their eyes look so familiar, because they are my eyes. their hopes are my hopes. their fears are my fears. but i have 'grown up', and they have not...yet, and i think sometimes all that means is that i am a little more burdened than they are. some people confuse this with wisdom, but i don't.

i sat on the floor, listening with ears that have been deaf for a while. it's ok to cut a lot of the emotion out of teaching adults, because they have been 'trained to listen and learn'. not kids. you have to hold their attention; you have to be honest or they won't listen at all. they're not very sophisticated, so you don't have to bundle the truth up in big words. they still exist within the notion that life can be the way they want it. they still believe that something about them is completely extraordinary. they still think they can make their dreams come true.

dave was talking, leading high-schoolers in a discussion about "life". i'm supposed to be on his end of the talk, and i am, a little. my role now is to be older and wiser, with advice to pass down, modeling behavior and lifestyle choices that are 'appropriate'. eh. i felt like i did that much better when i was IN high school than now, 7 years out. i have LESS figured out. i have more questions. i believe less of what i KNOW is true than i did then. or maybe not believe it less, but act it less. live it less. feel it less. i envy them a little, and i want to go back and hold on to what the world has begun to beat out of me. the part of me that used to write all the time, the part that saw magic in everything. i don't want to lose that simplicity, and yet i know that some of it is already gone.

i need them more than they need me, i think. people really invest in you at that age, precisely and only because it's so obvious that you need it. maybe as adults we just get really good at hiding our needs, and so we don't see them in each other any more. we don't get together and sing 'lean on me'. we don't hear 'please swallow your pride / if you have things you need to borrow / for no one can feel those of your needs / that you don't let show' . those high school kids see those words on the screen every week. their eyes soak them up, their voices sing them out, their hands do the motions. i sang along last night, my position in life putting me in the front room, even though i felt like i should be in the back. but when i looked out into the crowd, it was ok. i met a pair of eyes and saw myself on the other side. i wanted to run over and say 'don't lose that! stay just that way!'...

...and maybe that is the wisdom i can offer after all.