The process of growing up

The luxury of being young is something we come to appreciate only when we discover its absence. Growing up is a process in itself, different for most, yet similar for all. From being a helpless baby, unable to express oneself properly, to the insistent 10 year old, the misunderstood adolescent or the unstoppable adult; we have multiple chapters to live through. Then again, do we ever truly lose our “young” side? Walt Disney once said, “adults are only kids grown up, anyway”, never loosing our childish spark no matter our age. Adults tend to tell the younger generation to enjoy their youth, believing that they’re feeding them words of wisdom; but aren’t they simply giving advise on their regrets? Ironically we assume that when we are adults we will understand the world, things will shift and life will be clearer. Why? Because when we are young, we are often told to “grow up” by older peers (parents, teachers, siblings), when acting immaturely or having done something wrong. We associate being an adult (or growing up) as something positive, something to look forward to and aspire to be. The truth is, the grass is always greener on the other side, so we will never truly understand the value of being young when we are living it. Having the freedom to be naive, to make mistakes or simply to say no is something take for granted when we’re in our youth. Growing up becomes a goal we seek to achieve, instead of a continuous flow throughout our lives. From the Buddhist perspective, given the infinite number of life-forms that fill the universe, human life is seen as a rare privilege with special responsibilities. The main concept which makes human life so unique is the scale of our choice, the degree of freedom and how we choose to act for good or evil, to help or to harm. Like snakes we shed our skin, we change in many ways throughout our life (or lives), many of us see this change but the challenge is to embrace and accept it in ourselves. Everyone has their own concept of what growing up entails. Some have high expectations, others can drift amiably until they find the environment and character that best fits them. But at the end of the day… reliving your childhood seems to be the melancholic dream of most adults. For example, Disney’s notorious character Peter Pan who never had to grow up, living in “Never Never Land”; a world filled with adventures and explorations amongst friends summed up a fantasy for most. What most people don’t know is that Peter Pan was actually created by Scottish novelist and playwright Sir James Matthew Barrie, in the form of a 1904 play and a 1911 novel. Both versions tell the story of a mischievous, little boy who could fly and had numerous adventures on the island of Neverland (inhabited by mermaids, fairies, Native Americans and pirates). Although the overall story depicts a beautiful dreamlike world, the significance of Peter’s famous shadow has a more somber overtone. The shadow is understood as a symbol of his own inability to reach adulthood (or to grow old). In fact, J. M. Barrie’s novel opens with the declaration that “all children except one grow up”, stating that “growing up is the beginning of the end”. This suggests that Peter Pan and his lost boys (also known as “babies who fell out of their prams”) are in fact the spirits of dead children gone to a place called Neverland, in which they will never grow up. These children are ultimately suspended in a perpetual Neverland of the mind, never achieving adult understanding of the world because of their untimely deaths. The dark truth behind this fairytale creates the distinction between the world of a child and the world of an adult. In an adult world, meanings gain depth and mistakes hold bigger consequences; meanwhile a child’s world has more freedom (in the child’s perception). Is this why we’re told to indulge and enjoy our youth? Is Never Never Land so perfect because it is a childish perspective on the world? Would you prefer to live through your child self, with no serious worries preventing you to feel the enjoyment of your youth? Or is growing up a part of life which we can make into something beautiful and meaningful if we choose to look at it in the right way?