Had Nothing To Do So…Here

Had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day…we meandered a heck of a lot in between but the basic topic was: "when do you REALLY grow up?" A seemingly innocous question but isn’t it always the simple ones that are the hardest to solve?-_-" I suppose a general way of viewing it would be that a person grows up when they have their own steady job, have moved out of the house, can stand on their own feet, yadda yadda…don’t know why but this story popped into my mind…god…aren’t I always spouting allegorical nonsense?*sheepish smile*nonetheless it goes something like this…an orthodox Jewish girl becomes pregnant out of wedlock…in desperation she seeks counsel from her doctor who sympathetically gives her this piece of advice : "Do you want to know my definition of an adult? It’s someone who wakes up one morning & says to himself, "I no longer care what my parents think.’ To me, that’s the real psychological bar mitzvah."

To those of you who might be wondering what a bar mitzvah is…it’s a rite of passage that Jewish adolescents have to go through when they’re ’bout 12…traditionally it was meant for only male children who would have to symbolically prove their manhood by reading the Torah or Jewish holy book in front of the whole congregation but I digress…having said that I don’t expect people to immediately walk up to their parents & give them the equivalent of flipping them the bird…that would be stupid not to mention suicidal*wince* personally I think that it’s more a state of mind…who among us can honestly say that we couldn’t care less whether or not we receive unflinching support and approval from our parents?could you honestly say that it really doesn’t matter to you whether or not your parents are proud of you?usually the deep-down gnarled twists in our psyches generally yearn for such recognition whether we choose to admit it or not*wry grin*perhaps it’s more like one day you wake up and realise that while you might WANT your parents’ approval…it’s not precisely something you NEED…does that make sense?of course this is always subject to circumstances but I kinda think that on that fateful day…the thought that "I want to do what makes ME happy" might be the first along that line of thought however selfish it may seem*crooked grin*