To say I am jealous of little kids is a weird but true statement. Not only I am envious of the naps and carefree way they encounter the world each day, but I miss the profound output of confidence for no reason at all. 

Now at 21 years, I’m not saying I lack the appropriate amount of confidence or don’t take charge when need be, but we were on some different type of level as kids. 

Talk to any seven or eight-year-old kid at recess, and he’s the best at everything. Throw a baseball at him, and he’ll tell you how he was the MVP of the rec league all weekend. Playing kickball? He’ll make it back to home base before you can blink an eye, or so he thinks.

This over-the-top bragging right he thinks he has deserved has not yet been called into question. He hasn’t had to think about everything he does or overthink everything he says. He just does what he wants, as if nothing has dragged him down yet enough to question his self-worth (or awesomeness).

I want to know what happened to us? Why is it that we worry about everything we say and do? What makes us self conscious? Because I hate it. We all go through it; the older we get, the tougher it is to be “yourself.” I may even say I don’t care what other people think of me, and you may say it, too, but we know that’s not the truth. We care. Of course, we care. Still, I want to know what happened to that little girl that would bust out singing at any given moment, not because I was any good, but because that’s what I wanted to do. 

Yes, I understand that if I blatantly start singing Taylor Swift walking down the hallway like the good old days, people will think I’m crazy. I get that we grow up, we mature and we can’t behave the way seven-year-olds do. But, we also can’t forget about the fearless, relentless little kid who wasn’t ashamed of anything. That kid deserves to come out sometimes to show us how to have a little more fun and show us how it’s done.