Last night, I sat down with my family and we broke out the home movies. I set up the old video camera and rewound the dusty tapes to reveal our cherished memories, when my siblings and I were still learning about the world and finding our place in it.
There are a lot of sweet, funny moments on those old tapes. My Dad managed to film not only the bigger moments of our childhood, but the small, in-between things, like the three of us swinging on the swing set in the yard, or chasing each other around the house, or reading picture books together. And while I’ve seen these home movies a thousand times before, I was struck with how different times were just ten or fifteen short years ago.
In that old footage, we had televisions and computers, but no iPhones to steal our attention away from each other. We kids had hopes and dreams and even fears, but they were far different from the ones we have now. And in my own eyes, I see innocence and glee over the smallest of things. I see pure enthusiasm for life, something I fear I’ll lose the older I get.
I am a pretty sentimental person, so maybe I’m the only one who gets emotional over something like this. But watching my younger self, seeing how excited I was to be a kid, to play outside, to tell a story, to grow up and live, it makes me long for that time of my life—a time when my family was all under one roof, when I had not yet experienced the anxieties I live with now. It also makes me grateful that I had a childhood that I can look back on and smile, because that is no small thing.
I wanted to share these thoughts because as time continues to pass and as the world continues to change, I know I am not the only one who wants to be the person my younger self would have admired. And while I have grown and learned and changed over the years, there is still a part of me trying to find a place in this big world, just like when I was small.