Page 26 - SANIDHYA M_2023

The Teen Experience- A Roller Coaster Ride!

he teen experience also known as together leaving the individual confused and prone
T‘the phase of life in which 14 year to mood swings. In short this is the turbulent phase.
old children pretend to know about This phase as all others also ends and gives way your
everything’ begins around the time a late teens. One finally comes to terms with reality.
person hits adolescence. Fresh out of These individuals who were once referred to as kids
childhood, teen-age is an exciting are now given the status of men or women. A sense
experience. It means discovering of self-acceptance settles in and the person forgives
aspects of yourself you didn’t even themselves for all the crimes they didn’t commit.
know existed in the first place. All The spring of youth as it is called by
the time and exhilarating high a person many starts to fully manifest in a person. The nihilistic
experiences in the start of their teens is a urges stop and a person fully matures and the
feeling that can’t be explained in words. individual finally understands how they integrate into
But this doesn’t last very long. The mid- society and looks back at their mid-teens, scoffing as
teens soon arrive. it was the time they were ‘just children’. The sense of
This is the 14 to 16 year old self-pity and arrogance fades (mostly) and the person
range where anaesthesia settles in an becomes a fully functional human being capable to
individual. Things you liked before fend for him.
l i k e a sport may not appeal to you in the Realizing that his life is actually in
same manner as they did back then, back when you his control and he can impact others’ as well may be
were still ‘just a child’. New interests develop and your new to the individual in the start of this spring but
tastes change but most importantly a mental change he accepts it as a way of life. All coping mechanisms
takes place. The psychosocial abilities in a person dissolve (hopefully) and self-esteem sky rockets. So
begin to develop and along that come a feeling of where exactly did we all change? Where was the point
existential dread. that we stopped being kids and became teenagers,
This particular change is hard to deal where exactly did we transform into fully functional
with first but the individual gets used to it in a while or adults? We do not know the answer to these questions
so. This may be viewed as negative behaviour by some and will probably never know. The irony of the cycle
but it is a very important stage of life. The discovery of guilt in our teens is laughable. To do a foolish task
that right vs wrong and good vs evil doesn’t exist, that which would be regrettable in the future and have full
there are no black and whites in the world as we used knowledge of that and still doing it is quite comedic.
to foolishly believe in our childhoods. Pessimistic Well I suppose we all have been comedians then eh? The
nihilism seems to fascinate a lot of teenagers around ripe age of 19 hits and the abrupt realization of leaving
this age as everything we used to believe in as a child, your teens and actually participating in the economy
all our morals, all our ideals have been pretty much makes the individual afraid initially but ultimately
destroyed at this point. So, the idea of starting anew ends towards him seeking new opportunities and
from a foundation built by the environment a person being overall hopeful to see the dawn of the next
is in is loathed by 16-year-olds. day a feeling very unlike to his mid-teens. Alas the
A lot teenagers around this age start individual has fully matured and the teen experience
doing various different kinds of acts which are and the cruel indifference of the universe passes on to
labelled as ‘faulty’ or ‘unpolished’ by society when in the next generation only to ultimately be defeated by
fact the poor children are just discovering how they the indomitable human spirit.
themselves integrate as an individual in the world
they live in. The constant need for validation whether Master Sameer Thomas
it may be academic (it mostly is) or any other form Class- XII-E
and on the opposite end of the spectrum the sense S/O Dr. Simon Thomas
of indifference towards approval or disapproval clash
26 CRPF Public School, Rohini