Adolescence

Do we change as we grow? Are you the same person you were as an adolescent, or are you very different? I think that all of us would say that our adult selves bear little resemblance to who we were in junior high. That is the nature of personal growth, maturity, and the accumulation of wisdom. But if we dig a little deeper, I believe that we will find the core of our personality is highly developed by the time we are old enough to drive.

The most marked aspects of my personality were well established at an early age. If you asked my closest friends to describe me, I think that they would say I am hard-working and smart, with high standards and expectations. They would say that I don’t suffer fools gladly, and yet, I know how to have fun and see humor in just about every aspect of life. I am also a bit of a cowboy and an entrepreneur who doesn’t care to know what the rules are.

Most of these traits were present, if not fully developed, when I was in middle school. I started working to make my own money at age twelve and was always at the top of the class academically. Maybe these were inherited attributes, or maybe they were the result of the gift of high expectations and the examples set by my parents and grandparents.  

I rebelled but generally got away with my bad behavior by being the “good kid”. That meant that I could push boundaries further than my friends, who seemed to suffer much greater consequences for the same “youthful indiscretions”. That was one of the lessons I took away from adolescence: work hard, perform well, be polite, and they will let you get away with anything. The more I think about it, the less I think I have changed over the years.

Sure, I have accumulated experiences, knowledge, and possessions. I have long since overcome the standard insecurities of youth. There are great advantages to aging, and no one dreams of going back to middle school. I hope that I am a better and more fully complete person than I was as an early teen. There was no defined purpose to my life during that time of exploration and experimentation, but the outline was being drawn.

I am a product of my raising, and the cornerstone of that foundation was laid a long, long time ago.