Growing up is a way to live more, not less

Not many songs make me cry. However, in the beginning of last summer, my family decided to watch graduation videos in preparation for my brother’s graduation party. The song “You’re Gonna Miss This” by Trace Adkins came on while pictures of my brothers and I as little kids came and went. That song, for whatever reason, gave me a pit in my stomach. That day, I was 16 years old, there was no way a song about growing up could have made me emotional. But those pictures reminded me of simpler time, when I (almost) always had a smile on my face. No homework, going to bed at 7:30, having practically unlimited time to explore my imagination. If I already missed ‘this’, how will I feel when I’m all grown up? 

All my life I’ve heard the term “grown-ups”, referring to a group of people who are physically mature, do adult things, and have some sort of authority over anyone who is half their height and is brought joy upon hearing bathroom terminology. They were always separated from the kids, as if they were some sort of elite group. It was always ‘Grown-ups sit in the dining room’ and ‘that’s just for the grown-ups’, and there seemed to be no common ground between this interesting society of elders and us kids. It seems almost as if growing up required some sort of initiation in order to be a part of the “grown-up” experience.  

But as I got older, I realized that eventually I would just become a grown-up out of fate; I would lose interest in all my “childish” activities and I would become interested in the news, golf, and stock markets. For a while, I just wanted to know what day that would come. 

Then, I got a little older, and I started relating to adults more. I started working, and now I can relate to my parents whenever they talked about pay, hours, taxes, social security, and all those other ‘grown-up words’. When I started driving, I also starting to do other adult-related things, such as oil changes, car washes, and filling up gas. Now—as a high school senior—I’m about to embark on a whole new journey: being considered a legal adult literally everywhere except where I live and may spend a good part of my life.  

I feel like my experience “growing up” was more gradual than I expected. I think I got taller. I got my first phone on my 14th birthday. I learned how to properly do my makeup by the time I became a sophomore. The day before my junior year I passed my driving test. Now I have my own car, a job, and the weight of college very well on my shoulders.  

This part of growing up was what I expected; it was what the grown-ups talked about. But right as last summer was about to end, something hit me like a truck. My cousins and I were all at our grandmother’s house eating Cane’s, and someone mentioned how soon this would be the “grown-up table”. He further explained that the little table in the kitchen would always the table us cousins would sit at, and our kids would sit at the fancy dining room table that the grown-ups currently sit at. I realized that as near-adults, we were still sitting here at this 6-seat table just like how we used to when we were in elementary school. Time flew by so fast. 

Next year, my childhood will be pretty much over. If I go out of town for college, I will only have myself to depend on. Even thinking about applying to college is scary. It is now hitting me that after high school my life will change forever, and I can only remember being the kid I used to be. But now I know that life after high school is so much more than being a grown-up. As I’m getting older, I’m finding that I’m able to relate to adults more. I find the conversations that I have with my parents interesting because I feel like we are getting more and more on the same page. I’m also finding out that being a “grown-up” is just a term used with kids to imply that someone is older, more mature, and has more authority than the child.  

Being a grown-up is not the same as becoming an adult. As an adult, I won’t have to conform to a certain level of maturity (the exception of this is being professional in a professional setting, of course). My kids can—and will—teach me very important life lessons. Growing up does not have to mean no longer having fun. Maybe I will explore and travel the world, or maybe I will even help change it. If not, maybe I can positively change lives. I may not know exactly what I want to do and where I want to go, but I know that if I live my life being myself and not a grown-up, I will have a great life. 

The overall message: enjoy the time left that you have sitting at Central High School, whether it may be four years or merely months, or somewhere in between. Then, carry that over to the rest of your life. Be the person who you want to be. It doesn’t matter how old you get, if you absorb life like a sponge, you won’t miss this. You won’t miss a single thing.