Last Saturday afternoon, I was casually browsing the clothing section of my local Walmart when, out of the blue, my life changed forever. There was a rack of plain sweatshirts with random sayings, a trend that is rather lost on me. This display, however, was different.

Printed in bold white lettering atop a plain black Walmart brand sweatshirt was the following:

"Don't grow up, it's a trap."

You may need to take a few minutes to process that. It took me around 4 hours.

Not only is this quotation reminiscent of Peter Pan--a movie that I've actually never seen and therefore cannot pass judgement on--but it is also a reminder that having been born means that we are all predestined to exist, whether or not we would prefer to. And that, my dear readers, is why this ten dollar sweatshirt deserves a deeper analysis.

The first discussion that this sweatshirt merits is one about free will and the will to exist. No one knows what happens before we're born, so everything on the subject is mere speculation. Two categories seem to encompass every system of belief about pre-existence: meaning to exist and not meaning to exist. Let me explain further.

The belief that existence is a choice holds that we have to have existed as something else before we exist as humans. This could mean many things; we could have existed as frogs or sand or cacti or aimless souls or aim-full souls. As whatever we were before becoming human, we made a choice to become human.

The belief that existence is not a choice holds that we could not make the choice to exist for ourselves. This would mean that either we were made to exist for a purpose by an outside source or that existence is for no intentional purpose.

So for whatever reason, if you're reading this, you exist and are probably a human. Cool.

The next thing to consider is what happens between birth and death, that is, growing up. Now, the shirt is mistakenly telling its readers that they have a choice as to whether or not they grow up, but this is simply not true. There is no choice because no matter what, we are all getting older with every passing millisecond.

So what message is the shirt actually trying to convey? That even though everyone is constantly approaching the end of their lives, they can resist growing up by acting young?

This is a stupid concept on par with mantras such as "You only live once" and "Ignorance is bliss." I'm not saying that everyone needs to dramatically come to terms with their own mortality; I'm just saying that pretending you're not going to die doesn't change the fact that you are.

Now, it is time to consider what Walmart perceives as the "trap" of growing up. There are many obvious answers--paying bills, living alone, getting a job and working your life away--but I believe that the Walmart employee who wrote the beautiful sweatshirt sentiment was thinking a bit deeper.

We are all trapped within a web of the world's expectations and ideas of success, so we are stuck trying to fulfill the world's dreams instead of our own. The funny thing about this web is that it's invisible.

Most people don't notice that they're working for goals they never set and for lives they don't actually want to live. There is freedom in knowledge, no matter how that knowledge is spread.

This is why I urge all of you to go to Walmart and spend ten dollars on a sweatshirt. You won't regret it when you see the looks of awe on your family's and friends' faces as they begin to contemplate life the way that Walmart did.

From all of us who now see more clearly: thank you, Walmart.