because this is clearly a better use of my time than homework

Life begins and we are beautiful. Innocent. Special. Perfect. We are radiating the miracle of life. Parents, siblings, and doting grandparents shower our tiny heads with kisses, count our tiny toes, and sigh and coo at our general tininess.

Then we grow up. And this is how it goes:

We progress from constantly lying down to sitting up occasionally. Then to sitting up most of our waking hours. From there we discover motion. We crawl. We climb. We scoot. Eventually, we take a leap of faith and raise to our feet. We stand and fall. Then we stand and don't fall. After some practice, we take a few uncertain steps. A lot of the time we still fall. But eventually we get the hang of it.

Before Mom is ready, we have grown confident in our walking ability and begin to run. Some of us never stop. Never slow down.

As we grow up, we learn to fend for ourselves. We feed ourselves, toilet train, start to pick out our own clothes. We learn what we like. We say "no." We exert autonomy in any and every situation that we so choose. We push our parents away, tell them we don't need help, and then come crawling back, begging them to kiss the boo-boo and put a band-aid on all of our sorrows.

In elementary school, our minds grow and so do our bodies. We learn to add, to read. We learn about the world around us, about the past, and about where the future could take us. We make friends. We lose friends. We lose friends we never even had in the first place. But we don't usually realize that until years later when we're older, wiser, and more mature. In the moment we truly believe that those people were our friends.

News Flash: If somebody doesn't treat you right--if he or she walks all over you, picks fights over silly things, makes you feel worse about yourself, tells you you're worthless or that he or she's better than you--that person is NOT your friend. I repeat: NOT your friend. No matter how many laughs fill in the cracks.

In middle school, we try to find ourselves. We search for a niche.

News Flash: Some of us never find a niche. Not everybody can fit neatly into a box with the lid closed tightly, a red bow perched on top. Some people were meant to wander.

It's in those years that we feel most awkward, most alone, and most, well, weird. Because, I'm sorry, but most of us are weird at that age. We're stuck in that strange limbo between childhood and teenagerdom. We're not  little kids anymore; we can't get away with being young and innocent and precious anymore. But we're not grown up enough for real responsibility. We're not big enough to stay out past 9:30 on school nights or to go places without our parents. So much growth has been accomplished, but we've still got a really long way to go.

High School. Nobody gets it right in high school. Probably because there isn't a 'right.' There isn't a 'right' because no two people do high school the same. No two people do life the same, for that matter. So there really is no 'right.' We're going to make mistakes. We're going to screw up. We're going to hurt and be hurt. But that's ok. We can learn. We can grow. We can rise above and move on. In high school we learn more of what really matters. We lose friends because they don't want the same things in life as we do. It isn't enough anymore to both like dinosaurs or the color red like it was in elementary school. There has to be more substance.

In college we're on our own. We're adults. Mommy and daddy aren't looking over our shoulders to make sure their sweet, darling Honeykins is doing the right thing. We let more and more friendships slip through our fingers as we venture out into the world, trying to discover who we are. Sometimes we lose sight of who we are because we are trying so hard to discover an identity that is better or more exciting. We meet the people who change our lives. We get lost in the crowd. We sit in the library for an hour doing nothing productive, all while taking comfort in the (maybe) false belief that library unproductivity is better than at-home-in-your-pjs unproductivity simple because it takes place in the library. And that means we got up and did something. Or at least intended to. Morning comes earlier than it used to. We delude ourselves into thinking that who we are isn't enough.  

News Flash: You are enough. Sure, you have faults. You have flaws. Sometimes you royally screw up. But that doesn't make you a failure. It makes you human. It makes you you. And you are enough. 

I can't comment on life post-college. Theoretically, I know how it usually goes. But since I have yet to experience it, I will hold my tongue. Maybe someday, years from now, I will be able to sit down, a knowing smile on my face, and write about what happens when we leave the security of college. Until then, I will just wait patiently for whatever that is. 

But I'll let you in on a secret: It's going to be good.