When writing this article, I desperately tried to come up with a way to say this that gave a better use to the expansive vocabulary at my thesaurus-clutching fingertips but I drew a blank. Growing up is weird. What I find weirder to think about is that I didn’t realize growing up was weird for a large portion of doing so. My entire life I just tackled the day to day living, along with the (more often than not) distractions I made for myself. This entire time I just lived, aware of my new responsibilities and capacities, but not really putting a name to it. Then, all at once, it hit me: I’m pretty much an adult.
I was walking out the door, into my car a little while ago, now I’m driving on the highway listening to AM news radio station waiting to hear if there is traffic ahead. The report was going to dictate what route I’m taking to get quickest to my University. Then BAM. There it happened, someplace on the Northern State Parkway just east of the Wantagh Parkway exit, I realized I’ve grown up a lot more than I give myself credit for.
I have a flashback to being younger, on my PS2 playing Grand Turismo 4 (a racing game). I wondered what it was like to drive. I remember watching cartoon shows like 6teen about teenage life and how far off 16 felt at the time. Now here I am, going on 20, bringing a container to school so I can start packing up my dorm stuff at the end of my freshman year at college. So much for 16, huh?
What does this all mean? Well from what I have gathered, childhood and adulthood seem to be regarded as being mutually exclusive. It’s either one or the other. People don’t have times for anymore, there’s work to do! People don’t want pen pals, who sends letters anymore? But why is that? What’s so terrible about being a kid in certain aspects? What’s so amazing about growing up that puts everyone in a rush?
About 5 minutes after my epiphany moment on the Northern State, I arrived at the following question: Who ever said that adulthood meant completely giving up childhood? If anything, I say hold on to some parts of being a kid! Maybe that unwavering faith in our abilities to expand out abilities from childhood would benefit us in adulthood. Hopefully, our youthful openness to cooperation and kindness can still prevail even past adolescence. Maybe these and other qualities belong side-by-side with our knowledge, experience, responsibility and accountability of adulthood. Maybe such a combination could lead to a happier life. Who knows? Why don’t you be the experiment and try it out, see how it works?
For you curious types, I didn’t end up hitting traffic and made it to classes on time. Right after the traffic report, I turned on my music and belted it out loud as ever. After all, I always did like singing as a kid…
