We All Believed We Were Peter Pan Once

Lessons from an almost eternal childhood

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Evening is falling, and while the summer sun won’t set for another couple of hours, I can feel the world growing sleepy. The clock takes note of this and begins ticking a little slower. A kind of quiet fills the air — the kind that hurts your ears if you listen too hard.

But my mind has not yet gotten the memo that it’s time to slow down. Instead, I’m thinking about everything I have yet to do. Not just with the day, but with the entirety of my life.

But it’s evening. I’ve gone to work. I’ve made dinner. I’ve even done my daily lesson on Duolingo (narrowly escaping the wrath of that terrifying owl). I don’t understand why my thoughts are so jumbled.

Surely, I just need some fresh air. I don’t have the energy for a walk, but there’s a swingset by my apartment building, and I do some of my best thinking in the air.

So out I go, and while I swing, I ponder the most important decisions I’ve made over the course of my life.

Or, rather, the most important decisions I haven’t made.

I feel guilt creeping up on me. The summer is almost over already. Before I know it, I’ll be back at college. What happened to everything I wanted to do? What happened to the goals I had…