When we were kids, we always wanted to become an adult (God knows I did), I pictured of all the things I would do. I had so many aspirations some selfish others of pure of heart intent. I would be more grounded and assertive, I would be more focused and driven and most importantly I would be kinder to myself and everyone around us.
Honestly, I think we can all agree the idea of growing up from a child’s perspective is innocent and idealistic. But the world is anything but and teaches us that growing up is a grueling process that has no formulae. It’s a series of stages, a slippery slope of highs and lows and the minute you think you think you finally got it; life humbles you once more.
Off Comes the Training Wheels
When you are a child we enjoy many privileges from life, some more than others but the greatest one is the guidance we get from many adults unselfish enough to put us first. Many adults come through for us indifferent ways but the most important depiction of this unselfishness is our parents.
Although, the word parent in the conventional sense is one who gives birth to you, it is important to note that the true meaning of the word is the person or the people rather who provide guidance and care – one who raises you (So, it could be anyone really your father, mother, uncle, aunty, grandma, brother, sister or all of the above if you are a lastborn – lucky bastards). And our parents aren’t particularly perfect but we can all agree that at their best no one can really love you more than your parents especially the ones that birthed you, except God obviously (or the universes frequency if you are being pretentious).
When you are a child, you enjoy many privileges from the world but the most important ones are the basic needs i.e. food, shelter etc. and if you are fortunate, you even get icing inform of gifts and a pass in your favorite indulgences. And the more fortunate you where the more comfort was provided and even when given minor responsibilities, we often did them with a heavy heart, and to some degree depending on how entitled you were we often demanded for more.
Little, did we understand how tasking it was for our caregivers, how heavy a burden it was to have someone take full responsibility for another human being. However, African parents are no whims they didn’t shy away to remind you how much they sacrifice and the minute you started being entitled they would get vocal, if they were kind and give you a thrashing of a lifetime if they were reasonable. And even when our minds would intentionally bury these traumatic events, in one way or another the world would always hint that nothing goes as you plan. Because as you gradually grow up you start becoming more self-aware and you would subtly notice certain things. For instance, schooling is one of the most vital places we must go through, and unless you were homeschooled (rich people type sh**), we all went through it. A school is one of the first filters of maturity we go through. And don’t get me wrong our primary days were fun we got to meet different people who genuinely liked what we liked unlike our parents who always watched the news, people who almost matched your imagination and pursuit for wonder. But as we moved up the next class, you are stripped of certain things there were no nap times, no modelling, basically all the fun stuff was removed and you were introduced to the concept of learning. You know had a teacher who taught you about alphabets and you had to exert yourself to some degree which was no fun. But you notice this teacher tries so hard to make it fun by creating hymns and melodies that were kind of fun and even though it wasn’t as fun as modelling with clay, or making hand prints while waiting for your nap time it was still fun besides you still got to yell e for elephant with your buddies. So, it wasn’t all bad and to top it all off you still went home where your parents received you with warmth. As you get used to learning you gradually get introduced to other concepts like arithmetic, social studies, science and religious studies and despite being hard your pursuit of wonder still drives you to make it more interesting. Generally, learning was fun-hell school was fun.
Once we became acclaimed to the concept of school bam! All of a sudden, they introduce the concept of a tests and the implications of passing and failing. And this was our first glimpse of responsibility. Because to pass any test you had to willing fully exert yourself. And with their being a set timeline you had to read and practice in the fastest way possible. This often came with pressure – pressure not just from within but from everyone around you. Although not quite as clear then as you grew, depending on your environment and unavoidable circumstances, responsibility kept being slipped through your life and it often came with a heavy burden, but each day you held on to hope as time was on our side. But as time passed by and the world kept hinting that you should grow up the pressure got heavier and the noises got louder. Luckily, in each transition while still in our juvenile state, our community was still kind but reluctantly kind as in their eyes we were still children, we were still maturating.
