bakwaaas:

adulthood is weird because there’s simultaneously so much grief and so much joy

The same description applies to childhood but in a different way

In childhood we feel the same or greater intensity of both grief and joy as we do in adulthood. But more often.

Because in childhood the greatest possible human intensity of joy can be for things like “i got a teddy bear” and the greatest possible human intensity of grief can be for things like “i lost the teddy bear”

and then when we grow up most of us remember the events, factually, but forget how the joy and grief we felt about them was quite likely stronger than anything we ever feel about adult life

so, because those events no longer feel important to us, we convince ourselves that childhood was a carefree time, and that adulthood is where all the most grief and the most joy are