Reborn.

Today I decided to put my life on halt and observe.

I went to the place that uplifts me the most. The playground. As I sat on the grass and watched the kids play, I couldn't help but be overcome with nostalgia. I envied them their opportunities, their ripe lives still waiting ahead of them, their dreams waiting to be fulfilled...

Sitting there, breathing in the smell of wet grass, feeling the breeze and watching the kids run around with pink cheeks, laughing hysterically as they chased each other around the jungle gym, I suddenly wished I could do the same.

It was so much easier being so young, yet all we wanted back then was to grow up. If only we knew then what we know now..

I remember back in elementary school, we used to peek around behind the “big kids'” gate and wish we were older so that we could join them. Old people seemed so cool to us; so powerful and neat and I remember thinking “wow, I wish I was like them and do whatever I wanted”.

The truth is, it's so much easier when someone's making those choices for us. But now that we're older, it's all up to us isn't it? It all comes down to the decisions we make everyday and who we turn out to be.

There's no replay, no rewind button that takes us back, and like the old cliche says, “life is not a dress rehearsal”. There's no one who will take the blame for your mistakes or forgive you heartily like your parents do when you mess up when you're a kid. And in life, there rarely ever are second chances.

We all wish for them though. We all spend so much time wishing that somehow by some magnificent miracle, we'd be able to take it all back and re-write our lives. When we're stuck, we envision a replay and how things could have been different, and when we'd do, it all seems like it could have been so easy and so real we could almost reach for it and touch it. We'd just cry begging life to just give us one second in the past to flip our world the right side up again. But it doesn't happen. We eventually get a headache from all the crying, get up and crawl into bed and sleep it off.

Well, for most of us anyway.

But, you know what else I've realized? That we should never ever regret having done or not done something. Because at one point, it was exactly what we wanted. Maybe what we should be regretting is not having had thought it through.

So now what? Are we going to spend the rest of our days living lives of regret? Thinking of how it all could have been. How it should have ended up? What's the point? Time isn't going to turn back no matter how hard we will it to.

So as I sat there on the damp ground watching those tiny faces, filled with innocence and curiosity, their eyes filled with promise, I promised myself something. You see, life doesn't give us second chances, but why be so harsh on ourselves? Why don't WE give ourselves that second shot? Yea, life's harsh, but we don't have to be!

So I got up, and as I wiped the dirt off my jeans, I began wiping off the dust on my heart. So I'm not young anymore, but I've got a load on my back called “lessons” that I have to arm me through which those kids don't. And their parents will try with all the power of their love to protect them, but those kids, will fall, they will get hurt, and they will make mistakes. But they will also grow. So maybe I can't turn back time or re-write history, but I can move on and give myself a break.

..and so on that certain day on one certain playground, my heart was began to become reborn.