The Kid in You

One of my most cherished television shows that always takes me back to high school and revives the kid in me is 'Alexa and Katie'. This sitcom on Netflix shows the journey of two inseparable best friends of the same names, going through their life in high school with all its overwhelming yet memorable ups and downs and irresistible laughs as Alexa battles leukemia. I remember watching it for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic, when you run out of things to do when you are stuck between four walls and when days seem to take on the look of a year. At a time when the world was in lockdown mode and countless lives around us were snatched away without mercy. watching the story of a 14-year-old girl with cancer, living her life while navigating the invisible boundaries and stereotypes it creates for and about her, with the jovial support, love and care of her family and her best friend was something that really comforting and enlightening.

Photo Credit- Rotten Tomatoes

Another one of the beautiful things that this series portrays is how these two best friends become each other's driving force and support system for following each other's dreams and being each other personal diary without any judgement or opinion. They bring out the best in each of them and are not afraid to stand up and be there for each other physically and emotionally no matter the cost, or the opinions of others around them.

It's a show that captures the essence of high school and teenage life and teaches us to live life while keeping the child in us alive no matter our age, through playful and peppy acting and script penmanship.

Most of us have come across this one question at some point in our lives- "What's a phase or part of your life that you would like to go back to?" It's showed up in so many forms and places, games of Truth or Dare, 21 Questions, random side quests of getting to know each other as friends and family, and sometimes in our own hearts, when nostalgia visits without an invite. As humans, all of us set our lives into chasing our ambitions and passions, but in the course of its fast-paced nature, we forget that a part of our spirits holds within it the child we once were, the embodiment of innocence, curiosity and a way of seeing the world with eyes of hope and unconditional love. Growing up, a lot of us see the world as a desolate place where it's pointless to believe in the existence of goodness, but we don't realize what that does to the child in all of us.

A part of us will always wish to go back to the carefree days of our childhood and teenage life, where we didn't need to think about responsibility or expectations. Perhaps as we grow older, with the multitude of infinite responsibilities that our shoulders unconsciously take on without a choice, we take on the additional duty of not forgetting the child in us that is hidden away in the abysses of our soul. It's important that we remind ourselves that everyone around us, including ourselves, was a child once, and a lot of us carry the scars we faced then when moving forward in our journey, and perhaps we forget to carry the good times and the perception and perspective we have of the world and about the nature of people.

Photo Credit- New Scientist

In a way, preserving that childish carefreeness and trying our best to see and go out into the world with an eye of seeing it for the first time and the last time, like everything you see around you is a fascination, even routines that we claim to be mundane once it becomes a familiar pattern. It's motivating and uplifting to make cherishing the child in our spirits and keeping it alive as our routine grounded in familiarity and reminiscence, the pattern that we can adopt for our unique, jagged and imperfect roads- because down this long road, the ambitions we chase and dedicate our time on this planet are the brainchild of the kid in us. We strive every day, working hard for our goals when really, we are working to make that kid who becomes smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, proud of who they wished to become and would accomplish becoming. Don't forget the kid that lives in you and will always be with you in spirit forever.