We seem to live in a world where “old” is never old enough, and we’re always too young for something. No matter what we accomplish or how old we are there is always someone older to tell us how young we are and how far we have to go. It’s like a ladder that always has one more step. We may climb and climb but if anyone else has climbed one step higher than us we must keep going. With every step there are rituals we must perform.
First are the rituals many families have for the children to become adults. In my family due to our strong LDS background many of these steps were religious. We were baptized, we received the priesthood, and we usually aren’t considered adults until we leave on our missions. We also usually received a set of scriptures at age 8, and another at age 12 when we could actually take care of them. Many families signify major stepping stones through gifts. I once personally knew a family that bought their children brand new cars to go with their licenses.
Second are steps that people put on themselves. Many people turn a certain age or accomplish a certain task and think they are too mature to participate in a certain activity or to use certain words. Every elementary school student asks to “play” while the high school student asks to “hang out.” Both are participating in the exact same activity but we are much too mature to be “playing.” Also it’s worth noting that many people simply do not want to grow up. One may consider themselves an adult long after the rest of the world has thought of them as such. One may imagine a wall in front of them where they will all of a sudden become an adult. As Sally Fields put it, “You think that adulthood will hit and you'll suddenly be more capable. But that doesn't happen...
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...movies on their own, or go to war before they can buy beer. Surely the maturity required to operate a car or face combat exceeds that required to handle sexy movies or drinking. Age boundaries are drawn for mainly political reasons, not scientific ones. It’s unlikely that brain science will have much of an impact on these thresholds, no matter what the science says.” (nytimes.com) Why do we trust people with automatic weapons before we trust them with a beer?
Works Cited
Steinberg, Laurence. "What The Brain Says About Maturity." www.nytimes.com. N.p., May-June 2012. Web.
Calkin, Jessamy. "Senna: The Driver Who Lit up Formula One." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 20 May 2011. Web. 02 Jan. 2014.
Lamont, Tom. "Sally Hawkins: 'You Think Adulthood Will Hit and You'll Suddenly Be Capable'" The Observer. Guardian News and Media, 13 Mar. 2011. Web. 02 Jan. 2014.
Maturity is not a fickle expression such as happiness or frustration, but rather an inherent quality one gains over time, such as courage or integrity. Before maturity can be expressed, the one who expresses it must have significant confidence in himself, since self-confidence is the root of maturity. Being flexible and formulating one's own opinions or ideas are aspects of maturity, but neither is possible without self-confidence. The greatest aspect of maturity is the ability to make decisions which society does not agree with. Whether or not one follows through with these ideas is not important. What is important is the ability to make the decision. These decisions represent the greatest measure of maturity.
This story demonstrates that growing up is a necessary and frustrating task. However, people must handle anything that life throws at them with wisdom beyond their years. The aging curse prevents people from staying young and innocent, instead forcing them to enter adulthood and tackle the challenges facing them.
At the age of 9, a little girl is counting down the days until her next birthday because double digits are a big deal. Now she is 12 and is still counting the days until she can call herself a teenager. For years people cannot wait to be another year older… until they actually become older. As people grow up they accept that maturing means taking on responsibilities and adulthood. Having sleepovers and play-dates, taking naps, and climbing the monkey bars becomes taboo. The simplistic life of a child quickly changes into the dull reality of school and work. People will spend years wishing they were older; but when the time comes, they hope to go back to their innocence. In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger writes a stream of consciousness
ThThe notion of getting older, one day has too frightened me. I wonder what could I have done in the past to change the future. I reminisce of all the things I have done with the people that I love. But, at the end the day, I look forward to getting older. I look forward to the memories that I will make, which one day will be stories told between two friends or family members about their crazy grandmother Gabriella. E.B. White 's essay represents the fears that adults, but mostly parents, face when seeing children grow up and experience life the same way they once did. These nostalgic moments turn to fear of losing their youth. I believe that White 's essay is a manifestation of a mid-life crisis that fails to show what life has to offer after
“Rituals and Traditions; It Takes a Tribe,” written by David Berreby and “Indians: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History” written by Jane Tompkins, both exemplify a typical controversial topic in the United States of America today. The US prides there self on the basis of freedom, and how Americans are made up of individuals with backgrounds from all around the world. Many consider the US to be a “melting pot”, a society where cultures are just blended together and not recognized fully on their own, where as others consider the US to be a “salad bowl”, where people of international cultures hold fast to their traditions and practices and coexist with the cultures around them. Both authors of the readings propose that generally speaking,
He feels that growing old is not tied in with a negative context of falling apart physically, but about the positive aspects of growing emotionally and spiritually. From my perspective, this quote signifies that the person you are at the end of life is an accumulation of all the years compressed together, continuing to flourish with the knowledge of life’s experiences. Only with personal experiences come wisdom and
