The teenage years are one of the most important stages in life. For our bodies, it’s a time for brain development, body growth and puberty. For our minds, it’s a time for learning, new experiences and reflecting. For our emotions, it’s a time of seeking acceptance, self awareness, insecurities and stress. On top of all that, most decisions you make actually start to have significant importance: your career choice, with whom you hung out, how you spend your time. But the most important thing about the teenage years is that it marks the end of one's childhood, or as I like to call it: the point where innocence became ignorance.
It is always nostalgic and even a bit sad when I think back to my childhood because I remember the time where nothing really mattered. There was nothing to be stressed about, nothing to make you truly worry, the opinions of others about you meant absolutely nothing and you would make decisions based on how fun the idea sounded. When you are so young no one really expects something from you, therefore when you make a dumb mistake or when you don't know something obvious, everything is just excused because “you are just an innocent kid”. But then, suddenly around the time of middle school, things completely change. You have grown more, you have more knowledge about the world and your surroundings, you become more aware of who you are, what you like, who you like and people start to expect things from you, but you are still an immature little kid. It’s this confrontation between being immature and people's expectations that ignites the teenage struggle. From now on innocence isn’t an excuse and is otherwise seen as ignorance. The first time the school said something like “You should already know this, this and this and you should be getting these grades or else you’ll fail…” I felt so overwhelmed that I wanted to timeout and think “Since when do I have to do all this!” That was the first time I felt the horrible feeling of stress. As long as one is still immature during the presence of expectations, he or she will never grow and develop to fulfill these very expectations. This is why, mostly in the beginning, teenagers are so rebellious, because their immature way of being would rather omit having to fulfill their duties and focus on less stressful matters like hanging out with friends. And it is precisely in these moments where you start to miss being an innocent young child. Eventually, around 8th or 9th grade we start to mature and with it we accept the conditions of our current reality, where things won’t be as easy as when we were kids and we have to do something about it. You start to meet people's expectations and you finally think to yourself “this is doable”. Although the stress is never really gone, you now know the way around things. Stress is not good for you, but in the case you might feel it, think of it as your body’s way of telling you to push yourself even more on that one. Time goes on and you eventually get the scariest thought of all, that work never stops and it will always get harder. When I mentioned this to my grandfather, he gave me a brilliant answer: “Nico, the day life goes easy on you and no one expects more things from you, you’ll start to create expectations for yourself”.
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