There is no such thing as a grown up...

We move on, we move out, we move away from our families and friends. But the basic insecurities, the basic fears, and all those wounds just grow up with us.

We get bigger, we get taller, and we get older. But for the most part, we're still a bunch of kids running around the playground, trying desperately to fit in.

Agree or disagree?

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Reply 1

username1084946

Original post by mrmicrosoft

Agree in some respect.
Few people are man enough to be human and accept what it requires but most are trying to fit in and learning to fake it.

Reply 2

username1201943

We never really 'grow up'. We only learn how to behave in public. And some people still fail at that.

Reply 3

Magdatrix >_<

Yep, you have to do grown-up things like live alone, pay your bills, make decisions for your dog at the vet, look after someone's kids, make your own food, take your car for an MOT, and yet, you still end up sitting in an older colleague's office all afternoon just because they reassure you that your data spreadsheets are correct after all, and offer you coffee and a biscuit like you're their little adoptive kid or something.

I agree...

Original post by UnknownRoyalist

We never really 'grow up'. We only learn how to act in public.

And we are given obligations and debts which we must pay off, but for the most part we're still that same kid who would run around the playground.

It's funny how when you're younger, you can't wait to 'grow up', but as you get older, you learn that it is a myth, a lie sold by society.

idk maybe i'm just too nostalgic right now, but I'd trade it all to go back :sad:

Reply 6

mrmicrosoft

Original post by Magdatrix >_<

When you think about it, it's scary, right?

Reply 7

feathered-soul

WHen you're a kid you assume that adults are these amazing people who know everything, and as you get older you realise that nobody really knows what their doing and we're all just blundering about pretending to have it all sorted.

Reply 8

Klix88

Original post by feathered-soul

Ain't that the truth! I'm nearly 50 and I've concluded that "growing up" is just about learning how to cope with the chaos whilst appearing to be calm.

Reply 9

mrmicrosoft

Original post by Klix88

Ain't that the truth! I'm nearly 50 and I've concluded that "growing up" is just about learning how to cope with the chaos whilst appearing to be calm.

Well you know, just a few miles from the Las Vegas strip, you’ll come across a place they call the neon graveyard. It is here that remnants of the city’s past have come to rest. It is a reminder that history is merely a chronicle of replacement.

Reply 10

PinkMobilePhone

Volunteer Team

yes true in some respects

Reply 11

FlavaFavourFruit

I think people do grow up and act mature all the time, not just to satisfy the public(which some can't even do...)

Reply 12

Chlorophile

Original post by mrmicrosoft

This is really true. One of the most surprising thing I've learnt about growing up is how little we actually grow up. If anything, we go backwards. A lot of children are a lot more sensible than a lot of adults.

Reply 13

FireGarden

My parents taught me being a grown up is being responsible for yourself, and being who you are with full integrity. If that's what everyone else thinks it means to be grown up.. well, the responses in this thread are a bit sad.

Reply 14

Viva Emptiness

This is definitely true. Despite having a mortgage, paying bills, having a full time "proper" job, having a car, having pets etc. I still don't feel like I'm an "adult". I'm basically still the teenager that laughs at scrawling's of willies on the bathroom walls and drinks too much occasionally. Being an adult doesn't mean you grow-up, it just means you have less time for the fun things you did when you were a kid.

Reply 15

Octohedral

Original post by FireGarden

How old are you? :biggrin:

That's how most people would define being grown up, but there's a difference between actions and feelings. I think this thread isn't so much about the inability to do that, as the understanding that it's not automatic, and that adults are just you twenty years on. You know that as a child, but you don't really know it.

Reply 16

FireGarden

Original post by Octohedral

How old are you? :biggrin:

I'm 23. Why were you curious?

I'm not sure if I'm interpreting "don't really know it" properly. I took it as "Kids know adults are just kids 20 years on (i.e., aged); they don't know that in an adults head, they still are like kids". I'd agree to an extent; 'adults' are just as playful, but the play evolves. Nobody grows up to be totally serious, almost formal, and like everything is under total control all the time. That wasn't the part I was getting at.

My post was essentially about the latter part of the OP. If most people really do feel they're "still a bunch of kids running around the playground, trying desperately to fit in", well, it's a bit pathetic. The "being confident with who you are" is very much a feeling that influences your actions, and apparently seems to be missing often. I agree, it's not automatic, but sad nonetheless that so many people agreed!

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 17

Octohedral

Original post by FireGarden

Just trying to gauge who I was talking to in terms of stage of life. You're older than me, anyway. :smile:

Fair enough - I totally agree. I thought you meant adults didn't feel like children at all, rather than the insecurity part. I think people should, and do, grow out of insecurities - in a strange way I imagine things become less serious as you grow older, because they realise other peoples' views and petty disputes don't matter so much.

Reply 18

Picnic1

This is true of people all 'intellects'.

When people talk of 'intellects' they don't usually mean emotional intellects.

Emotional intellects can be high at any age. The neglected child probably has a high emotional intellect because they know what need is , they see what fulfilling that need is, and (in how they are treated) they see what not fulfilling that need is.

To make a society full of wisest we should probably be forensically looking at some of the most deprived areas as a starting point, gauging their emotional intelligence rather than just how many skiing trips they've been on or whether or not they've seen 'The Inbetweeners' and can enjoy it 'ironically'. We should be fishing them out potential harm that might come their way, putting them in grammar or public schools.

But that's not what the comprehensive system suggested. It left clever , but in some way vulnerable, children, at the mercy of how they chose to interact with people (inculding some teachers) less intuitively clever than they were.
All it did was reinforce being forced to learn the kinds of 'street life skills' that they might have relied upon where they live.

So I suggest that we were a more grown more society before the comprehensive experiment came in, before, like children bored of their train set, the government tore up branch lines and concentrated on the motorway, a more grown up society before convenience food and convenience relationships became a norm, a more grown up society before the 1960s wave of universities came in, more grown up before more people went to university which served only to make them think that they were probably cleverer than those who hadn't been 'unless proven otherwise'. More grown up before the 'space race' and spiralling footballers' wages. More grown up before the countryside became the place for the richish middle class creating a kind of ghetto of stereotypical 'niceness', rather than the place for the working and upper class. More grown up before 'the new middle class' existed leading people to not really know what the 'old middle class' was. Prudent? Austere? Tasteful?What?

if you feel grown up when you are very young, follow your path. Emigrate to do so if needs must. Otherwise who would you be trying to impress? A country full of insecure, usually slightly ill-educated, stunted, people!

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 19

Klix88

Original post by Octohedral

I think people should, and do, grow out of insecurities - in a strange way I imagine things become less serious as you grow older, because they realise other peoples' views and petty disputes don't matter so much.

Not really. You just become insecure about different and more fundamental things. Like how to earn enough money to pay the rent/mortgage/bills, what to do when your child is ill and your boss threatens to sack you if you take more time off work to look after them, how to find a decent care home for your Alzheimer's-afflicted mother who needs the 24 hour care you can't give or afford, etc.

Certainly the last thing you end up giving a toss about, is what other people think about you or what nasty comment someone made about you on Facebook.