Growth by Macey

Growth by Macey - April 2016 Scholarship Essay

The words young and old will never have set definitions. Both are so flexible—to people my parents’ age I am so entirely young, my entire life stretching ahead of me like an open road, ready to travel and learn from my mistakes. Just the same, however, to those just starting at my school—the very people to which the advice I’m giving is addressed—I am almost completely and certifiably a functional and well-adjusted adult. Thirteen years of raising my hand and being taught (as well as a variety of subjects) to function socially and responsibly have earned me this title, and as both an eighteen year old and a high school graduate, in a month I will be so lucky to finally be free from control and under my own rule.

I, for one, have always been terrified of adulthood. There is always more to be learned, more responsibility to be assumed and more decisions to be made, and I have never been a decisive person. It seems that no matter how old we are, despite how much we’ve accomplished, we are waiting. For something unnamed and not defined—for a sense of absolution, to know that we have reached the point in our growth that we’ve been waiting for and that we can relax, having crossed our proverbial finish line, and say “I’m here.” Grade school children ready to go to middle school, middle schoolers eager to traverse high school, those who think that once they walk across the stage at graduation they will have undergone some miraculous change and reached that point at last. “20 somethings” ready to settle down into their homes, careers, or both; countless middle-aged people ready to retire. Does anyone reach this point of absolution? We wait and wait to grow, living the same life.

If I could give one piece of advice to those students younger than me it would be this: grow. Do not grow passively; do not sit and wait to grow as if you are a plant that needs to be tended by someone else. When you see an opportunity to learn, take it. Take the class that you’re not sure about, learn about cultures and customs and ideas that are not like your own. Sign your name on the sheet for the poetry slam or talent show; life is about living, not wondering what other people think of you, and when you are done you will have grown. When you see the chance to be kind or to understand someone not like yourself, even if they aren’t so kind, take it. Speak kindly to those you don’t know much about and listen to them; all the time you will grow, your branches extending and your roots deepening. And if you never reach that point of absolution, that closure, don’t worry. That’s the best thing about growing; you never have to stop.