Maturity
I'm a young boy sitting at my sidewalk. The room is brown and comes across as very drab. Monotonous and boring. The class is empty except for me and an infinite amount of empty desks. I don't know how so many desks were brought into the room. I'm facing a large, rectangular, chalkboard hung on the boring wall. It's green is the only cheerful part of what I assume is a classroom. I don't see any doors, although the whole wall to my left is not a wall. Instead, there is a huge glass window that faces a place I do not know. It seems to be the only way this room is connected to anywhere else. I sit and wait, for a teacher, a janitor, another child, my parents, anything. It's quiet.
Suddenly the room is enveloped by a force that - like the desks - was simply not made to fit into this suffocating room. There is no chalk and the board remains in stasis, but I feel this force having a conversation, or at least some form of interaction, with my body. My mind is there, present, but it neither can't explain what is happening either.
Time passes.
Gradually I begin to understand that the force is trying to teach me something, to leave me with truth and wisdom I did not have before. Once I understand this I try harder, somehow, to submit to this gift so that I may receive it more efficiently. I concentrate, meditate, I close my eyes - the force stalls. It doesn't depend on me, it's just a matter of time. There is nothing I can do to change that. I sit, waiting.
The feelings inside me rise and rise, until I notice what feels like a plateau in this whole experience. The moment where it all stops surging - it's still there, the force - but I seem to no longer approach the goal. I am a stranded car, broken, alone, in the middle of who knows where.
Then the sounds begin. They sound louder than they are at first, since the only noise I had heard previously was my own muted mind. Traffic, chaos, airplanes, laughter, applause, and then I see the children through the window. They are playing beneath a large oak tree whose branches spread into the air as in a race to reach the sun. An open hug of infinite possibility stretching into the sky.
The plateau of feelings begins to morph and quickly turns into envy. Here I am on the cusp of something that has stalled, sitting in a bland room by myself - and these kids are giggling, laughing, playing. They are enjoying themselves playing together, as if they were one big group. They ignore me for the most part. Some take a quick glance but look away and continue to play. It's the way you would look at a homeless person: enough to acknowledge their presence, but quick enough they don't see the pity in your eyes.
This goes on for what can only be described as a torturous amount of time. One girl with black hair, however, is sitting next to the glass window, staring at me. The way she looks at me makes me feel as though my skin was also a big glass window. She can see my stalled situation and understands me in spite of it. All this I would realize much later. All I know is that at this point she is my friend and I thank her for it.
Then a torrent of activity strikes. Almost simultaneously a bell rings somewhere, a door appears in the classroom, and I feel as though my body is full and heavy with the now finally completed transaction of wisdom and truth into my body. It's an overwhelming feeling, but at last the plateau is over. I don't know what I'm ready for, but I feel ready.
With the excitement of a child on Christmas morning, I run to the door that has unexpectedly materialized, turning my back on the window. I want to show the girl that I am full now, finished, ready. The hallway I find myself in has no other doors but the one I have just gone through and the one that takes me outside. I push it open and am infused with the smell of freshly cut grass. The oak tree is still there, but that was all. The children were gone. The girl was gone. I am the embodiment of disappointment.
I walk toward the tree and realize that the playground isn't as appealing as it once was, when I was looking at the children playing through the window. I stare up into the tree's branches thinking of what I could of done differently to end up playing with the other kids instead of standing out by the tree, alone once more. I wanted to talk to the girl, to be ready with her.
I think of fate, of chance, of time, of nature. My eyes stare through the crooked branches of the tree, onto the sun. The sun doesn't hurt my eyes and I continue to stare. With the sun behind the branches their silhouettes seem more exact, precise, sharper somehow. Blacker.
The sun suddenly stings my eyes and instinctively I shut them, covering my face with my hands. The force inside me lets me know I am OK, and I realize I lost some of that fullness. It's not that there is less energy now, but instead there seems to be more of me. My capacity has grown.
When I open my eyes again I find myself sitting in the back row of another boring classroom, alone.
This one is different than the previous room, it has fewer desks but there are still an infinite amount of them. The room is green. The scenario seems familiar to the last, but I can no longer remember the first room. Was it the first? How many classrooms with progressively fewer amounts of infinite desks have I been in?
All these thoughts are forgotten as time passes. I spend a lot of time in this room, wondering what the purpose of it all is. I understand the helplessness of my situation.
I lay my head on my hands, on my desk, and wait.