The Potential Possibilities of Being Really Really Cool

On the train the other day I spotted a glam-rock star outlined in silver on the silver door; this looked like the work of a 14-year-old girl. A girl who still saw the possibilities of transforming something dull into something individual, something unique from all the others.

At what point do we lose that zest?

It feels like the older people get and the more repetitious their life becomes the narrower the thought-process, the narrower the mind. Shouldn’t it work the other way? Perhaps it becomes too frightening that we feel we must hold on to what we know, because if we let go, we may lose an essential part of ourselves. But what part is that really? I’d rather keep my zeal for transformation intact. I’d rather have the mindset of a teenage girl if that means I can keep my passion, my confidence, my ability to speak for myself.

Many of us, most of us, are walking this earth with severely bruised souls. Whether we have failed at something obviously or we thought we did something really amazing and everyone we knew thought we had failed--these moments stay with us, these moments cause the black and blue. I feel they may stay longer and harder than the sparkles of hope do, longer then the confidence of possibilities surely does. And I don’t like it. I vehemently disagree with it and no longer find it acceptable.

I believe in keeping a child-like wonder when I look out at the world. This is not to say I want children or even care for them, but I do appreciate their perspectives. I love how everything has the potential to be really really cool if I just take a moment to gaze at it with fresh eyes. Yes, I saw that tree yesterday and the day before that, but today the sun is hitting it in this really obscure way and the wind is blowing the branches as if they’re each longer-than-long gymnasts on the uneven-parallel bars. And today that tree looks really really cool.

I want to step away from my failures and my stepped-on confidence. I want to remove the grudges and the smudges of my life that are preventing me from seeing the possibility of what a door could look like as opposed to accepting it for just being a door. If I can transform the mundane at least there will be more beauty amongst the pain. At least each my potential will not drown in the muck of the everyday, at least I will keep the zest and zeal of my self, so when I look back on my life I can say, wow, that was really really cool.