Coming-of-age 50s 60s library research

  I still only have a very vague definition of coming-of-age. Is that a moment or is that a period of time?

   I thought it is a period of time. 

   Well, I changed my opinion after I saw this set of pictures. A set of pictures of a turtle suddenly caught my eye among all those pictures in front of me.

    Those four pictures portray a turtle tried to flip on a beach after someone prank on him by putting him upside down.

   In this turtle’s world, it must be a hard thing to do. So he stretched his head first in order to reach the ground, then he used the strength of his head to flip half of his body to a straight position, finally he turned back to his right position.

  This is a simple set of pictures, but it taught me a lesson.

  Sometimes you can reach a coming-of-age moment in a sudden, maybe in a few minute, just like a turtle.

  It must be very hard for a turtle to flip for the first time. The moment he was flipped by a wave or by a person, he must be very desperate because he has never been flipped before, this was his first big challenge in his life. “ What should I do?” he thought, “ I need to work hard on this. I need to keep trying.” So he tried at tried, then finally fixed his body.

   The same thing happens to human. Everyone in his or her life will meet something that never happen before, at that moment, you will feel so desperate and you don’t know what to do. You don’t even know if there is hope in front of you. You lay down there and look at the sky just like a turtle, you are looking at the sky in a way that you never did before. You stretched your head since you want to see what’s going on around you, or maybe try to ask for help. Then you realize that you have to help yourself.  So you try your best to fix the problem, trying to get out of there. But life sometimes get so hard that when you reach a point, when you meet a point that you think it’s too hard for you, you don’t even know if you can flip this time. But you still need to try hard to work this out.

  But you will, whether you believe or not, you will reach that point that you finally flip over. Maybe the process was painful, maybe the way you flip wasn’t pretty enough. But those are not important. The moment important thing is you did it, you flipped your body in the end.

  I guess that will be the moment that we called coming-of-age. The moment you realize that you can do anything by trying hard and not giving up. The moment that you know if you meet the same problems later you know you can handle this and you know how you can do this.

  Every time when you deal with a major problem in your life, think about you are a turtle. A turtle is put upside down accidentally. All you have to do this try your best, and wait for that moment you can find your way out. I guess that’s the moment I am talking about.