THE BOY INSIDE OF ME

There is a boy in me, one I never want to lose. He is the dreamer, the wanderer, the one who gazes up at the sky and wonders what it would feel like to trade places with a hawk, soaring above the trees. He is the boy who once lay on his back in the tall grass, watching the clouds drift by, shaping them into castles, and giants  roaming a world he dreams of. He is the boy who saw adventure in every fallen branch, who believed the wind carried secrets, and who was certain that beyond the horizon lay a life grander than anything he had ever known.

That boy is still lives in me. He always has. But life has a way of making us forget.

   I remember the first time I saw a red-tailed hawk circling overhead. I must have been no more than eight or nine years old. I was standing in my backyard with the crisp autumn air and the sunlight on my face. The golden leaves rustled in the trees, as I watched, mesmerized, as the hawk glided effortlessly against the sky.

No boundaries. No hesitation. Just pure, unhindered freedom.

Something inside me longed to be up there with him, to feel the world stretch out beneath my wings. I didn’t just want to fly, I wanted to see life from that height. From a place where everything made sense. I wanted to feel weightless, unburdened by the worries of the world, detached from the expectations that already seemed to be pressing in on me, even at that young age.

So I climbed trees, and jumped from the highest spots I could find, hoping, just hoping, that for even a moment, I could experience what it was like to fly. Of course, gravity had other plans. But the boy in me never stopped dreaming.

   As I grew older, the world around me started to change, or maybe I changed first. School, responsibilities, and the slow march of time pulled me further from the boy who once believed that all things were possible.

The weight of expectations replaced the lightness of dreams. There were books to study, tasks to complete, and a future to plan. The boy who had once seen magic in the ordinary things of life, now had deadlines to meet and obligations to fulfill.

Somewhere along the way, I let go of the branches I used to climb, forgot the feeling of grass beneath my bare feet, and stopped lying on my back to watch the clouds. The world told me to be practical, to focus on what was ahead rather than what was beyond. And little by little, the boy in me faded into the background, his small voice became a whisper rather than a song.

But every now and then, something stirs inside me. A gust of wind carrying the scent of rain. The distant cry of a hawk overhead. The way the golden leaves catch the sunlight in the late afternoon. And I remember that little boy.

I think we all reach a point in life where we realize what we’ve lost. We wake up one morning and feel the weight of it, the absence of wonder, the dullness that comes when we stop dreaming. We tell ourselves we’re being mature, responsible, but deep down, we know better. We know that somewhere along the way, we let go of something very precious.

For me, that realization came one sunny afternoon. I was watching my three year old grandson playing in the yard. Suddenly I found myself lying on my back looking up at the sky as he ran circles around me. Then suddenly the boy in me stirred.

He wasn’t gone. He had just been waiting. For the first time in a long time, I saw the sky full of wonder again.

  And so, I made a promise to myself. I would not lose the boy in me. I would not let the world take what was once so natural.

Keeping that promise will not be easy. Life doesn’t slow down just because you want it to. There are still responsibilities, still deadlines, still moments that will try to pull me back into the rhythm of a world that demands more than it gives.

But I have learned that holding onto the boy in me isn’t about rejecting reality, it’s about finding the beauty within it.

Now, I will make time to wander. Take roads just to see where they lead. I may even walk barefoot in the grass, and let the wind mess up my hair without worrying about looking proper. I will stop to watch the clouds and dream, not just about what is possible, but also the impossible, because that’s what the boy in me would do.

And sometimes, I even see a red-tailed hawk overhead, and for a moment, just a moment, I feel like I am flying again.

I think we all have that childlike hope inside of us. The one who once believed, once dreamed, once saw the world as a place of endless adventure.

I think we all, at some point, forget those moments. Life does that. It fills our minds with so much weight that we forget how to reach for the sky.

  But the truth is, that child is still there, still waiting. It’s in the way our heart leaps when we hear a song that reminds us of childhood. In the way we feel when we close our eyes and remember what it was like to run without care. In the way our soul stirs when we see something breathtaking and, for a moment, we forget the problems of life.

We don’t have to lose that. We don’t have to let go.

We can choose to keep them alive, to let them guide us, to remind us that life is more than just what we can see, it is also what we can imagine.

So here I am, still dreaming, still looking up at the sky, still wondering what it would feel like to trade places with a hawk and see the world through golden leaves. To fly high and Fly free.

My prayer is that as long as I am alive, I will never let go of the Boy in Me.