How Coming of Age Stories are Lying to You

Why is it that the stories we hear often only reference young adults experiencing life-changing epiphanies? This couldn’t be any more far from the truth.

BY: PAYAL DASS

Being a huge fan of young-adult fiction in high school, I always read about the journeys characters around my age ventured on. In these stories, the protagonists would go through events that would usually end with the character learning something about themself, accepting their identity, or learning about the workings of the world. I think the main reason I felt so connected to these characters is because I could see myself in them. They were full of angst, going through puberty, and most of the time, they were in the same grade as me. I could imagine that character playing a part in my life, walking by me in the hallway at school. 

But, if there is one thing I realized moving through life—having experienced these stories a while ago—is that these young characters aren’t the only ones learning about themselves and the world. Everyone is constantly learning and transforming. To quote the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, “the only constant is change.”

Looking at one of the most well-known pieces of literature by J. D. Salinger, and one of my favourite novels, The Catcher in the Rye, we follow the journey of Holden Caulfield and his difficulty in transitioning to adulthood. Unlike other coming-of-age novels that end in a resolution, this story begins in destruction, goes through more destruction, establishes a moment of an epiphany, and ultimately, ends with a hint of sadness. I think I loved this novel because Holden was full of angst and never missed a chance to critique society. I found his character to also be annoying as he was ungrateful for everything he had and was obsessed over the concept of innocence and how it needs to be preserved. What I appreciated the most was the idea that he somewhat came to terms with the fact that the world is changing, he is changing, and must accept that he is getting older. 

The directorial debut of Greta Herwig, the 2017 film Lady Bird follows a story that is very dear to me. Maybe this is because the protagonist is female and had done the extreme actions of what my heart may have desired at the time.​ This story follows senior high school student Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson who is obsessed with the idea of reinventing herself. She is a girl who wants to attend a prestigious school far away from home and live life on her own terms. This film was released when I was in high school which created an automatic connection with her character. It could be the fact that we both thought our parents were dictating our lives and that we had our emotions on high as we were trying to adjust to the transition to adulthood.

But what about the transformations people make later in life? Coming of age stories generally focus on the adolescent and young adult populations. When you search up ‘coming of age books or movies’ they are almost always stories that are related to the young adult demographic. They tell stories of this specific age demographic making it seem like this is the only phase of your life that will be life-changing and important. As if you will remain the exact same person throughout the rest of your life.

My main problem with life-altering stories only appealing to the younger demographic is that it makes anyone older than the intended audience feel like they are failures if they do not have their life put together. For example, the infamous quarter life and midlife crisis seems like life-altering phases everyone goes through. 

A quarter life crisis is defined as a period of extreme soul searching with the simultaneous occurrence of high stress levels in one’s mid 20s to early 30s. A midlife crisis is defined as a period of transition regarding identity and self-confidence in someone between the ages of 45 and 65. There are stories, in novels and film, about these tough phases in life that address the new life stages people go through as they get older. But these stories almost never fall under the ‘coming of age’ category. What exactly is the age limit of a coming of age story?

According to Wikipedia, coming of age is a term used to describe “a young person’s transition from being a child to being an adult,” in which the specific age of transition varies between cultures and societies. According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of the term is “the attainment of prominence, respectability, recognition, or maturity.” Regardless of which definition you look at for coming of age, the concept of maturity is always present. So why are adults maturing in later life not considered coming of age stories? Is it because we believe, as a society, that an older person cannot grow in life-changing ways past adolescence and young adulthood?

In psychology, it was a popular belief until recently that personality becomes stable as you age. Using the Big Five traits of neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness as personality measurement, it was believed that as people got older, they would become more conscientious and less open and agreable. It was believed this trend becomes stable and unchangeable when people reach a certain age (somewhere between ages of 50 and 70).

Perhaps this is why there is a myth that older adults cannot go through life-changing experiences that make them change as human beings, thus their population cannot relate to coming of age stories. However, recent psychology studies have proven this myth wrong.

Upon doing multiple studies in which older adults were given personality tests with the Big Five traits as levels of measurement, it has been shown that personality traits are not stable, especially after they go through certain life experiences. Personality changes can happen in older age as well, proving that people can continue adjusting to life in different ways.

To put this in perspective, a good example to better understand the change of person in later adulthood would be the experiences of Michael Pollan, published in a book titled How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.

In this book, Pollan talks about his experience interviewing cancer patients who have been on psychedelics like LSD, psilocybin, and Ayahuasca as they were part of “The Trip Treatment” he was reporting on for The New Yorker. Upon hearing about their experiences, he also read scientific findings about the effect of psychedelics on the mind. Pollan then addresses how he changed his “third-person journalistic inquiry” into a first-person one. He took psychedelics to really understand how this out-of-world experience changes people, their outlooks on life, and their mind. 

He talks about how psychedelics open your mind to new experiences. It sometimes makes one more thankful as a person, and sometimes even manages to make one more religious. In other words, he explained the use of psychedelics as life-changing. He considered himself to be a changed man after he went through the ups and downs of such drug use. 

So, if people are considered to be constantly changing through science and personal experience, why is it only the younger population that is constantly expected to be transforming? If we collectively accept that people are always going through changes throughout different walks of life, then the pressure of going through some magical transformation within a certain age frame would be reduced significantly.

For me, I never felt like I went through the life-changing transformation all teenagers were expected to go through at that stage of life. I felt like something was wrong with me. When casually comparing our past-selves to our current ones, my cousins always explain how the only difference they notice with themselves is just the increase in responsibility, but mentally, still feel like they’re 14 years of age. It is as if transformation only truly matters to the extent to which you open your mind.

Coming of age stories put the false expectations that life-changing events only happen during adolescence as you are about to go into adulthood and explore the world. No one tells you that you are going to have multiple experiences and periods in your life that will change you drastically. I believe that is the biggest lie of life: such expectations put on you. 

These stories do not prepare you for the uncertainty and constant flow of change happening in our world, never being easy to adapt to. They do not explain that no matter what age you are, it is never too early or late to have a huge phase of development that will put your life on a different path. 

After all, “the only constant is change.”