Struggles
When we are young, we live carefree.
Our biggest worries are playground games,
We are innocent, yet ungrateful.
We demand that our parents let us stay home from school,
stay up late and play
for every minute
of every hour
of every day
We ask them
question after question after question
about how the world works and each time they respond with
I’ll tell you when you’re older.
So we wish to grow up, longing for freedom,
not realizing how free we are.
And so we grow older
and we realize the harsh reality of reality.
We realize the truths of this world,
its fascinations, its flaws.
Our dreams that once ran free
are now confined to the cage of realism
as we realize
that the road to being an astronaut or author or artist
is riddled with hardship
and it is better to seek something more, “traditional”.
I suppose hardship is a way of whittling down the less dedicated.
Suddenly we’re staring down the dark tunnel
where every test, tests our will to survive
and our ability to memorize
details from some dusty, old textbook
College is the light at the end of the tunnel.
The sword hanging over our heads.
The gilded palace locked behind an iron gate
the key: perfection
Perfect is what we must be
if we are to succeed
so we spend our finite years
trying to mold ourselves into the shape
of what’s been deemed
“the perfect student”
We spend our years looking over our lists,
trying to check off as many items as we can
trying to perfect ourselves
and in the process forgetting who we are
and who we once were
And for what?!
For a future that’s slowly fading away
An old dream crumbling before our very eyes
A merge mirage in this desert we trudge through
But what choice do we have?
So we keep trudging
through this dark tunnel
to our future
to whatever fate awaits on the other side
Those finite years pass by in an instant,
each one bringing us closer and closer to that day.
The day when we are done growing up.
Where we have to step out, never to step in again.
All of a sudden the light is there,
bright,
shining,
overwhelming.
We enter into a different world–the real world.
We wish to be young again, back in our parents’ arms.
Ishaan Reddy 