Once upon a time there was a little girl who had many different kinds of dolls... short ones, fuzzy ones, blue ones, green ones, some that looked like other girls, and some that looked like princesses and some that looked like ninja warriors. As time went by, she grew tired of the blue doll, then the fuzzy doll, then the little princess until one day she realized she had no more dolls left at all!
In some ways this discovery made her very sad, but it also made her feel that perhaps she was all grown up. In fact, perhaps that's all growing up was... letting go of your playthings!
She thought about this for a very long time but soon was distracted by other Big Girl matters like making cakes or building houses or helping the homeless.
She forgot about it for years until she happened to be walking down Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn where she saw a box filled with dolls that looked an awful lot like some she used to have. She stopped dead in her tracks. And stared. (Even though someone had once told her staring was impolite, she didn't think the dolls much minded and actually kind of LIKED it.)
"Do you miss them?" said an old man who was standing nearby.
"Miss them? Are these MINE?" said the now much older girl.
"Maybe they were at one time," the old man said. "But once you give them up... Well, now you would need to buy them BACK. I'll sell you one for a dollar -- and if you pay five dollars, I'll thrown in an extra one FREE."
She felt a little sorry for all of the dolls crammed into the box (and a little embarrassed too since many didn't have any clothes at all.) For a moment, she considered buying just one. And the minute she thought about buying just one, she thought about buy TEN, and then she thought: "What if I bought the WHOLE BOX?!?!"
"Thank you very much for your kind offer," she said (if she had learned anything as a little girl it was to be polite).
"Why not?" he called out to her as she walked away. "I can see you miss them."
She did miss them. But she also didn't want to say the reason she was walking away IN FRONT OF the dolls and upset them. She didn't want to tell them she had realized growing up wasn't just getting rid of things she no longer wanted. (Any spoiled girl could do THAT!) But it was knowing that you didn't need to go back and feel nostalgic AND you didn't need to just buy NEW things to fill in those empty spaces.
Sometimes Growing Up meant being happy with yourself and sometimes (actually most of the time!) that was enough. Sometimes the world is MORE than enough, just the way it is.
[Hmmmmm.... Maybe we'll wait until you're a little older to tell you this story.
Then again, maybe you'll find out all by yourself and live it better than I have.]
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