"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." (Lewis)
Hmm...it is nice to know that someone, especially of great intellect, also finds it undesireable to be very grown up. Why is it that one has to lose their sense of wonderment to be counted as one with a voice worthy of hearing? Or may be we secretly despise the fact that some are able to maintain this, while life has seemingly beaten the passion out of the rest of us so that we are not able to live it as it was intended. My thoughts resonate with those of Lewis'. My desire is to put away such childish things, including the desire to be 'very grown-up.'
"Junior-High Girl",
Alana
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