Quote

[nuranar]

"Haven't you ever been disappointed yourself? Wanting to go to a party, and not being allowed to at the last minute, and all that?"

"Oh, yes," agreed Philip. "Not parties, but other things. But I didn't know grown-up people could be disappointed about anything. I thought they could do anything they liked."

Hitherto Philip, simple soul, had regarded disappointment and hope deferred as part of the necessary hardships of youth, bound to melt away in due course, in company with toothache, measles, tears, treats, early bedtimes, and compulsory education, beneath the splendid summer sun of incipient manhood. Most of us cherish the same illusion; and the day upon which we first realise that quarrels and reconciliations, wild romps and reactionary dumps, big generous impulses and little acts of petty selfishness, secret ambitions and passionate longings, are not mere characteristics of childhood, to be abandoned at some still distant milestone, but will go on with us right through life, is the day upon which we become grown up.


From A Knight on Wheels, by Ian Hay (1914), via Project Gutenberg
(The "children" in question are not so small - Philip is fourteen, and the other is probably much the same.)

I just started reading this book and I have no idea how much I'll like the whole thing, but so far I've rather enjoyed it. There's a lot of humor so far. But this little tidbit stood out to me for a different reason. For all that being grown-up is not so fun at times, it's really true that "quarrels and reconciliations, wild romps and reactionary dumps, big generous impulses and little acts of petty selfishness, secret ambitions and passionate longings" aren't childish. They're human!

And that is an encouraging thought.

;)