MEAD

It has recently dawned on me that everyday I wake up and almost every action I take serves, in part, to strip me of my youthful innocence. I feel closer and closer to becoming a true adult. It's not so bad. It's just... I feel like my time has expired on the good life and now I am on the cusp of just turning into something and living out the rest of my life, stuck. In a way, I have always wished to finally figure it out and be an "adult", but I really just enjoy the journey, the pondering of myself and learning how to exist and interact and be responsible, how to live and prosper and be happy. My future almost seems predetermined, graduate college, get a job, marry, have kids, grow old, impart wisdom/go senile, die.

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Here are some phrases I'd like to be able to say, in all honesty, before I die.
"That's it, send out the ninjas!"
"So then I had to kill my way to the second floor."

Rodney

Well, that's the script that society has handed you. But you don't have to live it that way, well, except maybe for the dying part. You have many choices; you just don't know them all yet.

dlish

well it can also be like this, but also be pre-determined...

drop out of college, bum around and smoke drugs with ure mates, live off the government, have babies with diff women u dont know, grow old and unwise and live dirt poor and then one day die in the gutter with half a cigarette u picked from the bottom of the trashcan in your hand.

my point? u have choices.. u dont have to follow what society dictates!

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An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

maleficent

Cynicism I often equate as being the loss of innocence, but it doesnt have to happen.

You can go out each day and see things and find things that really can touch you and fill you with wonder. Remember when you were a kid... splashing in puddles used to be fun for the sheer joy of it.. Who says that has to stop when you become an adult. Splashing in puddles is still fun (Ok, maybe you don't want to splash in your 200 dollar open toed shoes... but you can still splash) Snowball fights and making snow angels doesnt have to stop when you become an adult.

I'm looking over at my desk right now, and on top of the desk is a container of purple playdough, a slinky (because it's fun to watch it walk down from the monitor to the cpu to the printer to the speakers to the desk)

There's an old quote -- you don't stop playing because you get older... You get older because you stop playing. Loss of innocence doesnt' have to happen... You just have to look a little harder to find the things that fill you with wonder.

You are in south florida -- go to the beach and build a sand castle... play in the waves...People grow older and get old because they become too concerned about what people think and how their behavior looks.. Think about yourself... If you want to play air guitar whilst in your car - go for it - who cares what people think... Just Play!

BUT -- at the same time.. somewhere in all that playing... a little responsibility is a good thing and doesnt necessarily have to interfere with your fun. pay those bills... work for a living... but there's life outside of work too

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MEAD

I think you hit the head with this, Mal. I mostly feel worn out, like I've been doing all I can to create happiness for myself and others and it's only temporary, so I look back to when I was a kid and being happy was just so easy, you didn't need money, or a place to go, you didn't need a plan. I try and do things to keep myself full of wonder, I follow through with my childish impulses and I'm proud of it, though there is an emptiness to that, because its done alone, and you can't really share it with anyone. Perhaps I just need to find a person who gets that side of me.

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Here are some phrases I'd like to be able to say, in all honesty, before I die.
"That's it, send out the ninjas!"
"So then I had to kill my way to the second floor."

veruca

I know how you feel about enjoying things alone..I am an only child and though my husband and I share a lot of interests...we don't share all. I do alot of things I love alone...and it took me a little while to get over the stigma of being the "alone" person. Now I don't care..I make people there take pics of me ...and I talk to stangers about the art or the flowers or whatever I am looking at.

there is no set plan for your life. I too thought there were things I "had" to do...and then I got a little older and my life was not at all following the plan I had created for myself..and I got depressed..I like to call it my "quarter life crisis"...now I love not knowing exactly where my life is going to take me..I have my stable things..my job and my husband...but the plans of children...if we are going to stay here or move to a new city..buy a house...havn't been made yet..and that is just fine with me.


My grandma always told me you are as old as you feel...and she feels 16 in her heart..lol..she is one of the most fun and amazing women I have ever met..and she doesn't seem old or boring at all...so I am not going to be either

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How you turned my world, you precious thing
You starve and near exhaust me
Everything I've done, I've done for you
I move the stars for no one

Squishor

I made a deliberate choice to not let that happen to me, and I have loads of fun and act silly most everywhere I go. When people give me that blank look, I feel some pity for the drone and move on. I learned this in my late teens/early 20s, partly by watching my grandmother, who was pretty stuck in most of her attitudes. I vowed I wouldn't be like her. By contrast, my mother was free and vibrant, and listened to the same music I did. Then, sometime in the 80s, my grandmother took me to a luau at her stuffy country club. All these folks in their 70s got up in their mumus and started dancing to Michael Jackson (of course not my grandmother though). I despised Michael Jackson and was determined to have a bad time, but then when I watched them dancing, I had a revelation - why not just have fun whenever you can? If all these people who were born at the turn of the century can loosen up, why not me? It's important not to paint yourself into a corner - don't be an ageist. I find that most people seem to like me and are pretty open with me, regardless of age, probably because of the way I act. People half my age talk to me freely and so I don't have to feel old and out of touch with "youth," whatever that is. Honestly at times I think I felt older when I was 20. I don't play air guitar in my car but I do the waving arm dance. Who cares if someone thinks I look like a dork? I don't feel quite as free as I did when I was a kid, like Mal described, but I'm working on it.

kangaeru

I think losing innocence to me, is the growing realization that I am never safe, and that I have to take measures to guard my well being.

When you're a kid, if anything happens, mom and dad fix it. If you have no parents, someone else does, and if you have no one, then you lose your innocence young. There's no grades, no yearly salary increase...you just live and play, etc. But then slowly, as you become an adult, you have to protect yourself. You have to watch out for strangers because they might hurt you. YOU have to do these things. No one else can shelter you.

