Since returning from my mission, I've looked back at my teenage years as a reasonably undesirable time--a time of social awkwardness and rampant emotions and intolerable high school. I don't think I'm necessarily wrong for thinking that, but I'm starting to put it into perspective.
I was at my Grandma's this evening with a great deal of extended family, and headlining among the hubbub were three of my cousins, all sixteen years old. I noticed them especially because they were having a blast. I was having a good time--everybody was having a good time--but they were having a really good time. And it made me revisit, nostagically, my teenage years. And I figured out what the difference is.
When I was a teenager, I had all the same awkwardness and insecurities as I do now, but they didn't matter and I knew it.
Girls were a point of concern, but I also was aware (at least subconsciously) that I was in a social training ground, and that I likely wasn't going to pick out my future wife at the time. School was a concern, but I'd learned through experience that good grades were easy to get if you played the game, and I knew well that my high school GPA would soon become moot. Finances were a concern, but not really--I only really worked during the summers, and I didn't have any real expenses outside of going to the movies and buying Christmas presents once a year.
These things have all come to a head now, though, and that's what makes now different from my care-free teenage years. It's time to play ball: I'm looking for a girl to marry, graduating college, and looking to nail down a good job that will start me on a pleasantly prosperous career. And it's all really, really hard.
I never thought I'd look back fondly on being a teenager. But maybe it wasn't as awful as I thought.
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