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It’s odd how we can all go back and look at journals we’ve made or picture we’ve drawn long ago and laugh and say, “Wow, I can’t believe I ever wrote or said something so incredibly stupid!” Didn’t we have a reason to say or write or draw that once before? Didn’t we have some feeling that ignited the effort to create something out of nothing? And here we are, as if we were a different person, saying how foolish we were. Why are we so embarrassed?

There’s something to be considered about children, about the imprints in time of our younger selves and all the friends we lost touch with… to think, there was actually a time before we remembered being influenced by the girl next door or, our older cousin. There really was a moment where we were just ourselves, before we became a piece of clay for our peers to sculpt into their plaything. It’s hard to imagine now, when there’s not much else original about us left but our DNA. At one point as we grew up we thought we were unique, that we had already outgrown the cliches; but the truth is, we will never be different than lots of other people out there in the world. Only our thoughts may be considered odd enough to be a minority- but too many times, as we try to set them into reality with words, they come out convoluted and construed.

Perhaps from those things we wrote, or maybe the drawings we made… well, maybe we were onto something once. Maybe we had a fresh idea, maybe we thought of something new, but were too young to fully develop the idea. Perhaps it was more than a snowman drawn from colorful wax, or a short story with backwards letters and misplaced punctuation. Maybe something made us special, then.

So don’t feel embarrassed then next time you see a piece you’ve created as a child, even if you don’t agree with me; at least take pride in knowing that was something you created, and when you created it, you were learning something. And hopefully, you were happy. We could all stand to be a bit happier- and maybe we could, if we were easier on our peers and ourselves- at any stage in our life.