When I Grow Up

This is something I love to say. Loved it since I was a little kid, and love it even more now that I am pushing thirty and still feel like a kid when I think about my future. It's not because I don't have any responsibilities, on the contrary, I live alone, pay bills, take care of business, work, go to school, and generally act responsibly. I think it's more because I still feel like anything is possible, and as long as I'm alive the future could hold anything. I don't think that having a career, owning a house, or making a family means you're all grown up, it means you have some pretty heavy responsibilites. None of these are rites of passage in our culture and are all adult-like decisions or events that have been made, regardless of maturity. I tend to think that adulthood happens when you start taking things - or yourself - a bit too seriously, and that can also happen to take the fun out of just about anything. No, I'm not living in Neverland, and I can't fly. The point I'm trying to make is that literal adulthood to me is a biological point at which you will no longer be growing physically and dependence on oneself isn't a scary concept. It's true that in our culture we have no distinct point at which we become adults, whether that be leaving the house at the age of sixteen, or still being covered by your parent's health plan at the age of twenty-five. The concept of emerging adulthood can play deep in to a person's life and for some may never end. I believe that in American Society, we see adults in the way as I described above- people who have their own homes, work a steady job, fulfill their responsibilites, have relationships, etc. A quick search for "adult" on the web will bring up pornography (immediately), which may say something else about our culture. Most of the time when people hear of someone who hasn't left home yet a common response will be "when are they ever going to grow up?". Since we have no "coming of age", or rites of passage to distinguish our adult selves from our kids selves, I think that it all comes down to the way a person thinks of themselves. Since I feel that in life a person should be constantly learning and trying to improve themselves, there is never any point at which you are "all grown up".You can have all the responsibilities in the world, but that doesn't have to take the fun out of it.