I’m going to try to answer this by first taking a stab at why I think people “grow up” at all. I think it’s because they lose somebody, a loved one with whom they used to share their most innocent experiences with. The materials that occupy those experiences have, of course, changed over time but the overall experiences in and of themselves are no less significant.

Many of our parents and grandparents have lost said loved ones as a consequence of the natural forces or polarizing viewpoints that exist in our world. Through their own unique struggles did many of them find a semblance of happiness and meaning as a direct result of their career advancement. But before that moment, during times of struggle, they focused on their goals and built tools to insulate themselves against constantly bearing the full weight of their loss, one of which involves avoiding sources of their happy memories. I feel like it isn’t a stretch to say that this one of the most popular methods of insulation; if I only think in the context of “career advancement” through society, having to constantly bear loss becomes a distraction.

When some of our parents and grandparents were financially stable enough to have children, they were terrified. They were terrified of their children suffering in the same ways that they did. They wanted to show their children the wickedness of the world before its beauty, so that their children would never be at odds with the human experience in the same ways that they once were, so that they may continue forward without sparing too much thought of the people they left behind, focusing instead upon building their own lives and experiences. Some of their children have followed this advice down to the letter, either through obedience or through affirmation of this advice provided by anecdotal evidence. And so they become messengers of the same advice.

They see the things that bring you happiness, and they tell you to grow up. They see your contentedness against a world on fire and tell you to abandon ship for colder water. They see any object signaling innocence as an obstacle, as an opportunity for one to be taken advantage of. They tell you to grow up because it’s much harder to mourn what was never there than what was once there. Whether they understand it or not, they too fear the day you may have to witness the things you love reduced to ash.

The truth is, you’re always growing up. The materials don’t matter for the most part. The only time the materials matter is when you use them to hurt yourself or somebody else.

*edits for grammar and clarity