Destructive Distillation

My stigma with age continues and I, the ‘troubled non-teen’ return (last time time around I wrote this).

I will be 22 in a few months time now. I have finished my graduation and am at an important crossroads of my life with impending career decisions to make. The future is as clear as the proverbial London sky and I am worried. I set out to solve the various issues and a strong undercurrent makes it presence felt. I try and channelize the innumerable questions that are circulating in my head and what I have captured below seems no more than a trailer.

What is being an adult?

I am growing older by the numbers and responsibilities and duties in life arise every day. But I don’t feel any older. I don’t feel 21 or 22. I feel the same in spirit as I was when I just started out engineering at 18. So what exactly is being an adult is what I am waiting to find out. Is there always a change? An expected variation in behaviour, choices made, outlook to life. From the gloomy picture they paint of adulthood I have a bleak paranoid image of a more restrained, careful, moderate and dispassionate lifestyle. But I am having more fun and adventure than ever before with lesser supervision and more wisdom. So why exactly is this troublesome? Am I feeling this or is there really a demon lurking in the background with a wicked smile and glint in the ruby red eye that says you will know soon?

What is being old?

Why is it that people first size you up according to your age and only then by your talents and experience? Is it because of the masses? The majority of the population ages and metamorphosise in more or less the same manner at different agestones on the road of life and so they say. But aren’t are all our paths distinct and aren’t we diverse with different responses to similar stimuli, different skills and varied experiences? Even though the numbers say ‘old wine tastes better’, haven’t we witnessed enough examples of the younger surpassing the older in whatever criterion there is to measure success.

The learned have piles of experience accumulated and the vast amount of knowledge inherited often has a flaw of carrying forward existing shortcomings and woes. The novice has an advantage of a blank slate encouraging newer construction and novel perspectives. But the novice can go wrong for lacking the wisdom of the learned. Maybe there is no hard and fast rule as to who is better. So why can’t we abandon the practices of eras bygone and adopt meritocracy and social equality where young and old are equally respected and valued based on their skill over their wrinkles?