No, this is not a alternate rendition of the Pussycat Dolls' song. Well, quite unlike it actually.

We are all familiar with the tagline, that for sure, but we never really understood the focus or implication in making such a bold statement.

When I grow up, I want to be a doctor.
 When I grow up, I want to learn how to fly.
  When I grow up, I want to be happy and carefree.

Such is life, filled with aspiration and ambitions, and way beyond that, unattainable dreams that even though might be out of our grasp still calls for some attention for the bitter-sweet payoff we get in wishing but not wanting. And still we often mistake what we actually want to ask.

  When I grow up, I want to have five children, a dog and live in a giant mansion.
 When I grow up, I want to live with no regrets.
When I grow up, (insert idealistic opinion here).

I believe we have got the phrasing all wrong. We've always been taught to ask so that we may learn and progress yet we all start off as blind fools, pure adolescents asking to be something we might never become when we do grow up.

When (insert word) I grow up.

As Nike best sums it, just 'DO' it. That's the word we need. It's not so much a statement but a question we ought to ask ourselves from time to time.

We 'grow up' waiting to fulfill that particular ideal or become that person we always wished we would but time and tide waits for no man and neither does it come unless we go hunting for the opportune moments.

'Growing up' is far more than ageing and experiencing physical maturation in time. It is a long-drawn process that not every may go through in equal extents. We all will have to grow up one day and face reality but the extent which we hop from our bubble to the world of 'grown-ups' is a characteristic that sets many apart.

I want to look at 'growing up' from a different perspective, far from the convention. We always perceive the intellectual aspect and mature thinking of growing up is to develop more refined opinions and to act in a more rationale and mature manner. Growing up is about learning and applying this knowledge to new fields. Adaptability and independence; words and wisdom; faith and fortitude. Yet, this is but the tip of the iceberg. And we are constantly searching for the peak of the iceberg because we are always struggling to be at the top.

But right at the roots is a concept that growing up is about pure acceptance. It is a mental progression and a state of mind that we must come to (willingly or not) behold and embrace. Growing up entails loss--people die when you grow because somethings have to come only at the expense of others. When we grow up and gather wisdom for our own, we gather the seeds of our seniors, the experts in life, but sooner or later, they will pass on this wisdom to us for good. Then we are alone.

Then we are forced to be independent and there comes a point when this opportune moment uninviting-ly presents itself and calls for us to grow up. Because when people die and leave us by ourselves, we become the grown-ups. We face the reality of death and loss, the harsh, cold and all-so brutal mentality that things come and go as they please and it is in the end, a matter of how we deal with this knowledge.

To accept, and to keep that at the back of our head way behind our other concerns, that is growing up.

To know that life and death is a cycle that must be passed on eventually, and there is nothing to hold on to.

Growing up isn't all that desirable a phenomenon to begin with actually. But we lose ourselves with our ambitions and what we want to be when we grow up. But the focus has always been

When DO we grow up to (insert less-important idealistic opinion)?

And why?

Can we not?

When I grow up, I want to never wish I grew up again, and that life with no regrets can be a distant dream, one of those bitter-sweet unattainable nightmares.