But time waits for no man and the day of reckoning comes, and you are finally a young adult. And now the responsibility from this point onwards not only become a worry but an inevitable reality. If you are lucky to get guardians who tolerate you, you still have said 5-7 years max, before being fully pushed into the jungle. And for the first time you are completely alone. You have to make decisions. And not just mundane decisions like deciding what to wear, eat or what time to wake up. No…No…No, it’s about making life altering decisions in a split second, because if you venture to fast into the unknown, you might drown and if you don’t try something you might regret it. And as time passes, we get to make all these decisions, and for with time you get to understand that playing god isn’t all that fun, especially when everything is literally at stake.
To some degree it humbles you, you get to sympathize with everyone that came before you and judged harshly. But looking back you get to empathize with most are your parents/guardians because they weren’t just responsible for their lives but they were responsible for yours and although at times their methods seemed to be crude their intentions are pure, so they try their best to guide us best way they knew, because they knew that as much as they try to create the best world for you, the world wouldn’t be as kind, wouldn’t be as gentle, wouldn’t be as forgiving because to them no one can love you as they do, they can try but no one can.
Growing up is paradoxical really if you chose to not conform, you’ll be a reject to society and if you do you end up living a carbon copy of someone else’s life. And if we are being honest no one loves being alone because being alone, means facing yourself and trying to embrace every part of yourself which is damn near impossible especially after the world corrupts you and at the end of the day, we all need each other to some degree…so conformity seems to be the best way to survive.
“Conformity is the death of creativity.”
― Unknown.
And when nobody wakes you up in the morning and when no one waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever, you want. What do you call that freedom or loneliness ~ Unknown
Crafting our Identities/Personas
When we were first born there is no denying that we were all pure of heart. And as time passes by, we started gaining some sort of self-awareness, and not only observing but interpreting what we saw, and as the natural scientists we came up with hypothesis. And due to our childlike innocence, whenever we saw suffering, we saw a way to heal. And we made some innocent promises how to change the world. But little did we know that nothing is as it seems and as obvious as things seemed then as you grow up, your veil is removed and have a broader understanding that life isn’t ideal and at the end of the day we are all just trying to survive. But where did the rains start beating us? When exactly did the world strip us from our innocence and manage to corrupt our souls, to the degree that it becomes damn near impossible to recognize who we’ve become.
From the onset of our beginning, we’ve sort have been pushed to the world gently, and the more exposed we were the more we became self-aware. And if memory serves correctly the very first place, we get to explore a different world away from home was the school and after the fun part of school ended, we started getting introduced to the concept of ‘learning’. Most things done while in our juvenile state are done without your consent but then again you trust the world cares for you and since the world was there before you, you put your faith in those that were there before you. But one of the most irrational decisions ever made in our learning phase was the introduction of the concept of tests. And as soon as learning began without no consent of ours the concept was introduced. They ease us in explaining that to know your progress at the end of every school term, there would be exams and after the exams their would-be rankings and reward systems.
It sounded exciting but in hindsight this was anything but. Because if you look at it from a broader perspective this was our first introduction to the concept of competition and with it brought a new wave of emotions anxiety, guilt, shame, anger, hate, greed… And from all this we started creating different paths from our peers and possibly our first glance of individualism and possibly the development of our personas. Because, now you were conditioned to be better than your friends and not through sharpening each other’s in areas we were lacking but by exerting yourself individually. And when we take our first test, we got to see who was ‘smarter’, who was average and who was ‘dumb’. And when we saw our friends or we ourselves receiving awards especially Infront of everyone else we got to observe a different kind of world and sparked a burst of new emotions depending from where you were standing/sitting. For those who were passed during the walk to receive your reward they got to see the admiration and respect from their teachers, parents/guardians and peers a like.
And with every clap and ululation you heard you felt a sense of pride. For those who met the cut for not making it to the peak they would feel some sense of guilt and shame for not doing their best. It was our first dose of what failure and success. And like it or not success or lack thereof, like it or not often comes with a price. It also came with our first dose of responsibility, because depending on the positioning you where you were now responsible of approving/disapproving the world. Since, for those who outshined the rest wanted to stay at the top and those who were at the bottom or average wanted to gun for the title as they were already been given labels, status if you will. But the more exposed you are the more you understand their is always someone better and to some degree their is always something bigger than you, so if we look at success from the climbing ladder perspective at some point someday we all reach our ceilling it’s only a matter of when.
