Coming of Age

In general, it is easy to go through life not really thinking about the passage of time, unless you were feeling unusually philosophic on a given day. However it is easy to notice how far you've come in maturity when you encounter a younger person's thoughts through either conversation or blog.

Recently I stumbled upon a blog by a complete stranger to me. It was overly sappy, ridiculously emotional, gushing on and on about love and life and true deep feelings. That's when I thought to myself, this must be written by some school girl. Similarly, I read some random guy's xanga and he was waxing sadly about loneliness and hurt and isolation - typical teenage angst. I thought he was both young and a loser to boot. What especially aroused my disdain about this guy's blog was that he absolutely despises his girlfriend and repeatedly said so on his blog. I don't really know why he doesn't just stop seeing her then, instead of going on a hate rampage on the girl he is supposedly in a relationship with. Ah, the irrationality of youth.

It is true...things hold so much more significance to a younger person than it does to an older, jaded person, such as yours truly. I think if I were to go back and read my diaries as a young girl, it would make me positively squeamish with all my sentimental declarations, emotional outpourings and tunnel-visioned perspective on life. I think about the boy that in high school used to dominate 75% of my thoughts and I can't help but scoff at the silliness of it all. I look at the 17-19 yr old boys today and I think, overgrown toddlers! Babies! All of them. Even boys in their early 20's are really maybe two steps away from diaperhood.

But that leads us to an interesting exploration of the word "maturity". Exactly what does it mean? To my parents, maturity equates with "dong shi" or "to understand matters." What it really translates to is that I would be willing to work 24/7 to help out around the house, that I would take on all the tasks that I can conceivably take on and be a competent caretaker of affairs, a butler-daughter. More important than the actual execution of said tasks is the fact that I should have the mentality of "I am now grown up so I need to take care of business." So according to my parents, I am still very immature, "bu dong shi" as evidenced by the other night when I casually remarked, "Wow, that girl cooked meals for her family at the age of 4??" and my father says, "Emily, many people are very dong shi, you know." Which made me wonder if that was a pointed remark and not so subtle jab at the fact that i'm just a lazy cat.

However maturity to me doesn't mean exactly what my parents mean, not that I'm saying I'm oh so mature. I think maturity means that you gain a clearer understanding of the world and that you are able to laugh at the folly of it, both at yourself and at the environment in which you live in. You are able to see and put things in perspective. If you are angry, you have the ability to take a step back and understand why you are angry, what ticks you off and why. You can analyze yourself and you can have greater control over your emotions, your decisions and your actions.

I once heard this in a lecture and it's a statement I heartily agree with,"Life is about learning. We all come to this Earth and we have this one shot at living. All living is just experiencing, that is all we can say we ever possessed: the experience of having lived."