“Well, I guess we didn’t know everything we thought we did at sixteen, hm?”
– Dean Winchester, Supernatural
Season 9, Episode 7, “Bad Boys”

Ah. Youth. The golden days where you think you already know everything. Everything about yourself, your family, your future, your world. Oh, ye young grasshoppers, how you have so much to learn! 🙂

Dean says the above quote to an old friend, apparently his very “first” girlfriend. When they were sixteen, both of them wanted nothing more than to get out of “the family business.” Her family owned a restaurant in a small town, and she thought she’d go mad if she were trapped there for her entire life. She wanted to go out and see the world, let everyone else see what she saw as a photographer. Meanwhile, Dean’s family was rather demanding and under constant strain, to put it very mildly, what with the whole monster hunting thing. He wanted out of the endless nightmare, to become a rock star.

In the end, both Dean and his old friend stayed with their respective family. Looking back now, she can say she loves it, and Dean would not trade anything for his brother Sam. Both have found happiness, or at least some of it, and it wasn’t what they envisioned as children.

I don’t mean to say that there is no merit in pursuing our childhood dreams. Quite often, that is the only way we ever learn what we really want out of life, through experience. But neither is there shame in finding happiness where we already are, where we began. If our dreams fail, or we fail at our dreams, we can still be happy. We just need to be open to it.

No one knows everything. Not children, not adults, not teenagers, not senior citizens. So let’s not close ourselves off to learning something new, eh? 😉