On Growing Up

Or the lack thereof

With each passing month or better yet, with each passing year, I’m made aware of the distinct presence of stagnance, a pall of monotony that looms over the future. Growth has always been something of a linear progression to me but lately, it has come to resemble the erratic peaks and valleys of an ECG wave which is I suppose, ironic and poetic.

With 2025 drawing near and my 21st approaching, I feel a rather muted sense of obligation to finally adorn all the “growth” I’ve achieved over the past few months.

But only, I haven’t.

If anything, I think I’ve regressed to my sceptical, angsty high school self and perhaps it is that acceptance of identity that I should call growth. Although, it feels much more like a fall.

I suppose with school, life had a clean routine to it. A new year meant a new grade, a new grade meant graduating sooner, and all of it just felt like progression. With college, however, new academic years typically begin in the middle of the year, and it has warped my sense of time. With each new semester, I seem to be farther and farther suspended in a flimsy bubble that I must keep from bursting.

I used to say I was lost in school. And then I said I found myself when I started college. And invariably so, I think I’ve lost myself again. I want a proper growth quotient I can use and while age does seem to meet all the basic requirements, it doesn’t feel adequate to describe the trajectory I hope I am on. I was much more mature and slow to anger than I am now when I was eighteen. But I also didn’t see as much of the world or understand it then as much as I do now. Age and maturity while feasible, in way of quotients in their own way, still fall short.

Everything feels short, and all I feel is a quiet, deadly stagnance, a sheer lack of meaningful growth. I find the whole prospect of being stuck in this empty pit rather terrifying—a terror that stems from the fear of being trapped in a slowly decaying monotony where meaning dies away. I guess the only sensible way out is to accept that perhaps growth isn’t linear, even though it feels like it should just be.

It’s always been said that with age comes wisdom. And it is on this age-old phrase I have latched my hopes onto. Maybe twenty-one will grace me with some much-needed wisdom, which in turn, will herald growth that doesn’t feel two-faced. With the new year coming up, I think I should view growth as something of a quality rather than a stage of life and perhaps, there isn’t one quotient to measure it. And life, like an ECG, reflects vitality precisely because of its unpredictability anyway.

In a way, falling is growing up too, then. So, I suppose I’ve done a lot of growing up this year. With that said, here’s bidding farewell to 2024.

I have loved, and I have mourned,
In these farewells, I’ve learned to make way,
The bittersweet beauty of bonds burned.

Hope to heal and by time be scorned,
From New Year’s to Christmas Day,
I have loved, and I have mourned.

With every goodbye, my soul be darned,
Forms a jagged trail — I cannot to rest lay;
The bittersweet beauty of bonds burned.

The life we know — all so fleeting and flawed;
But “It is what it is,” the wise elders say,
I have loved, and I have mourned.

The jolly dance of stories and time adorned,
With every loss drowning space in decay,
The bittersweet beauty of bonds burned.

A celebration of life to grief morphed,
Breathlessly approaching is life in grey;
I have loved, and I have mourned,
The bittersweet beauty of bonds burned.

- farewell (orignal post)

Thank you for reading the contemplative elf!