Picture the 'You' you want to be five years from now. Now picture the 'You' you are right now. For a lot of us, these two don't have too many drastic distinctions between them. Now, what if these differences no longer existed at all. What if you were exactly what you hoped to be in five years. With that car, or that girlfriend, or that husband, or that child, or (if you're like me) that house with the view of the river. If that is what is happening now, would you wake up and do the same things you do today? Would you get dressed for school and rush to finish up Professor so-and-so's homework assignment? I surely would not. I would have my house and I would need to work hard to pay for it. It is no secret that young people are fairly quick to grow up. We see this all over sources of social media where young adults are attracting people much older than they are. So what does this mean? Does it connect to that old expression "show me who your friends are and I'll show you who you are." If that's the case, then the goal is to appear older isn't it? That just leaves us to attend to the issue at hand: What, then, happens to the years of youth we put aside striving to be closer to our future?
In terms of the friends we attract and spend most of our time with, it's important to be wise, of course, and it's a good feeling to know that more and more youth are drawing near to people that know more than them (i.e. older more experienced friends). In my case, it was always my older sister and her friends I would sneak play dates with. Eventually, this only made me seek friendship with upperclassmen at my school. I felt I could already relate to what they were going through since I heard similar discussions between my sister and her friends. This lead me to rush out of High School and into college at the age of 17. While all my friends from school still had months until they were able to enter college, I was taking on the course that continues to shape me today. What was the point of that story? The reason I jump on all the fast "short-cut" road paths in the world is because for a long time all I wanted was to be more than what I was. It was those snarky comments like "You're still in High School" and "Oh, I thought you were older" that would spur up the desire in me to be older and I'm sure in many other young people like me, this also created the urge to grow up.
When I think of how "grown-up" the youth of today hope to be, I think of the increasing number of teen pregnancies all across America. There is, undoubtedly a tremendous shift from adolescence to adulthood (or at least there should be) when a child is in the equation. Other examples of the youth's shift to adulthood is found in the young marriages happening more and more every year. People under 24 are getting married more often than before, and this could be a result of many things that have to do with financial and religious reasons. The point is, they are are shutting the door on childhood and becoming adults, one "I do" at a time. Other ways in which our young people are growing older in lifestyle are the jobs they are pursuing right out of high school. Working with teenagers on a daily basis, I learn of how many of them feel they've got a set plan for what they want to do when they finish high school. This was something I could not begin to fathom when I was their age. Some are considering becoming professional athletes and are qualifying themselves for it everyday. I met this young man that learned that in New York you could apply to be a firefighter at 17 years old and he was set on getting his high school diploma and doing just that. He was not worrying about important state and college assessment exams like the SAT.
Finally, my only advice for young adults, who like me have tried to skip the "easy" stuff, is to take your time learning what is best for you and what is not. If there's one thing I've learned from the short-cuts is that it'll be easier to undergo simple mistakes over and over again if we don't take the time to learn how to overcome them the first time. Likewise, it's also hard when we move so fast that we don't get to grasp how we are able to achieve things. Therefore, we work harder trying to recreate our accomplishments rather than just using what we learned before to obtain them.
