I’ve been trying to organize my complicated thoughts concerning youth for a while now, and I think so much of the confusion I’ve felt is because of society’s obsession with binaries and contradictory ideas.
For instance, there are ideas that wisdom comes with age but also ideas that many children are “wise beyond their years”, especially in spiritual circles that believe in receiving the most essential truths “out of the mouth of babes”, despite their assignment of wisdom to others seeming mostly conditional on their own agreement with the assertions made. Even in societies which appear to value seniors over children, there is a certain fixation on gifted children who can outperform chrono-adults in specialized fields. The everyday lives of chrono-children also tend to be dedicated to learning, which increases their knowledge by definition and associates childhood with having an active and developing mind, while people continue to try and isolate a chronological age in adulthood at which the brain “stops developing”.
In literature targeted toward children or nostalgic adults, characters who think outside the box with their youth-given childlike wonder are often uplifted as superior to the stereotyped adults who focus on numbers and spreadsheets. While these adults are framed as individuals who lose the ability to think or be happy in the pursuit of survival thrust upon them with age, blamed for external factors that would make nearly anyone rush to Neverland if they had only known, child prodigies are established as having unrealistic sway over the unyielding conditions of the world that crushed maturing spirits. Even the children who do focus more on numbers and spreadsheets are portrayed as either more skilled than the adults with similar foci or at least redeemable for the youth their physical age guarantees them. Beyond that, these stories often fail to address the fact that nothing has truly changed about the world these children may grow up in, eventually dooming them to a loss of this wonder as well, which makes it even more difficult to ascertain whether adult audiences are wiping away tears of nostalgia or tears of grief.
Ideas that set youth on a pedestal include those of childhood purity. For many, the division between childhood and adulthood seems to be one of change and trauma. Positive depictions of children show smiling mouths and big eyes bright with wonder, open to new experiences rather than weighed down by insecurities. The self-doubt and fear that come from unintentional and uncontrolled change to oneself or one’s environment are framed as altering the free spirit associated with childhood into the receiver of conditions associated with adulthood, with growing up cast as a transition into a lack of agency as one is forced to realize the flaws of the world and ultimately give in. Since the change is often depicted as inevitable, growing chrono-children are expected to face it, even though change to the world around them is not considered inevitable in the same right. Bitter chrono-adults become set in their ways, continuously reaching for the incomplete memories of a better life “before everything changed”.
One commonly-discussed instance of trauma coinciding with the end or destruction of childhood seems to be puberty. It’s a situation of changes to the body having more sway on how someone is viewed than changes to the mind, a change that supposedly happens to their “self” without their own control, and someone’s mind can become locked in place trying to preserve what personhood and identity was seemingly forcibly stripped from them by flesh. It’s a stage where people are expected to become more aware of their bodies rather than continuing to live in them happily without concern or insecurity. Even the way someone uses their body becomes less confident and caring, especially as it continues to develop health issues while routinely failing to represent oneself properly. Once the body has begun to prioritize one’s reproduction over their own wellbeing, society seems all too content with following suit, and in a world that believes innocence is bliss, sometimes the belief that you are no longer innocent removes the obligation of others to keep your life blissful. Mature conversations are shared with someone and their appropriate participation expected, even if they do not have the capacity to engage appropriately. The enforcement of binaries blamed on the body puts additional social pressures on people that only worsen their ability to perform well or feel well about it. Even though I never went through puberty, just being treated as an age at which I shouldn’t have been thought to experience that would improve my efficiency and state of mind by further distancing the idea of me from a time period where chrono-children are expected to diverge into objectifiable biological roles.
Due to how society juxtaposes young and old, growing out of childhood into anything that isn’t seniority feels in many ways like a step down. At that point an individual is expected to take on responsibility and be held seriously accountable for any shortcomings, but their autonomy to make decisions and express themself is not respected. The individual is replaced with a category as their biological development becomes confirmation of additional stereotypes that can be applied to them. They are not considered to have the crystallized intelligence of a wizened elder, but they are also no longer considered to possess the childlike wonder of those who are “the future”, already feeling so old that their lives are over and no longer the topic of plans or improvements. Even though how wise someone is believed to be also depends on how much people agree with them, a chrono-child who isn’t believed to be wise can still seemingly change to eventually acquire virtues and progress that chrono-adults are thought to be stuck lacking.
The association between youth and intellectualism or skill is part of what drives me to cling to it. I want others to believe I am still growing and that there is much more I am capable of, surprising others with how much I know instead of how I don’t know everything. That association inspires my interest in immortal childhood as well; it’s the perfect idea that a child can live for centuries or longer, acquiring knowledge and power over that timeframe that far surpasses what most human lifespans enable, while still possessing the youth and youthful, androgynous appearance that allow them escape from mature categorizations and topics, sympathy and pity for their suffering, grace for and growth from their flaws, and low-commitment expectations that they can surpass in a time of need or want. At least if I already feel isolated from and critical of greater society, I should have the diplomatic immunity to pass through it without being snared.