The Gateway of Youth

Look at a young child at play, what does one see? Is it not happiness? How about pure laughter? Emotion so strong that one can see straight to the innocence of their soul; and a smile so strong that it has the power to leap off the child's face and attach to the face a passerby? What could be greater in this world than that? Then look at the same child a few years later, when they are in their teenage years. What does one see in them now? Where did the joy go? Where did the pure sweet innocent laughter and voice run away to hide? Sadly Joan Didion implies in her story, “On Going Home”, that childhood bliss is a dream; a dream shattered by the onset of reality.