/int/ - International

I'm shocked every time someone mentions my age. I could have sworn I was 21 not too long ago. Instead, I am 30. I still feel like I am a child. People usually are well on their way towards raising their children at my age, it seems alien to me. I don't feel my age, but then again, probably nobody actually feels their age no matter how old they are, unless they are very old and have health issues. I don't know what it means to be an adult. Maybe having responsibilities and be forced to do stuff you wouldn't normally have done? Maybe that's the case, not that I would know or even care about what it actually means. I never expected to reach this age and now I have to make dealings.

>>6489 I don't feel grown up at all until I meat 20-something year olds. Maybe I have grown up a little. Or, I'm just the same I always was and the people who are 10 years younger are just incredibly retarded. I'm probably the first person in history who thought that there's something wrong with the young people of today.

>>6490 That’s an interesting thought: can you become a man without being a father? >>6491 Your last sentence is meant sarcastically, I guess?

>>6494 Certain tribes in the Amazon jungle have rites of passages where they stick their hands inside a glove filled with fire ants, and after doing so, they are considered to be men. I haven't done the same thing, nor have I jumped over 3 cows when I was 18, according to these tribesmen, I am still not a man. What I'm saying is that it probably depends on the culture you were raised in to define what it actually means. Some people consider sex to be something that turns a kid into a man, some people consider puberty to be what makes the difference, and so on it goes. Personally, I think that being a man involves accepting the fact that you are not special in any way and accept it over the course of many years. That and having duties to which you answer to. But that's just my opinion.

>>6494 Of course. We have such quotes from over 2000 years ago. >Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders, and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants not servants of their household. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers. And you can find a pretty dense list of the same complaints throughout the centuries.

>>6496 It’s probably true what they and everyone says, but the crux is that those people who cry about it are no better. It’s just easy for people to dismiss their own faults in favor of seeing the faults of others, like Jesus already said: „Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?“ (Matthew 7:3)

>>6495 But maybe that’s the core problem: that our modern world lacks such a meaningful rite of passage. That we never really become men and adults, because we never crossed that border, never learnt how to.

On his 55th birthday my dad said he still feels like a boy. I guess you never actually start to feel like an adult.

>>6499 In most European countries, it's simply by turning 18. I didn't celebrate it particularly, but I know some people do. Maybe if we had some ritual, Bernd would simply not participate either.

I have come to the conclusion that all humans are children. Even old men say stupid and immature things that even I know is immature. They just look older that's all.

>>6499 It's not actually that important if you are to think hard about it. Just because we don't have similar rites of passages, that doesn't mean that there are no actual manly men in the world despite it. It's essentially just emphasizing the fact that you're doing something you don't want to do, and that in itself doesn't have to involve anything similar to that. Personally, I think that a life where you answer to someone or something higher than yourself for a long time, that would be what I consider to do something an adult and and what someone mature does. But there are millions of different situations where specific people do that, and have lived under similar conditions, and still can't really be considered to be actual adults. There's people that have endured hardships few people in this world have, and despite that they're still not what most people would refer to being someone mature or adult in any way. If denying yourself pleasure and suffering is what makes someone mature, then people who are terminally ill were to be examples of how to live lives. And some people do actually think that way, but not everyone. It's complicated.

>>6505 >rites of passages I think that the correct spelling would have been ''rites of passage'' without the passage part being plural.

>>6497 kek