There's this scene in Peter Pan where Wendy is about to leave Neverland and Peter is pleading with her to stay. Upon realizing that his efforts are futile, he does what everyone does in a situation like this, he gets angry and starts yelling. He screams at her something along the lines of "Fine, go, but once you grow up you can't come back!", and this, my friends, is the most profound thing he said throughout the entire movie.
The deal with Neverland is that it is the ultimate place for children. There are no parents to tell you what to do, so you basically get to run young and wild and free for the rest of eternity if you so wish. But once you leave and grow up you can never go back. You can never be a child again. Once we grow up, there is no going back. You cannot just make yourself believe in Santa Claus again or justify trying to fly by running really fast and jumping of a tall fixture. You can be a kid and shirk your responsibilities as long as you want; you don't have to get a job, you don't have to keep going to school, and you don't have to listen to everybody else when they tell you magic isn't real, but when you do it's over. There is no specific age that constitutes a grown up, there can be 25 year old children and there can be 12 year old adults, it depends completely on every individual's circumstances. Because of this, sometimes I'm scared that I am already passed that threshold, that I have grown up and cannot go back to my own personal Neverland. Sometimes.
And then, other times, I moments like this one. My excitement over this realization, my need to tell everyone so they can revel in how completely awesome that is, my euphoria for pinpointing the message of the entire movie into one single line, these are the moments that make me realize I have not passed the line of no return; I am no where near that line. The fact that others I've told this to have not reacted in the same way I have, while it hurts that I obviously cannot convey its greatness, only solidifies my belief that I still am a child, and even though I am growing up, I have not yet grown up. If this was the move The Polar Express I would be the character that can still hear the bells. This is my own personal way of still believing in magic. This is still my Neverland.
