Adulthood, a nightmare

My thoughts in 389 words:

Ever since mankind people identify adolescence as the most stupid and “out of mind” phase of life, maybe we’ve been having this thought but never understood what was triggering that behavior. Nevertheless, even tough no human is certain about its origin, many psychologists coincide in a theory referring to adulthood phobia.

This syndrome is more common than you might think it was, practically everyone has passed trough its consequences. The difference between each one of us relies in the way we handle its symptoms: I bet you have had thoughts about watching youngling’s TV shows, playing with your old dolls or even remembering all those great moments in the backyard playing with absolutely nothing but your mind. I personally feel this way very often, and I call it nostalgia, a pretty funny way of disguising this adulthood phobia.

Well, actually Mr. J.D. Salinger wrote about it in a very controversial way: he depicted Holden Caulfield, the main character of Catcher in the Rye, as a teenager searching for belonging and acting stupidly just to test his tastes. Many critics have debated about this posture, however I find it pretty straightforward: Holden is having adulthood phobia.

Several chapters of this great novel describe his actions and let the reader think for a second how important being “childish” can be in order to psychologically grow as a person, a memorable example comes to my mind whenever a 15 year old presumes he’s old enough to engage a sexual relationship… “I was walking around the room waiting for the prostitute to show up…” (Salinger 92) and whenever the situation shows up, reactions are generally “Look, I don’t feel very much like myself tonight”. This past example clearly demonstrates how a typical adolescence statements turns out just to be a fallacy whenever it comes to working it out.

This previous example is just one of many situations happening in real life were a teenager is looking forward to be an adult and still retreats himself because of this fear of becoming everything we hated as kids: adults and their nonsense rules.

Nevertheless, experience is the best way of learning; we don’t learn how to ride a bike without falling from it. We should comprehend teenagers and help them out surpass their own adulthood phobia, promoting what Caulfield lacked the most, dialogues with adults.