I started reading Harry Potter again. Yes, from the very beginning.
Flipping that book open and seeing my mother’s note on the first page was in the true sense of the word overwhelming. I felt like I was being pulled back in time to that moment when I first saw it; when she first got it for me.
It’s something to walk down memory lane in your head. It’s something else to start really wandering about it.
I don’t really know what made me pick that book out from my bookshelf that’s literally filled with tens of books I have not yet read. Maybe it is the fact that I’ve been stumbling along relics that belong to the same day and age as that book; things and people that belong in the past… more specifically: that belong back in 1999.
10 years ago. That number is utterly stupefying. I never thought I’d actually live that long. I didn’t even know back then that 2009 was even possible! And yet here I am, 20 years old, alive and well. I remember how the future was unknown; how I didn’t even know where I’d be in the next 3 years and who would be my friends. I remember I took it one day at a time, because –let’s be realistic- I wasn’t going anywhere. I most probably would be in the same school, around the same people, with the same friends. Why would anything change? There was no reason and no seen catalyst for change, there were no complications. Honestly, I liked it better that way.
Now, 10 years later, I’m in the same position, however with a different outlook. I do not know where I will be in 3 months, let alone 2 years. And there is one thing I can take for granted: nothing is predictable; literally everything can change. Everything.
That’s why they call that age of 10 the age of innocence. So little worries, so little surprises. Most of the time it all goes as planned, because more or less, our parents plan it for us, and they always make sure it goes through. It’s sweet to watch that old film that is my past and smile at how at how small, innocent and simple I was and at how I knew nothing and -most of all- at how I now know all the things I wanted to know back then. It’s sweet… except it has a slight bitter taste to it; it hurts just a little bit to be so bluntly faced with how much I’ve grown up.
Yet no matter how bitter it may be, it gives me faith in the future and in destiny. See, at that time, 10 years ago, I had no knowledge of the Prisoner of Azkaban, the Goblet of Fire, the Order of the Phoenix, the half blood prince or the Deathly Hollows. I would’ve died to know; it was so exciting and so intense with every book that came out and every new note my mother wrote me. It consumed 8 years of my life thinking, contemplating and building theories about what is going to happen at the end. Now here I am, knowing it all and so confidently rereading it all.
So I guess the lesson learnt from rereading Harry Potter is that even though I may feel intimidated and ignorant of what is going to be, at some point in the future, I will be confident and knowledgeable of all that was. Doesn’t mean my curiosity is satisfied though… it never is. But I think I can afford to be a little patient, because I will be there for the ending after all and no matter what it is won’t I?
Flipping that book open and seeing my mother’s note on the first page was in the true sense of the word overwhelming. I felt like I was being pulled back in time to that moment when I first saw it; when she first got it for me.
It’s something to walk down memory lane in your head. It’s something else to start really wandering about it.
I don’t really know what made me pick that book out from my bookshelf that’s literally filled with tens of books I have not yet read. Maybe it is the fact that I’ve been stumbling along relics that belong to the same day and age as that book; things and people that belong in the past… more specifically: that belong back in 1999.
10 years ago. That number is utterly stupefying. I never thought I’d actually live that long. I didn’t even know back then that 2009 was even possible! And yet here I am, 20 years old, alive and well. I remember how the future was unknown; how I didn’t even know where I’d be in the next 3 years and who would be my friends. I remember I took it one day at a time, because –let’s be realistic- I wasn’t going anywhere. I most probably would be in the same school, around the same people, with the same friends. Why would anything change? There was no reason and no seen catalyst for change, there were no complications. Honestly, I liked it better that way.
Now, 10 years later, I’m in the same position, however with a different outlook. I do not know where I will be in 3 months, let alone 2 years. And there is one thing I can take for granted: nothing is predictable; literally everything can change. Everything.
That’s why they call that age of 10 the age of innocence. So little worries, so little surprises. Most of the time it all goes as planned, because more or less, our parents plan it for us, and they always make sure it goes through. It’s sweet to watch that old film that is my past and smile at how at how small, innocent and simple I was and at how I knew nothing and -most of all- at how I now know all the things I wanted to know back then. It’s sweet… except it has a slight bitter taste to it; it hurts just a little bit to be so bluntly faced with how much I’ve grown up.
Yet no matter how bitter it may be, it gives me faith in the future and in destiny. See, at that time, 10 years ago, I had no knowledge of the Prisoner of Azkaban, the Goblet of Fire, the Order of the Phoenix, the half blood prince or the Deathly Hollows. I would’ve died to know; it was so exciting and so intense with every book that came out and every new note my mother wrote me. It consumed 8 years of my life thinking, contemplating and building theories about what is going to happen at the end. Now here I am, knowing it all and so confidently rereading it all.
So I guess the lesson learnt from rereading Harry Potter is that even though I may feel intimidated and ignorant of what is going to be, at some point in the future, I will be confident and knowledgeable of all that was. Doesn’t mean my curiosity is satisfied though… it never is. But I think I can afford to be a little patient, because I will be there for the ending after all and no matter what it is won’t I?
