Savannah Watson

I had a dream the other night where I was back in high school, sitting in my favorite teacher’s class. I don’t remember what the lecture was on or what was happening, but I woke with one persistent thought that I have never had before:

Gosh, I miss being seventeen.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not because I liked being a teenager. I don’t know if anyone “likes” being a teenager. And my youth was overflowing with trauma and emotional turmoil that I couldn’t wait to escape. I didn’t start feeling real happiness, peace, and contentment in life until I was in my twenties and living on my own for the first time.

No, what I miss about being seventeen is that when I was seventeen, I was still a dreamer. There were a million things I wanted to do, and I was still naive enough to believe I would do it all easily. When I was seventeen, I still saw the world as a mostly good place through rose-tinted glasses. When I was seventeen, the future was still so far away and so vast and limitless, and all I wanted to do was chase it as fast and as far as I could.

When I was seventeen, there were a great many things I was afraid of, but dreaming wasn’t one of them.

And then adulthood happened, reality set in, and it suddenly became much scarier to dream big. In my twenties, there are a hundred things I want to do, but it’s always met with reality checks – can I afford it, do I have time, is it really that important? In my twenties, the world seems to be falling apart in a new way every day; I still wear rose-tinted glasses, but I think that’s by choice now. In my twenties, the future doesn’t feel far away, vast, or limitless anymore; it feels like I have one foot in the present and the future is somehow already behind me.

In my twenties, there are still a great many things I am afraid of, but dreaming won’t be one of them.

No matter what age, I will dream big. I will dream as if I were still

seventeen.

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