You, and only you, are in control

The world won't, and probably can't, fix things for you. But you can.

Only you have the power to prevent forest fires!

I thought I was a kid, too. Then I realized I'm just a human.

There are no children, and there are no adults. There aren't black people or white people or purple people. There may be men and women, but there is a continuum in between the two also. We are all human. Other labels fail to capture the essence of what it means to be alive, and only serve to draw lines between people that keep them apart.

The labels only exist in our minds.

As soon as you stop labeling, you will free yourself to be who you are in any situation. Human. Humans are adaptive creatures, who find ways to survive in the most adverse of circumstances, without losing their identities. Consider the slaves in America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Despite the harshest and most dehumanizing conditions, they were still able to hold on to pieces of their identity. Indeed, their descendants have had profound impact upon Western culture. They found a way to hang on to what they were even while being forced to play a different role on the outside.

Fortunately for you, you're not under nearly such harsh circumstances, and if you look hard enough, there are plentiful ways to project a child-like spirit into your every day life. Whether you are interacting with young or old.

As long as you continue to believe that you can't change anything, and that it's the rest of the world's job to make you feel better, things aren't going to get better. But you will realize that reality is really just your interpretation of things, and that you have complete control of it, and then - then, you can accomplish what seems impossible - how to stay true to yourself, and yet adapt and survive. Such is the wonderful and paradoxical nature of life.