#Coming of Age

An adult is one who has crossed society’s official border, gaining rights in exchange for a lifetime supply of bills. Coming of age means earning the licence to decide, only to discover you’re shackled by rules. You can legally buy beer, but there’s no instruction manual for life. You shout your opinions at polling booths, only to be lectured by tax offices and chased by responsibilities. Maturity is a ceremony in which a lost soul frantically dances to meet everyone else’s expectations.

Initiation is the ceremonial gateway to a new world, adorned with lofty rhetoric yet functioning as a prelude to control and compliance. Under the guise of granting social credentials, individuals are coerced into archaic rites that ensure allegiance to the host. Heralded as a path to personal growth, it quietly evolves into a ritual of conformity. Promoted as a spiritual awakening, its essence dissolves into the authority of the moment, swallowing the individual in collective submission.

Puberty is the ritual wherein innocent children knock on adulthood's door just as a mutiny of confused hormones erupts. Facing a stranger in the mirror, they perform a symphony of self-loathing in harmony with voice cracks. Parental advice goes in one ear and out the other, while a single careless remark from peers sends their emotions into chaotic overdrive. Those who ultimately survive are granted, ironically, a certificate called 'maturity'.

A rite of passage is a collective panic play draped in elaborate attire and empty words. It is the social repainting of a once-innocent heart to fit adult specifications. Amid the clash of formality and duty, participants desperately stare at the boundary between growth and sacrifice. Invoke "tradition" as an excuse, and any ordeal magically becomes sacred. In the end, boasting about the ordeal to peers is apparently the true delight of human relations.