Growing Up Is A Scam! But...

Growing Up © Lisinka

Growing up was a beautiful time. It was filled with days of sleep on the couch in the sitting room and waking up on your bed. Things were easy. It was easy to trust people and make friends, and you had very little to worry about. 

But somewhere in our minds was the issue of growing up—becoming an adult. The adults seemed untouchable, having all the freedom; eat, drink and do as they liked, and that appealed to us kids. We, children, wanted to grow up at all costs. I remember a time when my mum wanted to help me solve a math problem and I told her I could do it on my own; the truth was that I could not, I just wanted to feel grown and I could handle my own “problems”.

Fast forward a few years, we became teenagers. This time was the worst for some folks because the problems were too much. Learning new things about your body, learning about the opposite sex, trying to fit in and not being a wallflower, our parents not fully understanding us, getting influenced by music and “High School Musical”; just to mention a few. It was just too much for a teenager to handle at once. And still, we wanted to grow up and pass all these problems without experiencing them.

All of a sudden, we were done with secondary school and moving on to tertiary institutions. Finally, we were free, or so it seemed. There were no parents to tell us what to do, nobody to force us to go to class, we figuratively had our lives in our hands. Finally?

The truth is that we were SCAMMED! Oh yes, I said it. We were!

Adults are the biggest liars among humans. They made everything seem alright in our eyes. They could mask their sorrows so well we were made to believe it was part of being an adult. They almost made us believe that they could do anything as adults. But as I said, we were SCAMMED! 

Being an adult has seriously not been easy, to be candid. Every day with its own problems. You almost find no beauty in adulthood and want to go back to being a child. Oh, if wishes were horses!

While childhood has its many beauties, every stage of our lives has lessons they teach us. And I believe these lessons were to make us into better adults, all things being equal that is. If you’re on your way to being an adult, don’t be in a haste to grow up. Learn from the experiences life gives you now and let that mould you.

To the grown-ups, our experiences growing up might have shaped our lives in different ways and we can still learn from them. Let us remember that being an adult is a huge task and if we take it too seriously we might not get the joy it brings. 

We should try to teach these young ones lessons that will make them near-excellent adults and better versions of us. The differences in our worlds can never mean that our ideas cannot help one another.