.: the world at our feet :.

I guessed we have all grown up by now. It did not take as long as we might have thought. And yet we wonder where all the time has gone from then until now. We are not the same as we once were, as hard as we fought to hold onto our roots. The view is different from all the way up here on our soap boxes, touting the virtues that we have learned to market ourselves with. Our paths have strayed for a time, only to bring us back together at the least critical time possible. And it is not only us that have changed along the way, but those onlookers that sought to shape our very nature. Our heroes are now mortals. Our closest friends are now tales told across tabletops. Gone are those that we thought we would have with us for years to come. Adventures have been exchanged for the meeting of heaped-up expectations. It is as if age and distance have caused everything in our worlds to grow silent. Our dreams only appear here and there, reminding us of how tall we once stood before them all. The excitement has dulled and we have learned to run the race as those before us. The years now afford us the opportunity to laugh at ourselves, only this time removed from the pain that seemed to endure for so long. Here and now, our stories become far more common than they were before. In every happenstance meeting, we run through the lists of "done" and "will do", since there seems nothing better to do than just live. We have come full circle, seeing each other now for who we ended up turning out to be. And judge or compare, we all now bear a strength that has been taught us in ways too deep to demonstrate. We must admit, we truly do love it here! The masks have finally come off, though we do now don these new ones. But there is a sweet release in knowing that we made it through everything that threatened our very existence as those that wanted to change the world (or at least the piece of it in which we lived). Yes, the rules have all changed. And at this point, we must now turn our hearts back to the truths that have managed to slip through our fingers along the way. We can be who we are in this very moment and be enjoyed for what we have to offer one another, even rejoice for those that finally got a hold of what they fought so hard to have. We stop and take in all the realities that make up these lives that we could only hope for in the past. So this is what it feels like to finally be here! I must admit, part of me deeply grieves over the fact that it is here and no longer far into the future. There was something special about being able to paint our stories with colors far brighter than the ones that shade our day-to-day. But then again, there are elements of each day that we find ourselves in that are made up of the moments that we never thought were possible. The stories told of our childhood now setup the unfolding of the years beyond. There is more to reminisce, there is more to forget, and there is more to lament over our loss of. Here and now, we can finally be happy for each other. We made it through the thick and thin, through all that we feared and every occasion that we tried not to face, and we refuse to go back.