Got Peter Pan Syndrome: Here's How to Get Over it and Accept Growing Up
I distinctly remember being little and always wanting to be
older. As a kid, I wanted to be a teen; as a teen I wanted to be an adult.
Adulthood seemed like a magical land where you got to make your own decisions
and live by your own rules. You could have Frosted Flakes for dinner, go to bed
at 3am, wake up at noon and wear pyjamas all day. Adulthood was that fantastic
place where no one could tell you what to do, send you to your room, or force
you to make polite conversation with people you didn’t like. Adulthood was the
goal. I don’t know many kids who didn’t think, “I can’t wait to be a grown up.”
I certainly did. I longed for independence and the freedom to do as I pleased.
And then one day, it happened to me. I was a grown up. I
lived on my own, I ate what I wanted, slept for too many hours or none at all, and
came and went as I pleased. And it was glorious, for a time. And then along
came bills and rent and taxes and grocery lists and laundry piles and a job I
disliked and forced polite conversation with the people who signed my pay
cheque and essay due dates and all-nighters and student debt. Along came
reality. It seems that as a little kid, we only saw the freedom of adulthood,
not the weight of grown-up responsibilities. But I think I’ve finally reached
that age where getting older has lost its appeal. The years gone by now seem
brighter and happier than the years to come. I’ve grown to fear getting older.
The fear of aging keeps me up at night. I’ve begun to fear
arthritis and body parts that don’t quite do what I want. I’ve become afraid of
long funny sounding words like osteoporosis and tachycardia and abbreviations
like ALS and TIAs. But more than the physical decline that inevitably comes
with growing older, I’ve begun to fear that sense of losing things I can’t get
back. What will I do when I wake up at 30 and realize that I don’t even have
the title of 20-something to excuse my youthful folly; or at 50 to realize that
my child-bearing years are over; or at 70 to realize that I forget more things
than I remember? How will I bear the loss of my mother?
These seem like crazy things for 23-year-old to worry about,
but they haunt my mind. Perhaps I’m approaching my quarter-life crisis. Perhaps it’s my exposure to the elderly and
infirm at work—I speak with elderly folks who sound so bitter about their
advancing age and declining health. How do I make sure I don’t become that? I
realize that my fear is born out of my view and approach to aging. I’ve been
looking at it as a dark cloud, bearing down upon me, with only the promise of
rain and storms. I fear the loss of things and opportunities that I haven’t
even begun to enjoy yet. I worry about flowers wilting and dying before they’ve
even begun to bloom.
Tomorrow really is a mystery and none of us knows what it
holds. All we can do is live in this very moment without worrying about the
days yet to come or dwelling on the ones left behind. Life is happening now,
and here I am looking at tomorrow with dread instead of enjoying today. Getting
old is inevitable. I’m going to get old and I am going to die. We all are. But
not yet. And so, in those moments we still have, we should take nothing for granted. Do all the cliché
things like dance in the rain, and eat too much ice cream and marathon our
favourite movies. And we should do the not-so-cliché things like zip line through
rain forests, jump out of airplanes, swim with dolphins and eat desserts with
real gold in them, if that’s what you’re into. Have an extra glass of wine, and
compliment that pretty girl on her big brown eyes. Read a thousand books. Go to
a rock concert. Take care of yourself, mind, body and soul. Get dirty. Live life, gain experience and make memories. We
can’t stop ourselves from getting old, but we can make sure that with each
passing year, we have stories to tell and experiences to remember fondly. As
Chuck Palahniuk once said, “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the
goal is to create something that will.”