The World Doesn't Know How to Not Grow Up

     Today I make my [triumphant?] return to the blogging world!  I've been thinking about this one for a while now, so I hope everyone likes it.

     Not to long ago, as I rode in the car, I was introduced to new song by Avril Lavigne called "Here's to Never Growing Up."  This song helped to open my eyes to a topic that lies at the heart of many of the problems of the world today.  You see, in the chorus, miss Lavigne sings an anthem of:

  

           We'll be running down the street, yelling "Kiss my %#$!"

          I'm like yeah whatever, we're still living like that.
          When the sun's going down, we'll be raising our cups,
          Singing, here's to never growing up.

To me, this is a really narrow and infantile view of what it means to never grow up.  To me this is a disgraceful twisting of an idea that holds so much beauty.  

Never Growing Up

     Certainly, I can agree with miss Lavigne that to be irresponsible, careless, and disrespectful is very immature, I part with her in the desirability of this.  We can all know that kids are definitely this way at times, but we can also know that there is a certain magic about being a child and seeing the world through the eyes of a child--magic that is not found in drinking all night and partying all day.  In fact, I might posit that rather than desiring to retain that magic, miss Lavigne rather does not want to have to be an adult.  

     This is an epidemic in US society, for Avril Lavigne is not alone in this mindset.  Everywhere I see the pathetic man-children that movies so love to portray.  I see the kind of people that never learned to work with others because of their own arrogance.  People that refuse to be adults and instead go to their chosen security blanket, be it drinking, video games, TV, drugs, or any other of the plethora of things that we run to to distract us.  We see the effects of immature adults everywhere: in the failing of families, in the half-witted political fights on Facebook, and in the way we treat the symptoms rather than the actual problems of society.  Then there are others who have resigned themselves to the "ways of the world."  

     Equally responsible for the state of the world, those who have given up on changing the world.  These people look back on the "good ol' days" and spend their time hoping the world might eventually go back to what it once was.  Maybe in their past they made genuine change, or at least strove for it, but now they separate themselves from the world that they once tried to save.  They watch with a passionless look of disinterest as the world tears itself apart in its own ignorance of its peril.  These people wait for the embrace of death to part them from their problems.

Learning to Fly

      Now comes the part where I use a movie to communicate a point.  This time, the movie is Hook.  Note: maybe some minor spoilers ahead, but nothing you wouldn't be able to predict from seeing the movie's trailer.  Hook is the story of Peter Pan after he left Neverland.  Having lived in the normal world for a while now, he's grown older and started his own family.  We come in on a Peter that has forgotten what is important in life.  He ignores his kids and wife and spends all his time at work.  Peter too has gone to the comfortable embrace of his own security blanket: work.  Over the course of his adventure to save his kids, Peter realizes that he has lost track of what is important in life and that he has grown up in the wrong way.

     

     Many of us, like Peter, have chosen to grow up in the wrong way--we're doing adult-y things but we're not handling them responsibly or taking the time to understand them.  We have been harmed by the world, so we choose to ignore it.  The problems around us seem insurmountable, so we run from them to find easier problems.  We given in to the idea that life is just a big, monotonous cycle to be squeezed of all the personal enjoyment as much as possible.  The world nor the people in it are not magical in our eyes.  They are husks the same as us, waiting for time to pass us by.  

     So when I say I never want to grow up it is this: I never want to lose the imagination of a child.  The excitement of a child when he sees what a beautiful and awesome world we live in.  The passion of a child when he sees something he wants to stand up for.  I never want to stand down and let the evil present in this world run me down.  I want to look out over a crowd of people and see individuals, each with their own life and personality and reason for breathing another day.  I want to stare down the problems the world throws at me and combat them with my dying breath.  This is what I mean by never growing up.  May the magic never leave your eyes.