"You didn't grow up, you grew old."

"How can you hear silence?"
"You have to train yourself. You have to just shut everything else out of your mind and focus."
"Why would you want me to listen to nothing?"
"Because that's where everything important is."
Growing up is weird. It is more than growing old, it is becoming wiser, maturing in your way of thinking. It is gradually changing who you are as a person. I know Avicii's "Wake me up" is a bit old to be used as an example, but it is the best I can think of here. For the reason is simple: it is yet another example of Mobius pop. It tells the listener to let the singer sleep until the singer has become older and wiser. While it does not consist of recursive logic, it does consist of conflicting claims - "wake me up" and it's condition "when I'm wiser". Being asleep, one cannot become wiser, even if one can, there is no way to communicate it to the listener. Thus "wake me up" becomes "don't ever wake me up" and "when I'm wiser" becomes "so I can never be wise".

Conflicts aside, growing up means experiencing life. Not sleeping it away. In the movie 'Philosophers' (spoiler alert!) students in a philosophy class take part in a mind experiment several times. They try the utilitarian approach a couple of times, always failing due to a meddlesome teacher. Then they cheat to exclude the teacher and go off in the opposite direction - they have fun. They don't focus on sustainability and success, they focus on wellbeing, entertainment, even if it is the end of them. For this way they die happy. The movie should have ended right there with the conclusion that people are but butterflies, inhabiting this wee planet for a few decades before perishing, making temporary connections to people, falling in love knowing that everything they start will end, everything they create will be demolished. In the eyes of the cosmic clock, the life of an individual is but a quick moment - blink and you miss it. Blink and it's gone. Blink and you're dead. If life is for so little, why not enjoy it?

However, life is no enjoyment if one does not learn from it. The greatest gift is knowledge and the willingness to use it. Scientia est potentia is a phrase most commonly used about technological advances and secrets, but it applies with common knowledge as well as with quirky facts. Knowing more empowers you to do greater things. Having fun is good, but if it kills you, you can't continue having fun. Knowledge gives you the opportunity to have fun for longer and in more diverse ways. Cutting up a person becomes more fun if you know anatomy, cooking stuff becomes more fun if you know chemistry. Watching a foreign movie becomes more fun if you know the language. But you cannot learn if you ignore the world, if you sleep through your days just waiting for someone else to 'wake you up'. Given that you're reading this I'd say you are already doing quite well for a start. The question you have to ask yourself is 'What's next?'.

If I had to give advice about how to live a life that you'd be happy with I'd say think of something you really, really want. Something big, something hard to get. Something pretty much impossible. Then think of how you can achieve it, and do it. Then think of something even more difficult and more complicated and repeat the process. In the end you'll have grown more than you'd expect. And you'll probably end up old and wise. Avicii would be happy.