Life Diary

Thoughts on growing up

When I was younger, I never thought I would grow up to be like this. Back when we were little children, we all thought that we could be anything we wanted. When I was in the first grade, I remember telling to the whole class that I wanted to be someone that everybody knows. I stood in front of the class and told the story of our first day of first grade and then I realized I really like story-telling, maybe I can be a public speaker or something like that.

There was also a time where I thought I wanted to be a singer, and athlete, a doctor, a scientist, designer or a famous dancer. The point is, back then when we were younger, we view the world as a place that we can explore and seek adventures from and learn so many things. However, we gradually grew up. Our physical structures as well as our mental structure changed. Commonly, many of us forgotten our dreams and goals we stated when we were younger.

"Those are silly dreams. I never really wanted to be singer. I mean, in this situation? I don't think so."

I remembered telling that to my friends in middle school because I thought being a singer was not worth it as a career. Says who you might think. The response is society.

You see, the moment we develop and grew up within a society, unconsciously we are structured to behave and think in a certain way due to the teachings and experiences implemented onto us as we look and try into different things. I'm not saying that we should blame entirely for our current result in failures to the society. Actually, I think that growing up within a society helps us to shape our perspective upon things we see in this world.

Manners? We learn that from our parents and schools, right? What if we grew up without being taught how to be polite and grateful to people? What if we weren't taught how to learn differences in people? What if there were no tolerance between individuals if no one explained to us when we were children?

From my point of view, the way we are right now is based on the teachings of our society and enviroment - as well as our decisions.

Yes. Decisions.

It's only ourselves to decide whether things are fitted nicely to ourselves or not. We learn to see other perspectives and learn different points of views by exploring other fields of areas. Either by researching like reading, browsing through legitimate sources in the internet, or by having conversations with people.

This is what growing up is like. To keep learning and seeking answers to think we never know or understand before.

I think the reason why we thought our dreams we stated when we were children were silly because we believed it that way. Some people might think that being an artist is a waste of time and don't produce much money to help their life but on the other hand, some people think being an artist is an admirable job that pursues a world full of poetry and passion in things we have never express before.

I guess another point here is to open our minds and broadened our understanding so that we may have better views on things we never actually know about before.

Now I fully understand why so many people, especially the youth, are extremely worried about the term growing up, that is because as a youth we are still lacking in experiences we had never made before. This is where the anxiety of handling matters out of our hands made us feel scared, afraid, unsure, and not confident in facing it. However, to overcome that feeling I have seen some solutions to it. One of the solutions offered goes by this quote:

"To learn something and be succesful at it, you have to fail first. Why? It's because from your failures you will notice in which part you missed on approaching your tasks. Therfore, learning from your mistakes is one of the first steps of growing up that is to admit your mistakes and overcome it."

This quote goes by everything you will experience in learning. When you are facing you had never been before, think about this quote and try to implement this. 

We are now entering the 21st century where so many opportunities exist for each and everyone of us to explore into this world. As a youth of this era, we have the rights and the chance to expand our capabilities and seek into developing ourselves into a better person.

How? Everything can start by little things.

You might want to learn something new, for example learn new languages, join competitions, gain new hobbies, make new friends, read more books about inspiring people you can learn from and so on. Everything starts by your commitment and the rest is your effort.

I think this is the best part of growing up, to unlock the potentials we have in ourselves and to seek talents we had never known before.