A few days ago I had a dream involving some people I rarely see anymore. One of them was the girl who recently had a baby: except in my dream, she was young again. I was younger too, and we were at my old primary school. Weirdly, I always (probably 80%) have dreams set in my high school, but this one wasn't. And we were running from something - I can't remember the details, but I know it was an adventure. And we found Jack, the guy who lives in the next house down from ours (too far away to be a next-door-neighbour though) and we all continued on this mission.
It got me thinking about the way people grow. I might never have a childish adventure with Louise again, and considering the 14 years we spent as best friends, and the 7 years we've spent since then as sort of family, I can't accept that she's grown up. And I don't know Jack anymore, at all, but from his facebook I can deduce that he can't spell, therefore never got over his disability from primary school, and he seems like a bit of a chav. But in my head, and particularly in my dreams, he's the exact same as when we were 11. I have no idea how much I've changed - I can't even imagine what people from my primary school thought of me then, let alone now - but change, and the years of distance that seem to press on my mind sometimes, really get me thinking about time.
If we had no clocks, and no diaries or calenders or anything, we would have a much simpler, slower and more peaceful world. Who the hell invented a visualisation of time?
I hope I don't get old too quickly. I hope life goes at the exact pace that I want it too. I hope, above all other things, that I am growing up, maturing and getting over the things that 'haunt' my past. Watching Smallville, with all it's clever lines by Jonathon, Lex and Lionel - some of them mean more than just 'go be a hero, Clark'. Some of the things they say - the one in mind is about the past - Clark says "you can't move forward if you're so fixated on the past" but later on, Lex says "the stars in the sky that we see may have burned out thousands of years ago, but because light moves slowly, we're only seeing their light now. The past defines the future, and is always shaping the lives around us" (or something like that).
So my thoughts crumple into a few basic questions: do we only grow because of the passing of time? Without the knowledge of time, we'd never feel the urgency to be more than what we already are. And does the past define us, and shape us, or is it there to build upon, and learn from: should we welcome the past, as part of being our being, no matter how bad, or should we shun the past, and try to grow into greater beings without reflection of our earlier selves?