Growth Spurts

I believe in growth spurts.

You see, growth is not a gradual, boring, process. It's not like watching the sun rise on the horizon at a steady rate. It's more like the twitching your eye does when it's stressed. Before you can even anticipate it, there's this sudden spasm you're kind of scared to feel, yet it comes anyway.

Now that was a nice analogy, don't you think? We live our lives anticipating the big events like graduation, first day at work, moving houses, etcetera but somewhere in our heads we think "Hey not yet, don't come yet", because we know that sudden twitch, that sudden new, electric feeling, will give us a uneasiness. It will break the monotony of the present which can kind of hurt, that is, because we're so used to security.

But at some point in our lives growth spurts need to happen, because there's no way to go but forward, except if you're Benjamin Button or some martian with an alternate sense of metabolism. Growth spurts, I think, are a lot more exciting because they are so fast, they deliver a message: there is no backing out. You have no choice, yes you, human being who is not Benjamin Button, but to mature.

Being in Japan for exactly three months today made me realize how to live like an adult. And if you're sort of interested to know how much adventures and misadventures it took me to realize this, then, read on.

So it's not new knowledge that I had been the culprit of a plastic melting incident in the oven of our floor kitchen in the dormitory (which thankfully turned out more hilarious than dangerous). And that's only for starters. My hair dryer exploded too (hello, I am not an electronics major, what would I know about voltages?). It was funny alright, but it could have turned the other way around might I have been a little less careful.

Rule number one in being an adult is taking responsibility, since there's no one else to blame but yourself for any deliberate or accidental mischiefs. Responsibility too in many other things-- important travel documents, bills to pay, bank accounts, making sure that the heater and lights are turned off before leaving the room, eating dinner at an appropriate time, and so on. It took me one and a half months to figure out an alarm plan that works. Now, I have three alarm clocks ringing in the morning at varying tones, volumes and distances from my bed, and apparently it works!

Growing up is about making plans of getting rid of old habits and forming new ones. It's about memorizing pin codes and scholarship signing deadlines, making grocery lists and sticking to them, getting your butt off the chair to go do the laundry, making decisions you have thought two, three times about.

It's kinda hard but awesome if you ask me!