When age is NOT just any number.

It’s the end of the 2009; fortunately it’s not yet the end of the world (God-willing). New Year is here but there’s nothing new about New Year when we talk about growing old. Scrap that, I mean, growing up.

Unlike the good charm 2010 may offer, there’s nothing charming about being another year older. The future seems to offer dread, emotional stress and blissful denial to every living human being in his/her early-twenties. That is, of course, if you are the sort to freak out about being another year older, like I am.

Sure, I – in my early twenties am a little too young to be worrying about wrinkles (though an unsettling amount of people have tried to convince me "Awak nampak muda".) I believe that for a lot of us, it is not the growing old that we fear, but growing up.

Growing up is definitely not fun when it comes to being an adult especially being a responsible one. Of course, becoming a selfish adult would be the preferred choice to many when our time and wealth are not obligatory bound to other people (i.e. parents, spouse & family). That way, every possible personal desire such as luxury cars, high rise condos, ridiculously expensive gadgets and excessive overseas trips can be simply realized without sense of guilt of running away from increasing commitments as we grow older year by year. But in reality, whether we like it or not, we are defined as adults by our age, which increases over time. And by adults, I mean the responsible ones. As we speak, we’re aging and adulthood is something that we certainly can’t avoid.

Accepting adulthood means accepting responsibility and commitments. The question is, when is the time you know you’ve become an adult? I’m pretty sure girls my age and women alike can answer that with less hesitation (because they somehow had become so serious, grumpy & matured at very early age, some even acting like my mom back in primary school - Don’t smack me ), but to guys, really, when is the right time that we should consider ourselves adults? Is it when we hit puberty or when we turned 18? (which is the lawful age you are allowed access to almost everything in this country) or is it soon after we got married? I don’t know, and quite possibly you don’t as well. Or is becoming an adult something that we can decide on? If it is, when is the right time then?

People would say, “So what if you’ve become an adult? Not a big deal.” Probably, it is not. But it all depends on values in our society in general, family to be exact. Worse (or better), if your family has, how should I put this, emm, conservative, values? Anyway, because of these values, whether we like it or not, we are judged by how well we perform as adults by, say, our financial management skills, our career climb, our ability to provide for the family, and our ability to make sensible decision. In other words, to be a successful adult, we need to have some amount of wisdom. Unfortunately, wisdom, like bank accounts, doesn’t automatically increase with age. Well, growing up doesn’t sound that appealing does it?

Simply put, our age increases each year, which also raises others’ expectations towards our maturity, but our inner self may still be young, clueless, and really just wants to play PS2 all day.

Our parents, teachers, senior staffs, aunts & uncles are showing by example that being a grown-up means you have to be practical, stop being silly, cover your own ass, be nice to people you like or you don’t like, and make money like mad “because you’ve got no-choice”. But all those attributes are exactly what give people like me the impression that growing up is a troublesome and unpleasant process. Knowing one after another of your peers getting married and settling down in their early twenties doesn’t help either to reduce the stress of not doing the same – Yup, “You should be getting married because most of you peers already did” is the unwritten law usually observed by most of our parents and close relatives = our society in general. Demmit!

I can still remember back then, when I was in primary school, when the pressure was much less, the laughter was abundant, and the only things to worry about were to get your homework done and to apply wet chalk all over your shoes so they would appear bright white. Funnily, I remember myself dying to grow up when I was younger. Back then, being an adult meant being free and independent. I would no longer be subject to school uniforms, nor my teacher’s cane. I would be able to decide on my own bed time, the television programme that I can watch, the subjects that I study, and the time I want to come home. When you’re young, you just can’t wait to grow older; adulthood would surely save you from endless tuition lessons, sekolah agama evening session, the many reprimands that seem to spring up from all sides, and other traumatic episodes a child has to go through – from infancy to teenhood and adolescence – compliments from parents, teachers, hurtful friends and the like. Then you start growing up and feel the real pressure of life. Suddenly, you just want to be a kid again. By that time, you will realize you’re almost 40. That would be pretty messed up.

Sure, a lot of things are simpler when you’re a kid. However, kids are also mostly bewildered at the life already decided for them, laden with all subjects’ tuition, and suffocated by the amount of rules they have to follow “Because I Said So”.

So, how did our reactions to adulthood change from yeay to yikes? Perhaps it is because we romanticize our younger days by the pressure we face, and childhood seems wonderful because we had so much less to deal with. We may laugh at those silly little concerns, like SPM, and bullies, but they were really, truly huge issues at the time. Similarly, when we are older (and hopefully wiser) we may also laugh at what trouble us today. And we could laugh because we have moved on, and not because we held on.

Growing up is not that bad, once we realize that we do not have to be the adult we see, nor the adult we are raised to be. After all what fun is being an adult if we can’t make a bit of our own rules?

p/s: It would be nice if I could have a collection of Mutiara Naga comic series (from 1-42) for my birthday this year (am not a beggar). Fhm2 je la klw dh terbace nih...x mahal. Setakat RM 100 lebih, klw ade 10 org, bru sorg 10 hengget.

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