Adolescence
Not much is known on adolescence. The most important of feelings and experiences from adolescence are quickly forgotten as we mature and leave it behind, but even right in the midst of it, adolescence for the most part remains a mystery. Adolescence is such an important part of life and growing up, and at the same time it is just taken for granted. Adolescence is always there. No matter how old someone is, adolescence will haunt them for eternity.
Adolescence is a period of change, beginning between 9 and 12 and ending between 16 and 17, and is often defined in scientific words. For example, adolescence is the period of life during which the human body undergoes many rapid changes, mentally, physically and chemically, in a manner that will bring about the maturation of the person and prepare them for sexual reproduction and the ability to propagate the human race. For dogs, this period is between one to two years; in flies, this takes only one to two days. Unfortunately, in Homo sapiens this same process takes anywhere from a low extreme of four years to a high extreme of nine.
Adolescence is a puzzle for some. For parents who have the honor and pleasure of having an adolescent, this supposedly maturing organism is not only smelling weird and acting quite rebellious, but they act in a way that the parents are confused about. They want their parents to provide the necessities of life, but decline any offer to lessen the parents’ own burden around, or outside of, the home. Adolescents want privileges but don’t want the responsibilities that come with them. After all, if the parents got by just fine before we became adolescents, then why do they need our help now? We would like to become independent and branch away from the “insufferableness” of our meddling parents, even though we are, at the same time, still very dependant. We try to sever any embarrassing connections with our parental units with defiant actions when what we really want is to feel like they love us. That need to be loved frightens us; the fact that we need their love makes us feel pitiful and vulnerable.
Parents remember what they themselves were like in their adolescence, but scarring memories such as those are best left in the back of the mind to fester, and if they turn into a problem...well that’s what people who go to college to get a degree in psychology are born for. In the mean time, the parents would rather have their child act in a suitable, calm, rational behavior, and that thought in the back of their mind that keeps whispering, “Keep dreaming...” is just increasing their suspicions. Adolescence is talked about among the “girls” on the girl’s night out that mothers have with their best friends once in a blue moon, and is told in great, gruesome detail from the mothers’ points of view. It is a “difficult” time, full of hardships and disobedient teenagers who are so full if themselves that they think that they know everything. Adolescence, for apprehensive mothers watching their children as they near that age, is the big test of whether they are mother material or not, and the last hurdle before times become easier and the offspring, armed with wings of hope, fly out of the nest and into the smog-filled sky.
Adolescence is a nightmare. A typical adolescence is in high school for the majority of this period of their life. Not only is high school traumatizing in its own special way, but to have to go through this department of hell with your hormones raging, mind not in the right place and your heart open to any sudden manifestations of love look-alikes while still trying to get homework done, study for tests and not fail all of classes is pure torture, not to mention particularly stressful. On top of all of that chaos, some adolescents have jobs, take care of their taxes, and many have to take the responsibilities of their family, such as younger siblings and chores. Small wonder it is greeted by mothers with dread and the adolescents themselves by stifled screams. After all, who wants to look like we did when we first started adolescence? Talk about a real nightmare.
Adolescence is the state of psychological and physical being from the beginning of puberty until maturation is reached. This period varies, because each person will reach maturity at a different time; no two people are identical and that includes their growth and development. Because of these slight differences, many adolescents feel even more awkward, trying desperately to fit in.
Adolescence is an experiment that fails numerous times as we conduct it, mainly because we have no clue that we are conducting it in the first place. During adolescence, we learn through trial and error. Sure it would make more sense to just listen to the retelling of adolescent horror stories of our parents and heed their words, but adolescents are prone to doing whatever the heck they want to do, whether they should do it or not. Therefore, adolescents, in their self-absorbed lives, learn life the hard way: by actually making their own mistakes. Whether they learn from them or not is based on their level of maturation; as they near adulthood, they will learn more and more from their mistakes, becoming wiser, more aware and more responsible. It is at the point in which a person is able to fully function and support themselves, have reached physical maturation and act rationally with respect to others that the horrid period known as adolescence as well as many other colorful names draws slowly to an end.
Others define adolescence differently. John Ciardi defines adolescence as “enough suffering for anyone.” To Carol Burnett, “adolescence is just one big walking pimple.” Louis J. Kaplan said, “Adolescence represents an inner emotional upheaval, a struggle between the eternal human wish to cling to the past and the equally powerful wish to get on with the future.” Tori Amos went as far as calling adolescence “the cruelest place on Earth. It can really be heartless.” Any way you put it, adolescence is not the best time in the world, and as these people put it, adolescence is a hardship, full of problems, whether those problems include pimples, mixed emotions and social problems.
You must know a great deal about adolescence to know just how little is actually known about it. Adolescence is a time of rapid change, psychologically and physically, slow maturation and trial and error.
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