Growing Up.

I find we have huge, major, and multiple responsibilities that we do not exactly sign up for, that are more shoved in our face as a human in our current society. Now this is even more true for what we term as adults or grownups in our society today. As a sixteen year old, and a current highschooler who everything is practically handed to, these real life responsibilities are quite daunting and intimidating. Luckily, these responsibilities are slightly gradual and are in a way passed on and you acquire these “chores” through people who are the current elders and make it all seem effortless. But, what happens if you cannot handle these as an adult or fully do not grasp these ideas that are just expected almost suddenly. These are the basic concepts and ideas that we discussed today in my Challenge American Greats Class and really was intrigued by the social responsibilities that are just expected from us as being apart of our society.

Now one thing that I associate with the term adult, is taxes among other tasks but before that, I need to get at least a broad definition of what it means to be adult. Now, according the dictionary.com, adult means to be “a person who is fully grown or developed or of age.” I completely disagree, just going off that idea how are you supposed to know when you are fully grown or developed and if you do not know, who else will? It is hard and almost something that I look down upon when people start putting limits on their growing and development as an individual. Yes, I bet then when they were writing this definition dictionary.com was referring to reaching a certain maturity but in my mind that is still too vague when the definition of the word adult, comes with so many obligations. Do we put an age on it? When you turn eighteen you are a legal adult, but are you then suddenly considered a moral, just part of society that people would term as a grownup? Being an adult is a complex state of being that we need to rethink and reframe how we disperse social tasks because I believe that we are throwing the term around loosely. And we as society cannot let things such as the status of who will be our future front bearers of our society be wrongly classified into a large group of now adults, half of them being responsible, contributing member of the current, while the other half are leaches, sponges and worms in the big aspect reality.

A new look on the status of being an adult includes many things because it is something intricate and must be a pillar in our towering monument of a humankind. An adult is someone who takes responsibility for their actions. An adult is someone capable of great things and will or is already contributing things to the world that were lacking. An adult understand that we need together because if we are working against ourselves we will get nowhere. An adult understand that laws must be in place. An adult must understand that we trust them enough to let them lead us because if we set them up for failure they will get fail.

To think that some people from birth are paying taxes really does frighten me. It interesting to think and consider into what we learn as culture, that I really have no idea when people start doing taxes. At the beginning of today I thought it was something that you do maybe when you get out of college or something you do after turning eighteen. Yes, there is obviously people in the world where that is their situation but paying taxes starts when you start earning a substantial amount of money in the course of a year i have learned through google. Parents can add their child’s income into theirs but still the fact that some other sixteen year olds in Winona are already doing thier own taxes is astounding to me. Taxes seems so grownup in my eyes and that is where our misinterpreted view of being an adult ties in. Along with taxes, you suddenly are expected to know if you did not already, about political campaigns and make an educated decision in voting situations. You will truly have freedom from most reign from your parents but is that not scary to think that all the problems we deemed as things our parents needed to take care of, are now our responsibilities as the person in charge. Luckily you just catch on. It is apart of life, taking action and ownership of things that we once tried to avoid due to feeling inadequate and too childish to deal with matters that were meant for the adults in our lives.

Song of the day - Can't Go Back Now by The Weepies

“We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.” - May Lamberton