Let the kid within you be a part of your life.

I cannot begin to explain what introspection can do for one’s growth. All that you need to know you already have somewhere within you. It’s all in there, it simply must be found.

I also see the importance of looking into one’s past, in my case, of the things that I have done, where I have gone, what I used to be. It’s all within me, a part of who I am. It is what’s made what is moving and breathing and doing, right now.

In many ways, I see both as different forms of the same thing. Because the past has brought me to where I am now, and all my memories, all my experiences, all my younger me’s are what make me what I am now. They’re a part of me, and looking within (introspection) is often much like looking at my old selves (looking into the past).

I look back at the younger versions of me, and sometimes wish that I could have done things better. But this is a negative way of looking at a huge positive, because I know that my past experiences, mistakes and all, have brought me to where I am at the present. I could not have grown to where I am now without it all.

Chunks of my childhood stand out to me in particular, and I’m not alone in sometimes missing the days when things were so “simple”. Either way, I think it was a valuable time for me as a period of growth, of course, but I also think that those memories keep a front-row seat in my mind I’m missing something in my life that I was exposed to them. Allow me to explain:

We always say we were this and that. I was a toddler, I was seven years old, I was a sixth grader. As if we are no longer those things, and have moved on completely.

This isn’t true, though, at least not for me. These things still live within me. I am still a toddler, seven, and in sixth grade. I have never “moved beyond” these things so as to leave them behind, as they are a part of who I am now. I have simply grown into a new place in my life.

The reason why I’m saying these things is because they matter. We try to forget who we were, what we’ve done, where we’ve been. We all eventually enter the “world of adults” and it’s bye-bye childhood from there. Suddenly everything is about money, about success, about complicated, twisted issues. Stress, stress, stress.

We cannot forget.

Why do we do this? Because everyone else does. So we willingly dive into the whirlpool to see where it takes us. Anything that was done in childhood is for children. Adults are not children!

But they are, we all are. And there is so much we can learn from children if we look back at our own childhoods and relive what happened then. Sure, the world may be a bit different when you’re an adult. Yes, there are actually responsibilities and struggles that weren’t there before, but that doesn’t mean we have give up the beautiful, life-filled energy that we had when we were younger. We don’t have to let go of the free-ness, the wildness we once had. We still have that passion burning – a flame inside.

Most importantly, somewhere within us, we still have the innate ability to let life flow and whoosh around us. I don’t mean that we let life slip right by, that’s what adults, you or I, are doing by letting worries cloud our vision so heavily. I mean truly feeling life as it rushes through you.

Let the kid within you be a part of your life.

We are in 25 but now what

We are the 25-year-olds. We are the ones rolling in our chairs at the office because we still feel awkward in our grown-up clothes. We visit through city streets with eyes cast toward our screens, desperately seeking any source that will tell us the decisions we've made are valid. We work hard in jobs we aren't sure we want to make those fancy degrees feel worth it, and we date people we aren't sure we love to make everything feel less lonely.

We spend hours drinking wine on apartment floors or in a hotel room promising one another that those who broke our hearts will not own us forever.

We are 25, and hangovers hurt now. Most of our conversations these days center on assuring one another we are going to be okay. We are proud of each other but hard on ourselves. When a friend does something as simple as cooking a food more complex than pizza, we applaud her, yet we berate ourselves for not yet having a corner office or a bestselling memoir or a thriving startup.

We dance all night to pitbull because he understands. We love who we want, and we hate labels. We are not in college anymore, and we've just become too old to crash their parties. Everyone we know no longer lives on the same block, and we long for the days of running back and forth between houses at 1 a.m. We have few obligations, yet we are always stressed, wondering if life will ever be more certain.

Our breakups never end because social media keeps reminding us of our exes. Even when we block them or unfriend them, their names are bound to pop up on our news feeds below pictures they've liked, and their faces assault us when mutual friends post albums. We hate online dating, but we all do it because it feels like the only way.

We are 25, and we constantly try to tell ourselves to stop complaining and enjoy our youth. Life isn't really that bad. We have our families, our friends and our health. We are young and vibrant and the world is ours. We are closer to our parents than the 25-year-olds who came before us, and many of us are lucky enough to still have their support. We have the time to go to bars and be with friends. We get to party and work and not worry about others depending on us. Yet all this fear remains, and it melts us into pessimists. Because life is pretty good, and still we can't stop worrying. So we worry even more about what will happen to us when there are real things to worry about.

We hear the grown-ups urge us to calm down. They tell us it will all fall into place, that if they could give advice to their younger selves it'd be to send the butterflies away and have a good time before age catches up with us. We hear them say these things, but we don't believe them. Things don't just fall into place. We have to put them there, and we feel like every second we spend streaming movies from our bedrooms is a second we are not putting ourselves out there. Yet we stream on.

We waste time the same way we did in college, only now doing so makes us uncomfortable.We are too old to go out every night, but we are too young to stay in and do nothing. We want to be more productive and live a more worthwhile existence, but we haven't quite figured out how. We don't yet have children or spouses or secure jobs or whatever it is that would make us feel like we had more of a reason to live.

We are 25, and even though we are worried all the time, we still don't want to get older. We never want to reach the point where we cannot be considered kids, even though the studies we read say people are actually happier in their 30s. Because we may be scared, but we are still 25, and boy do we have fun.

We try to stop punishing ourselves for not becoming Mark Zuckerbergs, but we overlook the fact that they are the exception to the rule of 25. Because for most of us, at 25 life detonates as we suddenly forget why we chose that major or moved to this city or loved that person. All we want is to understand who we are, and we can't. Only time will tell us.