[CobaltBlueNote]

Yeah, me too. It gives people an excuse to be pretentious. One of the many reasons I love C.S. Lewis is that he really understood this stuff:



"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

Yes, that's a great quote, I've seen it before. I wonder what his personality type was...

[Tunesimah]

I think curiosity will always be interpreted as childlike. Children are the ones who are supposed to ask questions, adults provide the answers. When an adult is always asking questions it can look insecure I think.

But really it's a good thing. Since you will never get locked down in beliefs and remain flexible in the mind.

I think a tendency not to buckle down and follow societal conventions also gets viewed as childish... Kids can have ideals adults are supposed to buckle down and get things done...by any means nessicary.

[Blickwinkel]

It does make sense. For me it's a contradiction because I lived a lot, experienced a lot in life yet inexperienced with dealing with the 'real' world or just the outside world.

That's exactly it. This is probably because of our tendency to get lost in our own thoughts. We internalize our experiences, or at least I do, to the point of not really knowing how to apply that experience in our every day lives.

Let me be more specific. I went through a really rough period in my life during high school. I had a lot of family pass away and my faith was stretched and tested through this period, as well as losing a lot of 'friends'. I became exhausted with my life because of this experience, but I also matured greatly because of this experience. I've come to terms with what happened, and am just now learning to live with the consequences of things like death and family growing apart and finding out who your friends really are. However, I still struggle with things that most people have already experienced by my age, like getting that first internship or being in that first real relationship. I can even struggle with simple things like letting others get to know me, as I'm really not sure what is appropriate to share at times and what isn't. I tend to say exactly what is on my mind if people ask, or nothing at all.

It makes me wonder, perhaps personas really are a necessity. If so, how do you use one without being fake?

[Bremy]

My mother.