'Some Grow Young, Some Grow Cold'

"Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure.

You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively;

unless you can choose a challenge instead of a competence."

-Eleanor Roosevelt

I used to collect envelopes.
Not rocks, or dolls, or bugs.
Envelopes.

After my parents opened their mail I would secretly root through the recycling bin and gather up as many envelopes as I could. I would take them into my room and lay them out on my floor. Then, I would slowly peel off the stamps and place them in a seperate ziplock bag. The stamps were cool (plus I figured that it was a bit more normal to have a stamp collection than a envelope collection) so I kept them too. But my real curiosity was with the envelopes. My favorite ones had the little plastic windows that made the coolest crackily noise ever, so when I got my hands on one of those it was a real bonus. Even then I knew this collection was a little weird, so no one knew about it. I kept my envelope stash safely under my bed in a shoe box, and just in case someone were to stumble across this bizzare collection, as a decoy, I kept the stamps on top of the envelopes. At the time, I thought I was pretty darn smart.

I recently remembered this collection and wondered why I was so fascinated with envelopes. So, with the hope that someone would have an answer, I asked around. Some poeple said that envelopes could represent adventure and far away places, or that they were like a shell, an outer layer that needs to be shed in order to discover whats on the inside. And some said that envelopes are a sort of forbbiden and mysterious thing since you can never really know whats inside of them unless the mail is yours. All of this was very helpful and also very confusing to me. Each one of these explanations made total sense and could easily fit into some part of my life- my need to constantly seek adventure and change, growing up and shedding all (ok most) of my awkward layers and, of course, my sense of curiosity (which does sometime kill). However, as a kid, I don't think that any of these things crossed my mind. I liked my envelopes because they made cool sounds and smelled kinda weird. Plus, no one else had a sweet envelope collection.

We all grow up. And most of us grow up faster than we would like. We stop collecting worms, and toy cars and barbies. We move on into the 'real world' and begin our lives. But, one thing we will hopefully always have is our memories. It's important to look back on these memories and realise that, yes, we may be taller and smarter than we were before, we may collect nicer things instead of rooting through garbage or digging in the dirt, but the bottom line is that all of these goofy things we did as kids make us who we are. They shaped our personalities and at one point were just as real to us as are the jobs that we have today. These seemingly unimportant collections were our windows into the world and allowed us to freely discover it each and every day.

So, I write this piece in the hopes that, despite all of the ridiculous things that you might remember about yourself, you take the time to look back on your childhood and recall all the silly stories. That you take a moment to recognize that everything you thought was possible then, is still possible now, it just may take a few extra steps. That you rediscover the world and always keep a part of your childhood with you. Because no matter how tall or smart you get, who you are today really, isn't that much different from yesterday.