I think there's a lot to be said for breaking rules. Especially when they don't make sense.
When I was little, I had no problem breaking rules that didn't make sense. In retrospect, no running in the halls, using indoor voices and finishing my vegetables before dessert probably did me some good, but in my boyhood mind, they were but a few more of the many restrictions on fun that grown-ups had, inexplicably and systematically, imposed on my world.
No amount of sit-down talks, timeouts in the corner or hours spent exiled in my room could stop me from doing what I pleased. I remember feeling intense shame when I was punished, and fear too, but those feelings faded away eventually. The next time I saw an open banister begging to be slid down or a gooey chocolate chip cookie sitting on the counter top before dinner time, I attacked without a second thought.
There's nothing quite like relishing in the simple joys of life, a skill that we tend to lose as we grow older. Sometimes I go to Occom Pond to watch little kids slip around on the ice and giggle at all the fun things you can do on a frozen lake. Watching my younger brother play soccer, I envy the way he attacks the field like nothing else in the world exists even if it gets him a yellow card from time to time.
Utter absorption in what's right in front of me that's what I miss most about being a kid. I can't pinpoint when things shifted exactly, but somewhere between the "I like you, do you like me?" dating game of Middle School and the Facebook-induced self-consciousness of my teenage years, the number of things I did simply for their own sake, for nothing but a few moments of uninhibited joy, grew smaller and smaller. Constantly afraid of the judgment of others, my awareness shifted from what was in front of me to what others might think of me.
I did theater growing up, but when I got to high school I sensed that it wasn't okay for a jock to do plays, so I dropped it. My other creative outlet, percussion, also went by the wayside when I decided not to try out for band because I was afraid people might think I was nerdy. It's taken me almost 20 years to start keeping a journal because I've always felt embarrassed, for lack of a better word, by my own thoughts and emotions. No wonder I stopped pursuing creative outlets.
Sure, there are real constraints on what you can do as you get older. Sadly, we can't afford to spend our days playing tag and making arts and crafts anymore, but the biggest change I've felt since childhood is the constant, overwhelming presence of judgment. Judgment not only from other people, but from my own mind.
I randomly decided to take Acting I this term with one of my lacrosse friends. He asked me to take the class with him a few years ago, but at the time, I said no way. Opening up to a group of people I didn't know was far too terrifying a prospect to actually pursue, and furthermore I reasoned that, quite simply, I couldn't be an actor. Which is strange, because no one ever told me I couldn't be an actor. I just assumed there was some rule against it.
It's scary to have no idea what I'm doing in an acting class, but thankfully I have a lax buddy going through it with me. We've stuck close to lacrosse since we were young because we were naturally good at it. Now, in our last year of school, we're rediscovering what it feels like to be beginners.
I used to hope that one day I would stop feeling overwhelmed by emotion and thought that one day I would wake up and walk the Earth with the nonchalant confidence of a pro athlete or a movie star, or at least one of the older guys I looked up to on my sports teams. I thought that if I put on the right clothes and got with the right girls, if I found the right job, if I followed to a "T" all the rules that supposedly lead to success, that my world would become carefree again.
Sadly, my happiness isn't as simple as it was when I was little. It seems that the dictates of life only increase with time. Better start breaking a few rules. They never made sense in the first place, anyways.
