Having celebrated a roommate’s birthday this past weekend, I started thinking about what it means to get older. Do we ever really grow up? Every year as we blow out the candles, does something inside of us change? Do we feel it? Sure, we evolve and experience new things, but is it possible that our childhood fantasies may subconsciously dictate our adult lives? Is the hope we keep as we get ready for a first date or a job interview just a product of youthful naivety?

As children, everything is possible, and the world is ours to relish. Bending rules, we bite our lips, unsure which ones may break. We take risks without considering consequence, we jump unsure where we might land, and we do it with the handy excuse of youth. Youth can never be blamed. Invincible, we slip through grips like sand.

Where we once broke bones, we now break hearts, and over time, we repeat the same mistakes. The question is, do we ever learn? Are we truly wiser, or are we simply fooling ourselves, with time as our accomplice?

Peter Pan once promised Wendy a place where she would never, never have to worry about grown up things again. In her position, many of us would gladly escape without a backward glance. In the midst of college culture, with beer olympics on a sunny afternoon or bar crawls much larger and longer than lectures, growing up seems about as undesirable as a vasectomy.

In America, youth is as much a luxury as a first class seat. With the sole requirement to enjoy the ride, we make fun fundamental.

The common thought is that we grow up, we learn who we are, we find what makes us happy, and we settle down. But is that really a legitimate timeline? Has life ever proven so simple? Perhaps there is no point in time where we suddenly know exactly how to make all the chips fall into place. It’s possible that as we grow older, we are as much as we age. Do we act accordingly to the number that’s pinned to our chests simply to stifle the children we are at heart? “Truth or dare,” we ask: is growing up just giving up?

Some like to think that we are really glassy-eyed and unaware as children. This presumption of youthful confusion may simply be the slant of jaded adulthood. Likely, this stereotype is a bitter fabrication by those who have grown to realize that there are no Band-Aids for heartache. Ultimately, we envy what we do not have, the innocent heart to trust without caution and leap with no safety net, and we act as though it’s not what we want. Like children, we put something down to lift ourselves up. If in no other way, this shows that age may really be just a number.

So what will we do when we grow up? This most over-asked of questions is one of the hardest for us to answer. It is hard for us to know what will happen in our lives as the days and birthdays pass. In youth, we’re sure in our replies, as aspiring astronauts (or in a more personal case, ice-cream testers). Sadly, as we age we’re thrown curveballs, experiencing disappointment and even loss, and we realize we may not have all the control. As a result, our answer loses confidence.

There are things we learn to fight for, and walls we choose to build, bridges we have to burn and apologies we regretfully give at times. Experience becomes a prime ingredient to growing up, with a dash of humility and a pinch of self-discovery we mold ourselves like silly putty. We become. And maybe, somewhere along the line, we may even grow up. Just maybe.