Monday, October 30, 2006
Pretend it's a seed!
"When I grow up I want to be a fireman"
"When I grow up I will be better at X"
"When I grow up, they wont treat me this anymore"
I find myself in a strange situation. Here I am, 26, and yet I still don't think of myself as "grown up" There's still so much about myself that needs to be changed before I will be that "grown up" I have always aspired to be.
In fact it occurs to me that I am NEVER going to reach the point where I will feel I have grown up. Where I have achieved everything I needed to in order to be "an adult". This is because what I think of as an adult is completely unreasonable. It's this unattainable pie in the sky goal. This paragon of virtue and competence. Surely when I'm fully grown up, I won't make stupid flippant comments like that and offend people. I won't have all this difficulty knowing what to say, how to act. I'll be perfect. After all Adults are never wrong, and there so much smarter than us non-adults. There figures with so much more experience than me that what they have to say should be considered sage wisdom.
One day I'll be like that.
But I won't. Sure, older people are better than younger on average in these areas. There will be improvement. But my idea of my destination is unreasonable. Its unachievable. Its just not going to happen. I am an adult, as much as I don't want to claim all the responsibilities that come with it. And adulthood is not the cut and dried be all and end all that it first seems. Even adults need to keep growing.
And I have even more growing ahead than I thought.
"When I grow up I will be better at X"
"When I grow up, they wont treat me this anymore"
I find myself in a strange situation. Here I am, 26, and yet I still don't think of myself as "grown up" There's still so much about myself that needs to be changed before I will be that "grown up" I have always aspired to be.
In fact it occurs to me that I am NEVER going to reach the point where I will feel I have grown up. Where I have achieved everything I needed to in order to be "an adult". This is because what I think of as an adult is completely unreasonable. It's this unattainable pie in the sky goal. This paragon of virtue and competence. Surely when I'm fully grown up, I won't make stupid flippant comments like that and offend people. I won't have all this difficulty knowing what to say, how to act. I'll be perfect. After all Adults are never wrong, and there so much smarter than us non-adults. There figures with so much more experience than me that what they have to say should be considered sage wisdom.
One day I'll be like that.
But I won't. Sure, older people are better than younger on average in these areas. There will be improvement. But my idea of my destination is unreasonable. Its unachievable. Its just not going to happen. I am an adult, as much as I don't want to claim all the responsibilities that come with it. And adulthood is not the cut and dried be all and end all that it first seems. Even adults need to keep growing.
And I have even more growing ahead than I thought.
