The Myth of Adulthood

This is a stream-of-consciousness kid's story I wrote based on a tumblr text post I saw.

By the time you are old enough to read this book, I’m sure you know there are certain things that are myths�"certain things that do not exist outside of fairy tales and movies, and television shows that you can hear your parents watching after you go to bed. These myths include dragons, and fairies, ghosts, and spirits, witches and wizards, talking animals, and romance without heartbreak. But the one thing that no one teaches you is a myth until you are much, much older is adults. 

Now, I imagine you must be shaking your head, and one of your eyebrows has crept its way up your tiny forehead. “Why of course there are grownups!” you shout. For you must think that you know many of them�"your parents, your grandparents, your teachers, the neighbors, college students, and your parents friends who never cease to wonder at how much you’ve grown, how old you are, what grade you are currently in, and what you want to be when you grow up. But I am here to tell you the truth. They are a sham. A figment of your imagination, for age is a matter of perception. 

I imagine in your head right now, you have a milestone in mind for when you will be “grown up.” Perhaps it is when you get to high school, when you can drive a car, when you have a job, when you get married, or even when you just turn one year older. But every time you achieve one of these milestones, a new one will appear. The bar for when you consider yourself an adult gets farther and farther away every time you think you are close. 

The truth is, you will always feel just as old as you do now. You may never reach a point when you feel you are all grown up, but you will reach a point when you know more than you do now. Your parents, your teachers, and especially those college students, do not feel like they are grown up unless they are obsessively caught up in their own success. But they do feel like they can handle certain situations. They can cook, clean, go to school, make money, pay bills, and even�"hopefully�"take care of you if you are not too much trouble. 

And the people older than them�"yet still not adults�"still ask them the same tedious questions: Where do you work? How much money do you make? Where are you going to college? What are you majoring in? When are you going to get married? When are you going to have children? Sometimes you will be able to answer these questions, and sometimes you will not. But the question you will never be able to answer to yourself is “am I a grown up yet?” because there are no such things as grownups. There are only people: humans, worthwhile, members of society with intrinsic value that can never be quantified by age, and you are already one.