When Do We Know We're All Grown Up?

A girl I know is way into student politics. She's at all the rallies and protests. Her mom lets her stay alone in her apartment, but her mom has no idea about the parties she throws. I think it's commendable that she parties so hard and then shows up in college the next day looking, well, normal. You would think this girl is so grown up, right? I mean, she has political opinions, she lives alone and she knows how to cover up a good party. But recently, something happened that made me think maybe she's not all that grown up after all. She as late in submitting an assignment and had her dad call up our teacher. Now, you would expect a grown up girl to handle such a problem by herself without having her father intervene, but that wasn't the case.

The thing is we're all still young. We think we know so much about ourselves and the world, but we all still have a lot of growing up to do. We think how we feel at the moment is what we're going to feel for the rest of our lives, but as any middle-aged person and they'll tell you whatever they thought would happen never ended up happening. For example, the girl you loved when you were twenty turned out to be the wrong girl. The movies you liked at twenty-one started seeming silly at thirty. We rarely ever know what will be good for us in the long run. And that's how we know we're not yet grown up.

And how do we know when we are grown up? It's when we start seeing the bigger picture. It's when we start thinking what would be good for us in the long run instead of being reckless and making the wrog decisions impulsively. Now, when I say 'grown up', I don't mean 'old'. Growing up is never the same as 'aging', because it's good and I think it actually makes people happy. So stop trying to grow old and start trying to grow up. Who knows? Maybe it will help you stay young for a little bit longer.