And everyone wanted to maintain their status. But sadly, not everyone is wired the same there are too many factors that differentiate us 
but most important of them all was our uniqueness. We all have a certain uniqueness and with societies warped perceptions most people’s uniqueness is really hard to notice, almost impossible. So more often than not things relatively stay the same. So, we have a division and start perceiving our friends based on their status. And due to the constant lies we were told based on our brightness we start believing them.
Tell the same lie so much they start to believe it…
Luckily, the best thing to ever happen to any civilization/eco system is adaptability to one’s surroundings. So, what happens when the top one percent constantly gets treated with respect and admiration, the bottom one percent is berated and shamed for their slow learning while the majority labeled as average are totally assumed, they each embrace their identities yes but they find other ways to find societies attention, they find a way to adapt. And since necessity is the mother of all invention you start learning from your surroundings on other superficial ways people get appreciated. And in a sub conscious manner you get to understand that it’s more about your perceived value and to validate yourself you try different things that will allow you to fit in and most of us actually do whether it’s your beauty, or strength, or leadership, generally anything that propels you to your first shot of validation and depending on what you hear about yourself, it becomes your identity.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
— Albert Einstein
Little did we know that we had just been boxed in and slowly began the slow erosion of our imagination and wonder. Need I say our uniqueness and the older you get friendships become more ingenious, adventures become more disinteresting, kindness becomes more and more of an illusion. Generally, life becomes more and more boring. Because, you a stuck on a role you were forcefully cast in and the minute you try showing everyone you are more than the stereotype they formed in their heads and you were just performing it to get some sort of validation, they shave you back in the box and since it’s to risky to take action and vehemently deny that their perception of you they created in their heads is their responsibility to uphold, we conform to the normalcy and continue reading the lines of a book you don’t enjoy till time to shuffle off the mortal coil (if we’re being fancy).
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.”
— Carl Jung
Because at the end of the day no matter how many people you please or how many times you try to alter your true self to fit in and escape the loneliness of dying alone at the end of the day, we all go out this world the same way we came to it Alone.
They’re not Like Us…
At each point of our lives, we tend to blame everyone else but ourselves for our mistakes and as kids we were no exception, and from every decision and indecision that was made, we always looked at the adults in our lives with awe/judgy eye. Because we always wondered why grown people make such bizarre mistakes yet the right thing was obvious. Little did we know that we were innocently delusional to some degree.
Because in the journey of growing up we are knocked out of our high horses, and get to see the world for what it is. The world makes a mockery of all the promises we made to ourselves, it puts us in situations where our virtues are put to tests and most importantly it strips away the innocence slowly but certainly showing us that reality is often far away from ideals. Shows us that when push comes to shave your morals will get compromised, your virtues turn into the very vices you vehemently stood against and your dreams and aspiration remain just that dreams.
That’s probably why in every stage of your life when your olders tell you things aren’t easy ahead and you secretly laugh in their face and with a form of superiority are disgusted by their weakness, only for you to experience everything and come to the realization that their disheartening words weren’t just discouragements but a foreshadowing of what is to come. They were trying to soften the blow but our arrogance got the best of us and the world taught us the best way it knew by humbling us and showing you, you know nothing child.
But we are quick to forget and when we eventually conquered previous fears our bravado is back on and the process is repeated over and over again through all eternity. It’s fair to say that there is always something bigger than yourself because with each stage there is a fourth wall that is always introduced and broken it moves with time almost like a mirage and each time you pass this threshold you get a little wiser, you have a deeper understanding of the teachings and proverbs of the ones that came before us.
All of a sudden those ‘Methalis’ or proverbs make a little more sense because you get to relive them in present time hell we even get to make some of our own depending on our respective situations or how hard you hit MJ …If only we took head to the advice, if only we internalized the messages from our predecessors or books written and conserved for generations and generations e.g. the bible, perhaps we would save ourselves the trouble by hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. But we humans are many things and humble is not one of them, couple that arrogance and forgetfulness and all you have is a graveyard of regrets, no wonder you can only get wiser with time because maturity never stops.
