Imagine yourself ten years from now. Pretty exciting, right? By then, I’d like to think I’ll be married to a super model with a southern accent, living in a gigantic house with my 2.5 children and white picket fence. Pretty bold claims for an English Education major. Now, picture yourself 10 years ago. I know I’d be fresh out of a bath of AXE body spray, hair gelled in frosted spikes, with my JNCO jeans and Pokémon cards in tow. Strugglin’. Given the opportunity, which would you rather jump to? Chances are, you’d be like me and choose former. You couldn’t pay me enough to toss me back into puberty.

This lack of envy for the young is alive at all ages. Think about your parents. Twenty years from now, they’ll be on the homestretch to retirement. There’s no way they would pass up Hawaiian shirts and nickel BINGO at Del Boca Vista to clean up twenty more years of your dirty diapers and mashed peas vomit. It’s just the way we are bred – optimistic. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing either. Hope in the future is what gets us through countless exams and classes, praying for a six-figure salary on the other end. Hope in the future is what gets us through the girls with unibrows and hunchbacks, praying for that southern super model on the other end. It’s only human of us to want to forget about the diapers and move along towards the BINGO table.

Naturally, the grass ahead of us will look much greener. No, not because of crazy advancements in the fertilizer business. The grass only looks greener simply because we just haven’t began to tread on it yet. Ten years from now though, I’ll look back at the path I left.  Though I’ll most likely laugh at how crooked and confusing it is, I know I will smile and appreciate that it’s that very crookedness that made me whom I am. Until then, I’ll keep on treading.