They say: "You are so young! You are in the age when one can expect so much from the future, when one can carelessly fall into a reverie and not to control impatient impulses."

However hearing such words I seriously wonder if the person has ever been young. Or may be it's a case of mass amnesia?

Abilities... Opportunities... All that is hidden somewhere in the mist of future, and I vastly want to realize what's happening around me today.

Sweet dreams... Is it a proper time to have your head in the clouds while you need its intensive work on Earth? You are walking here and there, making acquaintances with extraordinarily different people, searching for those ones whom you in the firm belief will call friends. Nevertheless you submit to the feeling that they can easily do without you. And giving up the illusion of being safe and happy among any representatives of the humanity you get that it's heavily dangerous to dream as you may ordinarily loose yourself encircled by false friends and disguised enemies.

They say over and over again that you are too young to understand one and adult enough to cope with another. Then you find yourself haunted with the thoughts of what you belong to. Unfortunately the only thing you come by is that you are not a child. No longer… And you are not an adult. Not yet.

You follow your aim (if you have one) trying to find your place among all those people who "saw life" and were "much better in their youth", even having no idea what they mean. You ask them, but hear not a single word in the answer.

They want you to be serious and responsible. You want to be free and independent.

You want to fly up and catch the fair wind. They remind you to fasten your belt. You want to get to the top of the World. They advise you to explore the valleys before. You are sailing away to discover new lands. They are shouting from the shore if you haven't forgotten to take a compass and oars.

They tell you about the harsh reality of life. They say you know nothing about it. And there is nothing left than to keep back that you have already learned something about injustice, lie, treason and indifference. More over you have some ideas about friendship, faith and love. So you grit your teeth as you have to "control your impulses" not to be considered rude and ill-mannered.

I remember me trying to take the world with its entire "no" and "but", "stop" and "step aside". I remember me thinking about their wishes and expectations, hopes and feelings. Not to hurt them, not to disturb them... I was afraid to cause someone's tears and torments and failed to fix the hour when I turned into the torment myself. I tried to be closer to people and I concluded the best way to win their love was to listen to what they want, to be pretty friendly and attentive. But I forgot what I wanted to get from them. I forgot that I had hopes and feelings too; somehow attentiveness transformed into blandness. I felt devastated and low. And I realized that the inner sense of emptiness is much more painful than torments. Then the new discovery led me to the other reminding that I was born not to be lost inside my errors, not to dissolve in their wishes...

The things I carried from all these were that people's love and approval are nothing comparing to your own calmness and confidence. And while you are trying to take your place in someone's heart you fail "not to cause his tears."

They often blame you for being naive and credulous. They laugh at your "romantic ideals" and wisely add that they have nothing in common with real life. The fact is that your ideals do not concern their reality and mean so much for you. Would they blame a poet for singing the praise of ethereal fantasies and pure feelings? Most probably they will just take a book to escape from the loathed routine trying to bring to life their own forgotten hopes. So why don't they let you believe until you will be able to? Why don't they start to believe themselves? There are only few people with the hearts of real poets who take everything happening in due time and don't hurry you to say good-bye to your inspiration.

You want someone to give you a hand and to lead you through the shades of unawareness and diffidence. You want someone to answer all your questions and to dispel your fears and doubts. Finally you see that you are to find all the solutions yourself and these answers, which you feel from A to Z, turn an ex-teen into a future adult. And you are just waiting for a moment when the fog in your head clears and you can definitely identify right and wrong ways and choose the best one. In the meanwhile you grope your way in the passages of life running across those experienced people and the folk whom they call ‘young’ too.

You turn your eyes to these boys and girls. Do they feel the same? Some of them seem to be self-assured and independent. But why do they try to prove that every day? Others look at you and you understand that they see the things through your eyes, so they see nothing clear. And you are totally in the darkness about what is going on. And you feel broken off for nothing.

Then you sense …questions creeping up behind you. You see allusions flying past. And you try to shut out the sight of them with your hands. Then blindly walking in circles and trying to find the way out, you confidently direct your steps towards a chasm. You try to make a step and you walk and walk…Suddenly you find yourself falling down. But you are not Alice and it is surely not a rabbit mink. You wish it to appear a nightmare, just another nightmare, which will be wiped off with the first rays of the Sun. But you are not lucky to wake up, as you are not sleeping and you desire to fall asleep as your nightmare flights are much safer. Maybe someone’s graceful hand will stop your dreadful fall and I say to myself: "Catch hold of the sides, stretch yourself to the Sun.”

When you were younger (if we can say so) you created hopeful images of adult life. They were bright and very promising. But today standing next door to this adult life you fall into doubts. You want so much. You dream about far horizons and heights beyond the clouds. But you don't know how to run up to them. You don't know what to begin with. So you come down to Earth and try to join dreams and reality. As the result, the only "far horizon" you can reach at the moment appears to be at the arm's length. And you can't take yourself higher than your head. You discover that it is so difficult to keep dreaming and hoping while everything around tries to convince you that it is out of necessity. You come up against obstacles and getting over them you experience yourself and finally you realize that your dream is really worth the strife and the regards are too precious to stop fighting at the very beginning.

Now you are learning to be a personality. You are learning to answer for everything you do, think and say. You have a lot of teachers who teach you to spare without them. You feel that the time is coming when you can examine your powers and finally discover who you are and this discovery will be the key in your life. From this it follows that you need to look bravely into the future, you need to value yourself, but there are very few achievements you have attained for the time present. Therefore it is so complicated to feel ready to face everything that your fate has prepared for you. It is so hard to take the first step.

There are so many things which happen to you for the first time.

There are so many mistakes you make every day.

However in spite of all that you consider yourself special and unique. You are overwhelmed with ambitions. You are so sensitive to criticism. You are so self-confident and proud. And the main - you are so young. You want to become better. You can become better. You are not exhausted with grey routine. Everything is significant and valuable. You feel bright and strong, energetic and enthusiastic. You keep going forward from sunrise to sunset because you expect so much from the future. You want it to be outstanding and marvelous. And you believe wholeheartedly it will.

It's up to you if you take what they say to your heart or turn into a rebel and do everything to spite them. It's your choice to live directed with your own hopes or trying to carry out theirs. It's to your liking to pity yourself for being weak and pressed with their advice or to muster your strength and listen to no one except your intuition.