Pablo Picasso once said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

Somewhere between elementary school and college, teenagers inevitably lose a piece of themselves. Classes outside the four core classes were designed to help us direct our life, to keep one passionate and energetic about their interest.  But then add hours and hours of homework to ensure academic “growth,” insufficient sleep and stress to do extracurricular activities to look successful in the eyes of  colleges. Even if we find an elective to develop our creativity, we fall prey to the precise, scientific formula assigned to the classes. The result is that we turn into the bricks in the wall, building tomorrow’s foundation – against our will.

The harder we are pushed to achieve academically, the less energy we have to be the artist. Creative, flowery sentences disappear gradually as it’s trained out of us by bad grades on English essays. Doodling becomes a secret activity because you get in trouble for not being mature.

I’m not saying maturity is overrated and destructive. But there is a difference between being a clone copy of what society wants you to be and someone who is both an adult and an artist. The world tends to not want you to talk about certain issues, convinced that doing so would break the fragile world order. Yet as we grow up, we find ourselves immersed into a world where nothing is right. All forms of media- whether social or artwork- are tools that not only alert us but help us speak up. Then we become rebels, and society backlashes, leading either to more drastic measures or us stepping down, defeated. To me, creative maturity is being the one with perseverance and a voice.  There is nothing wrong with being strong and allowing yourself to hold power. Because this world is your world, and problems shouldn’t be accepted as life, as there is always a chance for either decay or growth.

One has to resist our society’s condemnation of “immaturity”. Never let writer’s block or other’s opinions slow down your voice in whatever form it takes. Those are just ruses of our society to try to keep the world the same and the students smarter. Because it’s the artist, not the adult, that will change the world on a grand scale.