This movie demonstrates how sad it can be when a person realizes that they are in the old-age category. Some said they noticed it the first time in meetings that they were the oldest person in the place. Another person said that he realized there are limitations now due to the fact that he cannot do everything that he used to be able to do when he was younger. Another statement comes from a woman who is so embarrassed about her “ossified brain”, due to her inability to read without turning back to remember what she just read. Despite their increased age, and limitations their body puts on them, some older adults report that growing old has provided them with tremendous clarity on the world around them, and some say that they have “never felt
J. J. Arnett argues his theory about a developmental stage individuals go through of 18-25 year olds as a new concept, (Arnett, 2000, pp. 469). He describes emerging adulthood as being a sustained period of time where this age group, as mentioned previously, explores their roles preceding being an adult. These movements can include events similarly by taking longer than previous years to get married and have children, moving back in with their parents at a point during this age span, exploring self-identities, not feeling like an adult and feelings of self-failure. James E. Cote, who is a previous colleague of Arnett argues the opposite about this concept being an unexperienced developmental stage Arnett calls, “Emerging Adulthood”. Cote states
How can a word our society uses so much have such a loose definition. Teacher’s and parents refer to their children as mature or immature. But maybe one teacher’s definition of maturity is the child, —or adult, can press on while a fellow student is in trouble, to ensure he himself does well. While another’s definition is that the child expressed maturity for stopping and helping the other child in his decisions to avoid trouble. A common idea is that to show maturity one must weigh out all the possible outcomes and then ...
The tragedy of old age is not the fact that each of us must grow old and die, but that the process of doing so has been made unnecessarily and at times excruciatingly painful, humiliating, debilitating and isolating through insensitivity, ignorance, and poverty (p. 2-3).
In conclusion, the growing up or the two stages in life are governed totally by a series of situations, parenting, and events that affect the outcome of how the individuals will handle the changes in life. Using human intellect and determining aspects that are normal, life will be lived and a good balanced person in society will be achieved. Because every person is different and an individual, the outcome in everyone will be different. Mature people may encounter different levels of stressful situations or circumstances than younger adults. They are more practical in coping with stress and have a greater acceptance of some things in life that cannot be altered or improved, and, can easily adapt to changes that will occur in life.
They can dedicate to feel needed and have confidence in their abilities to motivate for themselves. They both learn that not all decisions have a right and positive outcome. They also learn from their process to make better decisions next time. Characteristics of life are meaningful who they are as a person. Also, the lesson that parents teach their children to be responsible. Learning that not all decisions have a right and positive outcome and both learn from their process to make better decisions next time. Knowing their ideas with their knowledge, they both decide their actions, aware of the consequences to some level. Adulthood has much more independence and can choose things like where they want to live and what job they will do. Their knowledge can come from formal education. When adults want something, one of the leading factors will be what others think about the decision they make. What they learn as a child and what they choose to remember as an adult will figure them into the human that they are. They will have their thoughts, actions, and idea too outstanding to them only. Equally, choosing things like where we want to live, what we want to do, and what job they will do. They determinant of how much freedom to have in made their own decisions and having their actions. Children run-through is making choices as they grow. Held responsible for their
Thesis: People have their whole life to be old, but only a few years to be young
Childhood and adulthood are two different periods of one’s lifetime but equally important. Childhood is the time in everybody’s life when they are growing up to be an adult. This is when they are being considered babies because of their youthfulness and innocence. Adulthood is the period of time where everybody is considered “grown up,” usually they begin to grow up around the ages of eighteen or twenty-one years old but they do remain to develop during this time. However, in some different backgrounds, not everybody is not fully adults until they become independent with freedom, responsible for their own actions, and able to participate as an adult within society. Although childhood and adulthood are both beneficial to our lives, both periods share some attributes such as independence, responsibility, and innocence that play distinctive roles in our development.
Becoming an adult, also known as young adulthood, is a very crucial stage in one’s life. This is the climax of physical and health processes. This is the point in life when we make plans of our futures. It is the time when we think of what life will be like as an adult and make plans for the future. Most importantly, it is when we lay the starting point for developmental changes that we will undergo throughout our lives. An adult is a person who is fully grown or developed. Some people believe that you become an adult when you are 18 years old, other believe you are an adult when you can legally buy and consume alcohol, that is, at age 21 in the United States. Others believe that you are an adult when you are supporting yourself