To Grow Up
同志社国際高等学校

１年

永井小

夏

“Don’t grow up, it’s a trap!” I recall someone telling me this quote, having
me to go back thinking about what growing up is. According to dictionaries,
the phrasal verb “grow up” means to develop and reach maturity, to becomelarger and change from being a child to being an adult as time passes, or tostop behaving like a child, and become wiser. This left me with a fewquestions. “What does it mean to grow up?” “Do we need to grow up?” oractually, “am I growing up?”
I realized that at a certain point in life, we know we’re not children

big events in life, people are forced to “grow up” and “stop being a child”. Togrow up ― it seemed like an act or some stage that everyone expects
everyone ― expects me ― to go through. We all pictured sparkling selveswhenever someone asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” But
these past few years, from around when I started my teen years, I started tothink, wait, is growing up as beautiful as it seemed?
In Disney’s Peter Pan, one of my favorite childhood movies, Peter once
says, “Once you’re grown up, you can never come back!” The author of Peter
Pan, J. M. Barrie was also quoted as saying, “Growing up is such a barbarous
business, full of inconvenience . . . and pimples.” Though I didn’t understandwhat these meant when I was much younger, I do now. I believe I started to “growup” when things started to get complicated between my parents, especiallywhen they divorced. I learnt for the first time that parents aren’t people whostay with you forever. I learnt that “love” could be unstable and that evenwhen they said the vow “until death do us part” they broke each other andme when they broke the promise. These hit me hard, just like when I feltthat my childhood-best friend ― when I believed in such clichés as “bestfriends” ― was shifting away and started to grow out of me. For neither ofthese events was I ever able to speak up, because if I do I thought I’d lose

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anymore. Whether it’s after graduation or becoming twenty years old or aftersomething again. It was also obvious that it is impossible to un-grow-up, justas Peter warned. I started to lose belief in many things, just like “grown ups”
do.
Then I got this haunting feeling. If growing up means to understand“grown-up” things such as love affairs between adults or killing your inner
self and not being able to express yourself freely, growing out of friends, stopbelieving in fairies and pixie dust and start believing in heartbreaks anddeath, I would never want to grow up. What if all the innocence fades away
one day and leaves me with hate and guilt and disbelief? I loved the feelingof falling in love all over again with the endless diamond sky, but what if one
day I become all numb, blunt and lose sight of these beautiful things?
But that was when I found Peter Pan’s quote, “Peter was not quite likeother boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremor ran through him, like a
高校生―Ｉ部門

shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another tillthere are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one.” Then I suddenly felt
like I wasn’t alone. I guess I was afraid just like Peter was, to be left alone,
to let go of childhood. I am sixteen now, starting to create my world as anadult. However, there are parts of childhood that I wish to and will keep, suchas innocence, sense of wonder and the appreciation of my surroundings. I
notice grown-ups around me who seem to have lost these important qualities
including a spoonful of silliness. Maybe growing up isn’t about letting go of
everything, or kissing purity goodbye, but to balance and gather the precious
essences of childhood. When packing for the journey of adulthood, make sureto never forget to include your inner Peter Pan, to have a little chat with him
once in a while.

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