Growing up, what's the appeal? Does a boring life make it anymore real?
People, close and distant, always talk about how mature I am and how I am wise beyond my years. Not just in comparison to my peers but adults as well. I always found it funny because that last thing I try to do is act older. My cousins and classmates would always talk about how they could not wait to grow up and all these things they would be able to do. Me, I have always just saw the freedom for what is was then and still is today. Even then I had my doubts that the "freedom" my relatives and classmates so anxiously looked forward to was not all it was cracked up to be. Like how I am in college now. Man, was there ever a bigger build up for kids than college. Senior year of high school was everybody talking about how different college was gonna be, how great. And while college isn't horrible, there's no where I'd rather be but home.
And maybe that's why I am seemingly so mature. I already felt I had that freedom. That's all freedom really is, if you think you have it, then you do. To me, freedom was never associated with growing up. In fact, "growing up" is how you lose it. As we get older, we create all these rules for ourselves. We tell ourselves that when things are easy they can't be good or worth it. This results in the over-complication of what I believe are simple concepts. As humans, specifically as we grow up, we pride ourselves on our complex minds and how despite being the same species, we are all so intrinsically different. We had everything we needed when we thought like children. Most, if not all of today's problems could be solved by observing things from a childish perspective. Childish simply meaning a base perspective without all the jargon we accumulated through adulthood.
For example, racism. Without all the influences of others, it sounds really silly. As a kid it's inevitable that you are going to get into an argument with a classmate about which color crayon is the best. And you are going to defend it with the best logic your 4 year old self can muster up. But at the end of the day, regardless of whatever color you claimed to be the best, you are still going to color the sky blue and the grass green. Assuming you are going for accuracy. Why is that? Because when you look up, it's blue and when you look down, it's green. So at the end of your debate, you both realize that every color has a different but equal purpose.
I am empathetic because I have retained my imagination. People are not that hard to understand, if you put yourself in their shoes and you don't like what you hear...chances are they won't either. And if you do like what you hear but they don't feel the same, then you simply don't share the same values. I am mature because I understand the opportunity I have to be immature. So many of us repeat the mistake of our elders in trying to grow up too fast or of trying to grow up at all. I refuse to be a wasted youth, and ironically I guess that makes me...Gthe oldest of them all.
