SHhh..It is Going to be ok...
When you're young everything is fun and games. Everything is simple because you do not have to think about anything that would stress you out. Nothing has consequences , you are safe from harm, the only problems that you have is going to school, sleeping early and you're relationship with other kids who you want to get to know and play with. Waking up and watching television on an early Saturday, going to church every Sundays and an endless and sometimes boring loads of homework.
You see when you're young you want to grow up fast, you want to earn money, buy every toy that you want and sleep as late as possible. It's ironic really that nobody tells you as a child that "growing up" means changing all of that. That growing up shall pull you down from your clouds of imagination, it shall plant your feet on the ground and you lose everything , even that "wide eyed smile" that you have every day of your childhood.
The definition of Growing up according to the Dictionary is that it is when you begin to exist and you develop into an adult. It doesn't say really say that it is when you lose yourself and become someone that you do not know every time you look into the mirror. You see when you grow up the fun and games it begins to vanish and every action and choices that you do begins to have consequences in them. It is when stress, anxiety or even loneliness starts, it starts to happen because you're trying to build up something that you could show to other people, something you could be proud of. Something that says I'm here , I exist and I'm not a child anymore.
People start to expect something from you, you in return do your best to provide that expectation. To give positive results and a failure to do so will be a big blow to you , to your work, your ego or anything that you are trying to build, even you're career.
But growing also gives you an important lesson, even though you're are expected to do great things which is hard, even though you fail at a lot of things, you learn from all of it. When i was a child i learned an important lesson which i still use to this day, I was walking along the street from school and saw that there is a person who was selling ice cream across the street and me being an avid fan of ice cream wanted some and in my excitement crossed the road without looking at both sides before crossing it, as i was midway at the street a car suddenly passes in front of me a few inches away from my face unfortunately i did not come out of it unscathed seeing that my toe was rolled over by the wheels of the car and in my experience from that day it really hurts like hell. From that day onward, before i cross the street i look both ways because never would i want to feel my toes to be rolled over by another car again. EVER. You see you learn from you're mistakes and like i was from that day, i wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for those failed choices that i have made during the time when i was young.
Each and every one of us are survivors, we are survivors in a way that we survive the day that are gifted to us. We learn from our mistakes, we grow up, we grow old and we add value to the lives of not just of ourselves but other people too.
One could say that children are just looking for several ways on how to kill themselves but i beg to differ. Children are smart and they become smart by doing or experiencing ways on how they could hurt themselves. BY hurting themselves by feeling pain they eventually, WE eventually learn from that pain and become a better and smarter person than we were before. That is what's amazing on being a human being, a child or even a grown up. We do not stop learning, we experience plenty of stuff that we could add to our arsenal of experience and we use that to our advantage.
However , this exploratory phase of us ends, not because we run out of ideas but because we start to see that there is too much of things out there and it is impossible for you to feel everything so as a grown up you start to focus on what you're good at, you begin by again making a career on what you think is your best line of work and we use that knowledge to advance ourselves and show to other people that we can have the potential to be the best. Everything starts to be a competition of skill.
We start to develop, our brain works out the complexities of the world and we adopt the rules provided to us and granted us by adults who also were once children creating rules from experiences that they also made. Life, growing up, growing old, it's a cycle.
We begin to practice several principles that emerges in our minds. Principles that helps us to avoid pain. We ourselves create rules for ourselves and as the cycle start we start to pursue our own version of pleasure and avoid problems that could cause pain and problems. We begin to negotiate our own desires with the desires of people around you and we play by the rules of the society and the authorities that implement the said rules.
Being a child is feeling pleasure. But being a Grown is about the experiences we learned from being a child, it is a road to which we take where we learn principles and we get pleasure from being rewarded by following those principles and earning something from it.
We begin our lives as a person who knows nothing ,a blank slate and we leave it with our minds full of the knowledge that we have learned from the road that we have taken from being a child itself.
Life is a road to which we make mistakes and those mistakes makes us stronger and better.
So don't be afraid of growing up. Instead learn from it. Become a better person, become someone who you aspire to be.
So don't be afraid, do whatever it is you want to do, create mistakes but be sure to learn from it.
Enjoy life. Grow up. Hakuna Matata ;)
