an exert from a high school graduation speech, supposedly given by author, Tom Robbins:
"...When I hear the word maturity spoken with such solemn awe, I don't know whether to laugh or to get sick. There circulates a common myth that once one becomes an adult, one suddenly and magically gets it altogether and if I may use the vernacular, discovers where it's at.
ha ha. The sad funny truth is adults are nothing but tall children who have forgotten how to play.
When people tell you to "grow up" they mean approximately the same thing as when they say "shut up." By "shut up" they mean stop talking. By "grow up" they mean stop growing.
Because as long as you keep growing, you keep changing- and a person who is changing is unpredictable, impossible to pigeon hole, and difficult to control. The growing person is not an easy target for those guys in slick suits who want you to turn over your soul over to Christ, your heart to America, your butt to Seattle first National Bank and your armpits to extra crispy Right Guard.
No, the growing person is not an ideal consumer, which means in more realistic terms, he or she is not an easy slave. Worse yet, if he or she continues to grow, grows far enough or long enough, he or she may get too close to the universal mysteries, the nature of which the Navy and the Dutch reform Church do not encourage us to ponder.
The growing person is an uncomfortable reminder of the greater human potential that each of us might realize if we had the guts.
So society wants you to grow up. To reach a safe, predictable plateau and root there. To muzzle your throb, to lower the volume on the singing in your blood. Capers all cut, sky finally larked, surprises known, SETTLE DOWN- settle, like the sand in the bottom of an hour glass, like a coffin six months into the ground. ACT YOUR AGE, which means act their age, and that has from the moment they stopped growing, always been old.
Growing up is a trap...."
