Finally, I am done with the 30 Day Book Challenge, and not a moment too soon - because it was really turning out to be a challenge towards the end! For the simple reason that when I read a book, I don't over-analyse it - I simply enjoy it and let the words wash over me. So having to classify and categorise books for this tag was a strangely difficult experience.
However, it made me realise how incredibly lucky I am to have been part of a generation that still read decent stuff. This is not to generalise in any way, I do know a lot of children who read, but for the most part, this vampire-obsession really gets to me. I grew up on a diet of Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie (as did a lot of my other friends), most of today's children seem to grow up on a diet of violent Japanese cartoons and Edward Cullen. And it's not just choice in literature but the whole attitude to life that is different with children I see. When did the world change?
Sometimes I just feel incredibly OLD. I think time is passing us all by and every second is fleeting by, every second we grow closer to the end of our lives, that Big Bang in our own existence- except that we will not explode, but rather implode into ourselves, into the lives we have led.
And every minute that passes, I am reminded that there is such a lot to do - why, this is just the first month of the last year of university, and already I am swimming in lists of books to read, reference books to look up, essays to go through. And while my cat snoozes away peacefully with her head on my laptop keypad (making it difficult for me to type without moving her head a little, but I wouldn't do that, oh no, she's sleeping so peacefully), I find myself a little weary of life, of growing up and its various responsibilities. But then again, that is life in itself - it must be lived, lived well and lived responsibly (although I know lots of people who defy this convention).
And while a best friend worries about jumping off metaphorical cliffs and how, with the onset of age, we are becoming alarmingly unadventurous, and I tell her that life, now, is more about just being and living than anything else, I realise that somewhere, somehow, we have grown up and shed the adolescent angst, and are learning to deal with life itself as an adventure. No need to prove anything, no need to be 'cool', to 'fit in'. There is no need to jump off any cliff, we have already jumped off it. The question now is, do we go crashing down into the abyss, or do we learn to fly?
