This started an interesting discussion, cool

Originally I reacted to two things in the article: first of all the implication that being deeply involved in various sports was somehow immature and irresponsible in itself, without taking into consideration any other aspects of that persons life. Like many of you, I feel that it's bizarre to assign certain activities to the young and others to the "old". (See, even I don't want to use the word old). I do feel that there is a moral issue when it comes to extremely high-risk activities and families, but that is hardly a large problem and one solved best by each family, and bringing in skiing and rock climbing into that kind of discussion implies that family life should be completely risk-free. What is important is the balance of time you spend on different things, whether it's at the office or on the ski slopes or with your family.

But I also don't like the idea that being grown-up - i.e. not young - is somehow not desirable. I do think that there is a trend where everybody wants to be young practically until they're carted into a home, and being grown-up or an adult is just too uncool to be desirable. But that really is an idea that needs to be defused imo. Being an adult is no longer about the facade stuff, but still is about being a real, responsible, mature human being, and lord knows the world needs more of those. I think maybe we're just buying into the whole "young is good"-thing by talking about how someone acts young or looks young or whatever, when what we mean is that that person is competitive or alert or energetic, does activities she loves, and looks fit or happy. There is a whole lot to be said for being an adult. Take Adult Back!

Besides. The terror of being "boring" (I have an advantage here being the only one who's read the article except maybe DoW ) is just stupid. Life is boring sometimes. But to get what you want, you have to do the boring stuff too. And maybe what looks like boring or staid is fulfilling too, in a smaller-scale and more introvert way.

Anyway. My main point was really that being an adult is or should be a good and desirable thing that implies maturity and responsibility to yourself and the people you care about and who care about you, and should have very little to do with anything else.

PS. Some nuances may be lost in translation here, the Norwegian word translates most directly to "grown-up" IMO. It's used to denote someone fully grown, definitely not a teenager, and sometimes - often - a euphemism for middle-aged (!) Such is the terror of not being young...