love always, kristin

In a lot of ways, I am exactly the same as when I was a child. Obviously, I have grown and changed as I’ve gotten older, but fundamentally, my main character traits have stayed pretty concrete. Just like my younger self, I babble aimlessly when I’m nervous, I hate wearing dresses, and I can be a serious klutz.

Probably the most defining quality I’ve maintained throughout my life is the desire to make people laugh. When I was a kid, I was an entertaining one-woman-show. I knew the words to every Disney song and had a choreographed routine to go with. I forcefully subjected my family members to watch my performances because I loved how it felt to make someone smile.

I would also tell jokes anytime I had the opportunity: to my teachers, at the dinner table, to anyone who would listen. It became something I enjoyed doing because even if my joke was bad (which it definitely was), people laughed anyway. How could you not laugh at a five-year-old’s joke?

I learned early on that I had the ability to make someone feel happy, and I wanted to use that power as often as possible. To this day, I still slip jokes into most conversations. My sense of humor has evolved, but I think younger me would love that I never stopped trying to make people laugh (often at my own expense).

I think it’s important to do things that would make your younger self proud. And I don’t mean “healing your inner child”, that’s a whole different discussion. In the society we live in, it can be so easy to be in a hurry to grow up and get to the next step, that we don’t notice how quickly our childhood passed by. We should dedicate some time for that younger version of ourselves that grew up too fast.

If you’ve ever spent time with little kids, you would know that they don’t really think about the future. They are too preoccupied with what is in front them to think about next week, let alone the next few hours. They don’t spend every car ride planning out their day or having a pointlessly stressful commute. They will be looking out the window at the birds and the trees without a worry in the world, because they know they’ll get there eventually.

As we get older, our priorities change and we shift into work-oriented adults; we tend to get caught up in a daily routine and have tunnel vision around our future goals. Within our busy schedules, we could take a few minutes to do something our younger selves would enjoy, things as simple as playing outside in the mud and running through the sprinklers.

Little Kristin might be bummed that I never learned how to talk to dogs, but I think she would be glad to know that I still shamelessly sing along to Disney movies at the top of my lungs, and I never stopped trying to make people laugh.

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Love always,

Kristin