What does it mean

I wonder what it really means to grow up? 

Everyone and everything gets older.  It’s one of those inescapable facts of existence.  And as age settles down upon us, we change.  That is also an unavoidable truth.

It is how we change that fascinates me.

Experience should make me wiser, but that is not a given.  How I translate the information I absorb into action defines me as a human being.  Sometimes I choose to ignore what I know and sometimes what I know just doesn’t register.  How that can be, I don’t understand. 

Knowing is a strange ability.  It strikes everyone differently!

Once I only wanted to know what it took to please the people around me.  Now I would prefer to know what it is that offers me the best quality life possible and even that changes depending on how I look at it.  I want a balance of health and happiness.

For me that means finding a way to do the necessary things like eating healthy, exercising and paying the bills as well as playing.  Playing is important to me!  Without it I become moody and repressed and that is not healthy.  I think knowing that is growing up!

Learning to cherish all the parts of me has taken a long time.  In fact, it is always a work in progress.   I suspect growing up shifts its balance over the years, but the luckiest among us finally grow so large we dissipate into all being.