Why is Growing Up So Painful?

Do you sometimes wish you were a child again and your parents did everything? You know one of those periods in life when you were not accountable to anyone or anything?

Lately, I have been doing a lot of thinking on the subject of growing up. While it is a process, it is both painful and enjoyable. There are good days without a doubt but the bad days tend to erode one’s memory of the good days. Now if you agree with me, please stand up. However, you must always let the good days stay with you and let go of the bad days or else they will continue to sap at your strength and energy.

Believe me when I say this is the best time to be alive. I mean technology has so evolved, all you have to do is go on the web and everything you need is at your fingertip. If you are lazy and cannot cook, there is always ready made food. Everything is almost now instantaneous. However, there are things that will grind you and bring the best out of you and those things make growing up painful. Believe me, Mary J. Blige is not the only one with ‘Growing Pains’, the title of her latest album.

Success is sometimes an overnight business for a lot of people but for others, you have top work at it. It may take years before you get to that place where you can path yourself on the back but I believe we should path ourselves on the back everyday for the simple fact that we made it through the day and did not lose our minds. Oh yeah, you are not in a mental institution, that is a blessing and you should be grateful.

There are things that kill others daily but you made it through. You ought to be thankful. If you made one good choice or decision this week that will shape the rest of your life; please path yourself on the back because you are one step closer to your purpose while another is on his or her way to the state prison for wrong choices and decisions.

If you have your freedom, your health and your sanity, believe me when I say you are one of the richest people on earth. Some of us don’t have all of that. We may have one and crave the other.

As for me, this is the best time to be alive. I am growing through all of life’s experiences. I am learning everyday through and from my relationships. Some lessons are painful and others, well, let’s just say, I know better now. If I have learnt nothing at all, I am certain of the very notion that when people decide to walk out of my life, I ought to let them walk because even if I get superglue I cannot make them stay. My heart and spirit might be bruised but is it only for a while. There is always enough grace to heal and move on.

Secondly, when people show you who they are, please believe them because they are mot messing about. They are for real. You ought to realise, that’s just life. It is nothing personal.

This is where I go back to one of my favourite people in the world, Susan L. Taylor, “Not everyone is healthy enough to have a front-row seat in our lives.”

Back to the pain of growing up and accountability, this week has been very stressful to say the least. I am still recovering from my workload and the demands life has made on me. But this is the catch, when you say, I want to be this or I want to be that, when I grow up, you never think about the amount of work and time you will have to put in to become that very thing you desire. And that is when growing up becomes painful; when you become accountable to yourself and no one else for your successes and failures. When you are solely answerable for your thoughts, choices, decisions and actions because you know when tomorrow comes, you have no one but yourself to hold responsible.

I am tempted to throw in the towel and just be lazy but that’s not who I am. It has never been part of my make-up. I am too intelligent, blessed, gifted, and talented to waste all of life’s investment in me.

The greater one has given me more than enough to work with, I just need to make time and do the things I need to do. Time flies and you wonder how and when the day disappeared but that is life. It makes room for you but it won’t wait on you to be ready before it moves ahead.

Truth be told, I have been real tired this past week. If I am honest, I was close to tears on Thursday because I had just had enough. Exams, work and all of life’s little demands but when I looked back on my life’s journey, I said to myself, ‘Belinda, you have come too far to go back down on yourself.’

And that my people, is why growing up is painful, when you become accountable for the way your life turns out and no one else. You have no choice but to face up to the stark realities of life, pull yourself up by the bootstraps and keep walking.

You keep walking because growing up is a quest and a journey that one embarks on to find fulfilment in their life’s purpose and the key to finding it is in your hands.

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