Dreams and Aspirations
During the onset of our birth, we were no strangers to praise we often heard buzz words of affirmation. Bundle of joy, Beautiful, Angel from heaven, Perfection, Sunshine and many others (no wonder we’re all attention seeking narcists at our worst). But with all the words of praise there is no doubt you were the star of the show keyword Star. A star in the traditional sense is a huge, glowing ball of gas (mostly hydrogen and helium) held together by gravity. Stars produce light and heat through nuclear fusion happening in their cores—this is the same process that powers the Sun.
When we were all kids it’s true to say that we had certain dreams and aspiration and although most weren’t technically our dreams but more social engineering, the goal was quite similar. Be successful (societies version), help your parents while trying to help the less fortunate (Oh how delusional we were makes you wonder if society really had faith in us or were waiting for our downfall or both…sigh!). Therefore, it is safe to say we were all stars.
But with every stage we get to understand that when we are outside our homes their other stars and not just your peers but those that came before them and they that came before them till infinity. So, depending on the fueling of our grandiose personas we created the world start sifting through looking for the best of the best-natural selection if you ask Darwin. And if you don’t get to succeed (societies version), your light deems and the crème de la crème moves to the next stage. And for those who do move to the bigger stages of life you get to meet even brighter stars, you pass through the sieve again and again…rinse wash repeat until there is only the best at the top.
But what happens to a star when it burns out it becomes a blackhole. And depending on the stage you got off/fell off (societies version) depending on whether you give up on yourself you collapse into your own gravity and eventually die (shuffle up the metal coil).
The truth is we all become black holes to some degree because our idea of success is mostly an illusion and no matter how successful you become, you’ll always feel a wave of emptiness. So even accumulating all the material wealth you possibly can you always feel like you want more trying so hard to feel a void that you can never do because to some level we all understand that there is a degree of satisfaction money can never buy, so no matter how many cars, houses, women/men, yachts, you’ll always feel empty and alone because you still haven’t fulfilled your purpose. Moreover, to some degree this pursuit of endless consumption is just a cry for help a way of our inner child trying to seek the validation we were taught to pursuit…it’s a statement or a question rather asking “Do you see me now?”
You don’t know yourself so you look for validation ~ J Hus.
Capitalism
Capitalism from my perspective is one of the worst things to ever have happened to our world as it seems to be the root cause of all the corruption and decadence to have happened to the world. It’s not necessarily the root cause but a symptom of mans temptation to gain control over the world, which is something we will never do. Because no matter the heights you reach, no matter the wealth you acquire, no matter the fears you conquer when you reach your mortality and you are not amongst the living you become insignificant. And no matter the impact you make it will reach a day no one will remember your name…and even if they do how relevant would it be to you in the great beyond (Ha! I guess there is always something bigger than you Afterall). So, nothing that matters really matters but since we live in the real world to some degree corruption gets to everyone because at the end of the day, we are only human. And what more corrupt thing than capitalism. Understanding capitalism is understanding that from the minute you were born you are a commodity and every commodity has a price. And from the minute you start becoming self-aware you start observing things and time and time again you ask yourself how valuable are you?
So, trying to evaluate from within yourself and analyzing your importance to society and how you can contribute to it. And since we were all born different so when this insecurity creeps in and gets to corrupt your mind, body and soul, you try overcompensating for every way you can appease the market. With time this feeling intensifies and with age it terrifies you when in moments when you are alone that to some degree people mostly care about what you bring to the table. Although this feeling is prevalent from the beginning, we made our first real interaction with the world it gets magnified when you’re in your transition to adulthood. Because relationships become transactional and you can lie to yourself all you want but many a times as you grow older people don’t really see you for you, they see you based on your value.
And the illusions of ourselves we create to fit in make it even worse for us to see each other beyond the mask so each time when you hit the lowest of lows or the peak of your existence you can’t help but wonder how many people actually care for who you were. It is important to note that there are people who actually love you for who you are and actually care for your existence, your happiness, your wellbeing, generally who you were as a person but it’s usually almost certainly on how close they are to you i.e. family. But more certainly than note the love you receive/give is directly proportional to your value to that person and as your scope broadens the love dwindles slowly but certainly. Most notably the more capitalistic the society the more narcissistic and self-centered people get.
