Why does it seem smaller? What I outgrew and what I'm approaching ahead.

I venerate walking.  I value the mental benefits and the physical benefits, and on days when running is too intense, walking is a quintessential replarock .  Even then, I walk everyday.

I take the same route every day: to town center and back which totals 2 miles.  I find that time alone allows my mind to relax and focus on other ideas I would otherwise have little time to muse.  Something that perpetually re-enters my thoughts is high school.  

This week in particular, I’ve been intrigued with the diverse selection of clubs that Andover offers.  And when I say “diverse”, I mean I was looking on their 2016-17 list of clubs and they have everything from Film Club to Alzheimers Awareness Club, from Rock Climbing Club to the school newspaper The Phillipian, from Andover Business Club to Big Data Analytics Club.  High school…it’s only 2 months away, standing in the distance.  It seems big.  It’s intimidating.  And it’s most certainly not rainbows and butterflies.   I know I’ll need to expect setbacks and failure.

However, that particular afternoon, I decided to take a different walking route and I revisited a pond I live close to.  When I was younger [about 4-ish] I remember my mom and dad used to talk me for walks here.  I remember there being a resting area on the edge of the pond that has white pebbles, a tall flag pole and beds of beautiful red flowers planted around the flagpole.  In addition, there was a horseshoe rock wall that separated the flagpole from the pond about 3 feet tall and a foot thick.  Being younger, I remember picking up the white, dry and chalky pebbles and crushing them in my small fingers.  I remember wandering around the red [tulip?] flowerbed, smelling every flower, watching bees dance through the beds.  I also remember climbing that 3 foot tall, 1 foot thick rock wall.  The rock wall wasn’t pure and contained many protruding large rocks and I remember scraping my knees along those rocks as a four year old trying to climb something one foot above my head. It seemed like paradise in the summertime, walking around the flowerbed, smelling every flower that somebody graciously planted there, climbing the rock  wall and looking out into the pond, grazing my knees against the rough blackish rock all under a fluffy clouded blue sky.  

The rest area in the winter.  Flowers usually grow within the first around the flagpole.

But it was different this past week.  Everything looked smaller.  Everything felt smaller.   The entire resting area was smaller.  The flagpole shorter.   The flower bed farther and smaller.  The rough rock  wall even felt shorter.  Physically, I know I’ve grown taller since I was four years old, but I think I’ve also mentally outgrown this rest area.  It was paradise for me as a four year old.  I found pleasure in looking at colorful flowers in the summertime, climbing the horseshoe shaped rock wall and crushing white pebbles in  my stubby fingers.  Now, when I look at these flowers and they’re not so extraordinary anymore.  

I’m trying to contrast this with high school.  It seems so big and humongous ahead of me, like the rest area by the pond once seemed, big, luminous and mysterious.  But now, 10 years later upon revisit, it feels smaller and I’ve become accustomed to it’s feel that it no longer feels like big and mysterious.  I suppose high school is going to be like this, luminous and scary at first, but [hopefully] gradually, I’ll get the hang of it.