WHAT IT MEANS TO GROW UP
Illustration★★★★Childhood with its carefree attitudes is so attractive that doubtless we all at times have wished we could be children again. Certainly we understand the sentiment in the familiar line, “Make me a child again, just for tonight!” One cannot seriously study the problem of being real persons, however, without encountering the fact that our neurological and psychiatric institutions, to say nothing of more familiar places, are filled with people who have offered that prayer too consistently and have had it altogether too well answered.
They never have grown up. Their basic emotional reactions are infantile; they are still in the stage of childhood’s tantrums or adolescent aimlessness; they do not know what mature personality means. One of the most tragic failures of per- sonal life is the refusal to grow up. Harry Emerson Fosdick 669 “I AM JUST A YOUNG MAN” Scores say this: “I am just a young man.”
In other words, what thousands of men today would like to be! A potentiality with his face to the East! A lifetime stretching ahead! The Book of Life with clean pages to be written on as he may elect!
“Just a young man” in a time like this: in a land like this: in a world like this! Then he deprecates himself!
In a land of opportunity where every chance beckons and every road invites! A road straight and clear, and the high peaks of achievement beyond—and oh! so few on them! To carve out of Life what one wills! How many men there are who would gladly give all they possess to have that chance once more!
Edward W. Bok 315
The point
Reflection on how refusing to mature is a tragic personal failure; includes Edward Bok's perspective on youth as an opportunity to achieve greatness.