Re: Contemplations of A Soon-to-be Adult
Turning 18 isn't as scary as it seems. Most people don't actually expect you to suddenly wake up with a vision in your head and a song in your heart on your 18th birthday, knowing exactly what path you're going to resolutely march down for the rest of your life. In fact, many people change their majors and/or careers several times before they settle for something. While it's true that, especially in today's economy, most folks settle for mediocrity, or at the very least, something that they wish they could change if only they had the time, inclination, different family or socioeconomic status, the list goes on and on, it's much more acceptable not to know exactly what you want.
Having said that, there's still an incredible amount of pressure to measure up and to be perfect. American culture is especially terrible when it comes to this. Add the arrogance of certain blindness organizations, such as the NFB, who think that all blind people sho uld fit into a certain mold or else they are portraying unacceptable stereotypes, and you've got a recipe for disaster. It can be enough to make you go insane if you ruminate on it too much.
Lastly, while I think the age is just a number trope is tired and not exactly true in all circumstances, the fact is that 18 is not a magic number. You can vote, you can smoke, and you can join the military. So, you're considered responsible enough to fight for your country and face almost certain and irreversible trauma, but in this lovely country of ours, you're not quite responsible enough to drink yet. That's a different debate for another topic, though. The point is, big whoop dee freaking doo. So much emphasis is placed on this milestone, but why? The thing that surprised me the most about becoming an adult was not the increased responsibility, but the fact that I wasn't taken any more seriously than I had been previously. The trap I fell into was that I had been raised to believe that teenagers are hormonal and don't know what they want, much less what they feel, so everything they do, say and think is by default invalid. When I turned 18, I was banking on emotional liberation. I expected to be able to finally spill my heart out to my elders and tell them how and why they hurt me, and they would respect me because of my newfound adulthood, and we could compromise about things that maybe both of us were wrong about in certain ways. Well, it...doesn't work that way at all, if you haven't guessed. In fact, I think that adulthood forces you to become even more tight-lipped, because now, in addition to all the economic pressure, you're expected to keep a professional facade at all times. Slip up and show the slightest hint of so-called abnormality, and you might not get that job, or that date, or that respect from the people who you've looked up to for all your life.
Why am I bringing this up? The answer is si mple. Hold onto your innocence for as long as you can. Innocent does not always equal childish, nor is childish always a negative adjective. If I could go back to my 16 or 17 year old self, I would give myself one good swift kick in the ass, then proceed to tell my former self not to waste my time hoping for a world in which I was free to express myself in the ways I thought would get me far. The truth is, they call it the daily grind for a reason, unless you don't make as many mistakes as I did, and that many others have done, although a little bit of luck, or fate, or whatever you believe in, also needs to be on your side too.
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