Sixteen


So many view it as the magic age. Somehow, this is when everything is supposed to fall into place. We are meant to discover who we are, and what we want from life. Despite being only the halfway point in adolescence, sixteen is where the transition is meant to happen; the metamorphosis from child to adult. From sulky girl to sultry woman. From skittish boy to stoic man.

The world has made us expect some grand, life-shattering event to happen in this year. Sixteen is first love. Sixteen is beauty. Sixteen is discovery. Sixteen is downfall if all else fails. This is the year life figures itself out.

This ethereal portrayal, this mystic aura surrounding the age, bears heavy cultural and societal expectation. Before a teenager reaches his or her seventeenth birthday, there must be some revelation, some overnight change that somehow defines the rest of his or her life. Therefore, a sixteenth birthday is met with anticipation and fear. Then we wake up that morning. We are unchanged. We are the same person we were the day before. But the world isn’t the same world.

In the end, there is a realization connected to sixteen. It’s not sudden, it’s not magic. There is no sweeping romance. There is no life-altering decision. Try as we might, we do not live in idealized novels. The revelation that comes with sixteen is in knowing yourself. It comes slowly and uncertainly, but at some point fear must be let go. We must look at life for what it is and explore it. True, it may not happen at sixteen, but when the time comes, we must be ready to close our eyes and jump off the cliff of life. That’s what sixteen is.