Growing up.

I’ve always wanted to be mature. You know, mature. It’s such an attractive term. But a lot of things happened in the past few days, and now I’m scared to grow up. It seems that growing up takes something out of you. It smothers the youthfulness in you. Well, duh, you’d say. Growing up means you’re become less youthful. But what I mean is that growing up takes away the youthful energy that drives you to believe that YOU matter in this world. YOU can change things. You can right the wrongs. I don’t see that in Mr. Gibney. I don’t see that in Chris Christie. I don’t even see that in Leke. The three people I mentioned share one characteristic—they are all disillusioned. They seem so well-acquainted with reality that they are all so ready to give in and concede that: “There is simply nothing that we can do. And thus is life.” Perhaps that is true. Perhaps certain situation cannot be fixed. Perhaps by growing up—experiencing things, coming to realize the many obstacles of life—one like Leke learns that in real life, especially when you’re in a leadership position, you don’t always get to do things out of free will. Perhaps when they give up they are really speaking from past experience and profound insight. But I don’t think growing up should be an experience that wears you out and beats you down. If something is not right, we should never concede. It’s never too late to right the wrongs. We should never betray our own beliefs to conform to the hefty reality of life.
What’s worse about growing up is that it makes you forget that you were once young. When I was in fourth grade, I thought I was mature and those first and second graders were little kids. When I was in middle school, I thought all those elementary kids had the mental capacity of infants. Even now, when I’m about to graduate from high school and leave for college, I still don’t really consider my twelve-year-old brother having any sophisticated reasoning skills. I forgot how I thought I was smart and intelligent when I was his age. And actually I think my moral and ethical view of the nature is still pretty much the same as the one I had when I was twelve. But growing up makes me look down on the people younger than me as if I am more mature than they are—even though to people like Chris Christie my brother and I don’t really have any difference when it comes to politics and the “serious stuff.”
The press release from Christie’s office bothers me immensely: “It is also our firm hope that the students were motivated by youthful rebellion or spring fever – and not by encouragement from any one-sided view of the current budget crisis in New Jersey.” Not only are we not being taken seriously, there are people who would rather see teenagers acting out of pure “spring fever” than soliciting advices and opinions from people. Let alone the fact that they don’t even believe that teenagers have the ability to assess and judge facts and opinions concerning an event like this budget crisis. Such profound distrust in the reasoning ability of students is in fact a curious contradiction to Christie’s policy. Isn’t one of primary goals of education to develop students’ critical thinking skills? If even high school students are considered so dumb by Christie, why is he cutting eighty something percent of the budget for public schools (and also the library)? Oh I get it. We’re just not dumb enough. When we are, we will stop questioning Christie. And peace follows.
It scares me. Christie, Gibney, and Leke remind me of an episode from the Japanese Drama Great Teacher Onizuka, in which a high school girl was appalled at her father’s corruption but was reprimanded by her teacher Onizuka said: “Don’t be so fast in judging your father. He was once just like you. Young and righteous. You’re job is not to become the type of adult that you appall.” I don’t want to be disillusioned through the process of growing up. I don’t want to be like these “mature” adults who feel so powerless about the things around them that they can only resort to hypocrisy and defeat. I don’t want to be jaded by life. I want to stay forever youthful.