The Weight of Tomorrow

I spent this morning watching my neighbor’s kids play in the alleyway. They were wearing oversized cardboard crowns, marching back and forth with such serious, heavy-footed determination that I couldn’t help but smile. They didn’t seem to care that the crowns were slipping over their eyes or that the pavement was uneven. They were entirely caught up in the gravity of their own game, convinced that the world was waiting for them to save it. It made me think about how we eventually trade that kind of unearned confidence for a more cautious, measured way of moving through life. We stop marching and start looking for the safest path. But there is something sacred about that early, stubborn belief that you are meant for something larger than yourself. It is a fire that burns before we learn to fear the wind. What happens to that version of us, the one who was ready to conquer the world before we even knew what the world was?

Shahnaz Parvin has captured this exact spirit in her beautiful image titled To Victory. It feels like a quiet promise made by the next generation. Does this remind you of a time when you felt like you could change everything?