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| Your 21st Birthday is a True Milestone |
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We consider a birthday as our own personal Christmas Day when we were children. However, we no longer look forward to our birthday when we reach a certain age. We do not want to be reminded that we are only getting closer to death as we get older. This change usually starts somewhere in a person’s twenties. There are only three birthdays that really matter for teenagers and young adults. The 16th birthday marks the beginning of a young person’s conditional independence. The lucky ones get cars for their 16th birthdays while the not so fortunate ones have to wait. The car basically makes or breaks the 16th birthday. On the other hand, the 18th birthday signals the beginning of a person’s real independence. A person can now vote, sign a contract, move out of his or her parents’ house and pretend to be an adult. The 21st birthday is probably the most celebrated birthday. A person that has reached this age is now considered an adult. A person at this age can do practically everything real adults can do.
A person can go out, drink alcohol, and come home when the sun comes up when that person reaches his or her 21st birthday. To put it simply, the 21st birthday means that a person is no longer a child.
In previous generations, many people had serious jobs and grown-up lives when they reached 18. Today’s children are often coddled all the way through college. These children will eventually meet the newly recognized quarter life crisis when they realize it's time to grow up.
People in our parents’ generation may have already been to war and back, bought a home, married, and had a few children by the time they reached their 21st birthday. People in the present generation get their first real professional job when they are more than 25 years old.
However, I have noticed that many people spend their 21st birthday getting drunk when it is supposed to mark the beginning of adulthood. Maybe young people nowadays have less and less opportunities to act with such irresponsibility. This may also be because our culture is becoming more immature.
I see this resentment toward responsibility as a sign of immaturity. Well, maybe I’m just biased when it comes to the traditional 21st birthday. I do think that it is a celebration but I also think that it has more to do with the birthday celebrant rather than the birthday itself.
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