I hate the expression “grown-up.” There’s just something about it that is so depressingly final. I don’t mean to say that I want to live a completely infantalized life*, I am merely trying to suggest that the idea of being a “grown up” is a lazy slump…in fact it is more than that, I would suggest it is a totally flawed concept altogether.
(Please note: I lied there…I would love to be a child forever, unfortunately it just isn’t biologically possible – as soon as such a procedure is available I will set up a Kickstarter campaign, and I expect your full support.)
So you are a grown up then…you grew all the way up – where is up though? What do you grow up to? Are you a fucking magical beanstalk? Have you grown all the way up to the clouds, and stopped there because you spotted the giant golden eggs? I don’t get it!
Oooooh, but no, you’ve grown up – and that’s enough up you say, yes, – yes that’s enough up for one life you think to yourself…I can’t go up anymore, no please no more up, I have things to do – there is a giant here after all, and a castle on the clouds…it’s a lot to maintain – the dusting itself takes forever.
Oh shit, and look! A child has now burst into the mix! It scampered up your beanstalk body, and is now rifling through your possessions – looking for its cut of your golden eggs. Soon it will fall…all the way down…bye, bye…THUD. But it will grow, yes it will grow it’s own beanstalk. It will grow up – up – UP!
Then stop. It’s grown up after all – all the way up…no telling what is beyond the clouds…but…no, no – it was told it needed to grow up, and it has now grown up to a satisfactory height. It should stop there, it has things to do after all.
But why do we have this very final expression? It suggests that once we reach this rank we are all done; with nothing more to learn, no other ways in which we can blossom. And surely this isn’t true? Well of course it isn’t…you don’t stop growing, just because you stop growing physically…your mind wanders on, hungry – fucking starving in fact; for knowledge, for understanding, and for enlightenment of some kind.
Instead, some people take it another way -and they choose to attribute the expression grown up, with children – as if it is a totally separate entity: we have the grown ups in one corner, and the children…the unfinished products, in the other. Sometimes a false peacemaker will come between the two – and suggest that the grown up, “says hello to their inner child”…gimme a fucking break…you are not playing the shitty parent role here, and this is not your unwanted child that you visit on the weekends you aren’t in prison – or say you will visit, and never show up…THIS IS YOU! There’s no tag given, no baton passed – and if there is, it is forced by sociological pressures in the form of expressions like “grown up”.
We should grow up…but there shouldn’t be an end point in this life – the end point should only come in death. Then everyone can look at the huge, beautifully illustrious beanstalk, that stretched out high above the clouds and up to the stars, and stammer…”wow…I sure hope my life reaches those heights someday, I am going to keep on growing. Let’s see what’s beyond these clouds.”
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John Lee Taggart 
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