Once you are done with a certain phase in your life you move on and make new friends neigh acquittances because at the end of the day you still need people to survive. Luckily, it’s important to note that there are some few meaningful relationships that stick and transcend time, once that seek to understand who you are as a person…but they are as rare as the next crypto coin boom (SN: How I wish I invested all my savings back in 2008…well you live you learn I guess)
Growing up makes you go back and realize nothing society did was actually about you it was about them. You realize school wasn’t crafted to make you better, realize most religious leaders weren’t seeking to ‘bring you closer to God’, the government isn’t there to bring order to society, hell your third-grade teacher wasn’t even genuinely beating you to instill knowledge they were just trying to survive, chasing the bag if you may. And for a minute you feel cheated, angry perhaps even resentful and their two ways you can play this either you vow to try do better when you finally get your chance or you just play along while secretly hatching a plan to get back what you are owed- ‘escape the matrix’. But then you are introduced to the world-the real world and there is a division because you understand getting the bag isn’t as easy and some give up and are satisfied with an average job because all that hustle isn’t really worth the trouble, some are unlucky to never get the shot no matter how hard they try so they just try to get by.
But some are relentless and either by luck or consistency they get to make that money and despite getting elevated to a point they can now live comfortably, a persistent voice urges them to get more because money often comes with a lot of perks; you get to buy what you want when you want it, people respect you (finally!!!) and for some this is enough. However, for others even after the validations they deeply craved, they still want more and more because between trying to impress/show the world you’ve made it, you realize their someone richer than you try and acquire more and more. And when this pattern of thinking your judgment more often a times is clouded and even after reaching the peak you know want power and control, not just of yourself but of everyone else around you. But don’t be consumed for this kind of pursuit will always destroy you because you’ll never reach the peak because there is always someone more powerful than you. So, what happens when you reach the ‘peak’?
Growing up in a world that fully embraced capitalistic thinking isn’t about maturity or actual growth it’s about trade, you trade in self-respect with people pleasing, trade in purpose with mediocrity/ambition, trade in love with value, trade in humility with bravado, trade in living for survival, trade in friendships for partnerships, trade in calmness for wrath, trade in imagination for conformity, trade in pursuit of wonder for materialism, trade in accountability/learning with blame, trade in honest conversations for gossip, trade in true beauty with superficiality, trade in introspection with addictions…and eventually you trade in yourself for the world.
Would you rather be at peace with the world or at peace with yourself because when you are at peace with yourself you can’t be at peace with yourself and if you are at peace with yourself, you can’t be at peace with the world ~ Nipsey Hussle.
Conclusion
To be honest growing up isn’t all that bad because we get to finally understand life isn’t all sunshine’s and rainbows and despite us having the best intentions we live in a chaotic world, we can’t control the best thing we can do about it is to try and do be our best when confronted by each defining moment. However, it’s important to note that despite trying our best we can also be pushed to lean towards our negative side. So, the goal is not perfection but taking the good with the bad and embracing our chaos.
Although, we also need to some degree take accountability whenever we fall short, and try to not only learn from our mistakes but also try as hard as we can, not to revert to the same mistakes because this is what drives us to insanity. Being an adult comes with many perks you get to be independent and try to craft your own path; it comes with responsibility of your own actions; it comes with duty to serve not only yourself but others and most importantly it comes with the betterment of one’s self.
Therefore, maturing isn’t about avoiding your responsibilities and retreating to your inner child, nor is about killing the inner child and take on the world with so match serious it’s not black or white, it’s shades of gray. Because, it’s more about integrating dancing between the lines of our two worlds so we can strive to live than survive…Because at the end of the day we are all just looking for a happy ending somewhere. One of the greatest way’s creators have tried to blend both worlds is through animation because they make it accesible for everyone to understand, thats why watching all the cartoons/animations/anime we watched back in the day, we get to see things with a different light.
Ps: No matter the commonalities growing up as a process has, truth is we all experience it differently because away from the noise, we are all different. And we can’t control a lot of things beyond us but we sure can control how we relate to each other. We can try learning from our mistakes, try avoiding using each other as a means to an end and most importantly embrace the differences despite how chaotic it might seem. Because the world always finds a way to bring order in the chaos so why shouldn’t you?
To: Whomever it may concern
From: Le Sourie