At a youth ministry seminar a few years ago, a sociologist told us that adolescence in Western culture now stretches from age 10 to 28. In other words, twenty-somethings can be excused for acting like teenagers at an age where 50 years ago they would have been expected to have 3 or 4 kids and a steady job to pay for the new house.
A reporter for the London Telegraph, noticing this trend himself, started comparing his life to his grandfather’s life. Here’s the conclusion he came to:
I suspect that my grandfather’s life was real in a sense that my father’s life hasn’t quite been, and my life is not at all. The crucial difference is my grandfather’s lack of self-consciousness, and that self-consciousness is a hallmark of the perpetual, infantilised adolescents we have all become, monsters of introspection hovering twitchily on the edge of self-obsession, occasionally aware that the life that exists only to be examined is barely manageable; barely, indeed, a life.
He also came up with a list of ways people need to just grow up. Here are the first three:
- Don’t be affronted.
- Mistrust anything catchy.
- Ignore celebrities.
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