Neverland, Everland, Foreverland?

The Promises of Peter Pan

Why did Peter Pan never want to grow up? It wasn’t like he knew what adulthood was about. He never grew up!

 

However, he held on so tightly to the rails of his childhood that he assumed he’d have to give it up when he grew up. Perhaps, along his travels, he met some Scrooge’s, a few grumpy adults that put a bad taste in his mouth. Maybe the glory of youth was too much to let go of. Who knows?

What we do know is that adulthood entails reality. There’s no escaping what’s under your nose. Staring blatantly at what’s in front of you, making eye contact with it and never breaking it. You don’t want to show weakness, not anymore at least. When you were a child, it was okay to cry, throw tantrums and recover all within 20 minutes and go on about your day business as usual. But now, that’s no longer acceptable. Those twenty minutes allotted to your release of feelings are no longer tied to you at the age of twenty.

 

A promise to never grow up, huh?

Everything grows, whether they are roots stretching beneath the surface of the earth or whether it is a plant stalk growing high towards the sky.

 

Before finishing the movie, I concurred that Peter Pan was wicked. How could he take those children there, why would he want company in a fantasy he created in which they eventually returned home? I would have forced those kids to stay with me because I knew their lives would be torture. Torture of knowing they visited a fantasy land where they had the responsibility of being a child which is being a child, but to never return. Take ‘em to Neverland to Never return.

But I remembered the story incorrectly. The children, well, Wendy, the eldest had thought of Neverland and all the adventures they would encounter because well, she dreamt them, which we only find out in the end. The whole reason they returned home, however, wasn’t in Peter Pan’s will but instead Wendy’s. She thought she would enjoy being a child forever.

 

(Side note: I’d have to deduce that jealousy is a childish emotion seeing as it was the catalyst for Tink’s dishonour and betrayal as well as Wendy’s reason to leave Neverland.)

Wendy needed her mother and couldn’t be one to The Lost Boys because she too was a child. They all needed a mother. Someone older to guide them along, to love and nurture them, I guess. I don’t know what motherhood is about.

So, what am I really getting at here? Is holding onto childhood too long in order to avoid facing adulthood foolish? Yes. Simply put, yes. How can you run away from what’s right in front of you? Well, it’s easy. I’ll tell you how: watch all the shows, read all the books, connect with all the people of your past. Have an array of options and choose the memory of your childhood and that’s how you end up watching Peter Pan. Nostalgia is a serious thing. It can hold you back instead of propel you forward if mishandled. I’m rambling at this point and I’m all over the place because guess what? I don’t know the answer.

I’m twenty. No longer a teen, no longer an adolescent, no longer a child. Yet I am still in my youth. Everyone tells me I have plenty of time: “My whole life’s ahead of me!” Yet I cannot dilly dally and must make my own decisions like an adult. But I thought I had time?

There must be a balance somehow. I just haven’t found it yet.

So, whose side am I on in the whole thing? Adulthood or childhood? Where do I lie? In between the lines, the very fine line one can find themselves on and I guess that’s what your twenties are all about. I don’t know! I just started 5 months ago!