And because of these experiences we go through, we see the sadness and unhappiness present in the world, and how this manifests itself in the people who populate it.

I become more cynical about the world every day...

Sage

"What is the use of planning to be able to eat next week unless I can really enjoy the meals when they come? If I am so busy planning how to eat next week that I cannot fully enjoy what I am eating now, I will be in the same predicament when next week's meals become "now"."

-Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

Part of becoming an "adult" means that you realize that, while you do have stuff to be "responsible" about (basically meaning you're taking care of yourself instead of having mommy and daddy do it), you can still have fun and a lot more of it besides, because you aren't limited to the kind of fun you can have. As an "adult" you can travel the world, learn anything and everything you ever wanted to, meet people, go to strange and exotic locations, and do and be everything you ever wanted to be and more. Just because someone says you "have" to do something doesn't mean you must!

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Gilda

You can make a conscious choice to take back what you feel has been lost, or to keep those things from your childhood that gave you joy. From the time I was 9 years old to the time I started grad school there wasn't much about my life that I would connect with "youthful innocence". Now I sit in a room whose walls are covered with bookshelves that are in turn laden with comic books, many of which were written for pre-teen and teenage boys, in some cases written by teenage boys. I have eleven full Diablo 2 accounts. Three weeks ago my wife and I dressed up like teenagers, wearing mini-skirts, spaghetti strap tops, and canvas tennies (not gonna do the winter boots thing) and spent the afternoon at a family fun center playing videogames, miniature golf, racing go-karts, etc. We acted like teenagers. My sister, who is a teenager, thinks she's too mature to do such things.

You get to choose how to live your life; that's one of the best things about being an adult, especially before you have children. Responsibility and wisdom don't have to come at the expense of joy.

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I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert

MSD

This is doubly depressing for me, as I now realize that the first 18 years of my life were completely wasted, and the other 3, almost completely.

eMOTIONal20

I seriously had this terrible fear of my future about a year ago. I felt like I was settling... in every aspect of my life at that time. I finally realized that it was stupid of me to waste my potential just for some safe plan in life I had settled for, and that everyone else seemed to be settling for as well. Thinking about the plan that seems expected: "graduate college, get a job, marry, have kids, grow old, impart wisdom/go senile, die" literally makes me sick to even think about. Here's my plan: graduate college, help other people in a way that provides me with some financial stability, do everything in my power to experience new things, share my life with someone, grow old, still help people in some way, theeeen die. *shrug* I suppose it's almost the same... but when I don't focus on the path that a lot of people aren't happy with, and of course, re-write it in a more positive way, it makes me smile and look forward to growing up, rather than dread my future.

You don't have to be "stuck" in a set way of life if you don't want to be. Get out there... experience... no one ever said you had to settle.

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"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Gandhi

Suave

I can attest to this. I am a large man-boy. Great people have said that the most important thing in life is to have a sense of humour about it, and allowing yourself what you call "innocence" is definitely a good way to keep that.

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"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein

"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato

ruggerp11

I think this is def. a familiar phase. I went through it and still am to a lesser extent. What did I do to be different? When all my classmates were looking for jobs and a career path, I went abroad for six months to London. I traveled and worked on me. i got more confidence and had the experience of a lifetime. I realized right then that I never have to do anything that I dont' want to do. I will have to do enough to get by but in reality that isnt' much. Have fun with your life through small things (slinky!) and big things (trips and escapes no matter what they are). You'll be fine

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Patriotism means being loyal to your country all the time and to its government when it deserves it.
--Mark Twain
Do What makes you happy
--Me
BUT!
"Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness" - Chuang-Tzu

vic28

I don't think you can ever move forward if you focus on the past. Yes, look back fondly, but never yearn for it, cause you're a more experienced, more interesting person now. Keep your childlike wonder by always learning new things--there's so much out there! I've taken after my sister, who is always excited about taking the next step in life--she's one of the only people I know who was excited about her 30th birthday and buying a minivan! I try to focus on what I can do and how I can grow, rather than how good I had it X years ago. Make your life worthwhile the whole way through.

toxic515

screw the script society gave you, go senile first.. it makes the rest a lot more pleasant!

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Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies
like a banana.

Daoust

You have some choice, but in the end you will fulfil this prophecy to some extent, because you have no other options. You can splash in all the puddles you want ( as Mal has suggested ) but when it's all done, you still need a job. You need to support your habits and the only way you can do that is with legal tender. Most likely you will find a job you don't hate and stick with it because you have to. You don't have to marry. That I agree with. But you will spend your life seeking companionship of one variety or another until you find it. You will grow old, my friend. That again is something you cannot deny or ignore. Just yesterday my mother in law was having a great laugh at my expense because she noticed all the hair I have growing on my back. It sucks. I hate it, but I can't stop it. I can try to deny, hide, ignore all the signs that tell me I'm not who I once was, but that's foolish. I don't think the key to facing the inevitabilities of life is to try to cover them up with other silly distractions. I think the key is complacency. "Yeah. I'm getting old. Oh, look. Dr. Phil is on."

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I have faith in a few things - divinity and grace
But even when I'm on my knees I know the devil preys

Marvelous Marv

Don't look at it that way.

People who look like they have it made as kids/young adults often grow unhappy when they have to maintain the lifestyle they became accustomed to having provided by Daddy.

I didn't have a lot growing up, but once I was on my own, it took a lot less "things" for me to be happy.

Plus, I didn't worry about losing my possessions, like so many people do. I knew I could get along with very little.

If you don't have much now, at age 21, there's still an excellent chance you'll be happy once school is a few years into the rear-view mirror. Even if you're not swapping stock tips with Bill Gates.