The long road ahead

This article is much shorter than my average pieces. It is the product of digging into my mind for days and finally coming up with an article on growing up. This is a difficult topic for me to write about because I'm still maturing, still learning. I'm yet to fully grow up, to walk the long road ahead.

The road ahead for many of us teenagers is a long and arduous one. As soon as we step out of the shells hiding us for seventeen or eighteen years, we will realize there is a greater world for us to decipher. Some will become butterflies breaking out of their cocoons and embracing the warm, sweet sunshine. But for the majority of us, we’ll be like snails deprived of our safe shells, naked, unprotected from the winds and storms ahead.

Fred Dehner once quoted: ‘The best helping hand that you will ever receive is the one at the end of your own arm.’ Leaving home will be like opening our eyes once again, this time wider, freer. We will be responsible for our actions and mistakes. As we seek out looking for jobs, friends and money, we will come to terms valuing how simple life used to be. People you thought were your friends will mature and leave you hanging when you need them. When you reach out for a hand to grab on, you will apprehend that the only hands you will ever need are the ones at the end of your own arms. The materialistic things we once yearned for will be a distant dream without a job and money. Our reveries of seeping away from the stringent grasps of our parents will turn into veracity as we are forced miles apart to earn a living. There is no backbone to rely on when our own spine breaks.

Just like the world keeps on spinning, our lives keep on advancing. I remember watching a Chinese television series and the female lead was going through mountains of difficulties in her life. When she cried out on her father’s shoulder, he said to her: ‘The world will always be round, it’ll never be square.’ What he means by this statement is to have faith in our hearts because in the end everything will be okay. The world will still be round, it won’t be square. This advice can be applied to our own developing years when we take the leap into adulthood. It will be equally a frightful voyage as it is a yearned for escapade. When we can stand on our own two feet and face up to difficulties, we will have reached the destination.