Why do we have to grow up and get old?

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I've always thought about this and never really understood the point of growing up, aging, death, and change. I can't speak for anyone else but when I was a little kid, my life was great. I didn't have any worries or responsibilities and I enjoyed watching cartoons and playing with toys. My grandparents who have since passed would always babysit me and take me to do fun things. My childhood was great. As I started getting older, I used to not want to celebrate my birthdays. I always hated the thought of growing up and getting older because I enjoyed my life the way it was and I never wanted anything to change. When I was a kid, I always thought that I would be that young forever and that I would always have my parents and grandparents. I still don't enjoy getting older because I don't like change and I don't want my body to continue to age. I wouldn't want to live forever, but I just don't like the thought of one day being an old man and having everything being completely different than what I have known.

The only way I'd be twenty again is if I could take my fifity-two year old brain with me.

In regard to the OP: Well, there's sorta TWO kinds of growing-up----one's MIND growing-up, and one's BODY "growing-up".

In regard to one's mind: there's sorta, IMO, no such thing as a grown-up----cuz, look-it..... When something is "grown-up", there's nowhere else to go, but to begin to die----but, as long as we keep LEARNING, we keep growing, and thus, never "grow-up"! !

In regard to one's BODY being "grown-up"----well..... Mine's already begun to decay!! LOL

As we go through life, our cells divide over and over. Every time a cell divides, a little bit of DNA is lost, and DNA controls everything in our body.

They think that the lost DNA during cell division causes damage to our bodies' cells. Since our cells divide again and again as we get older, the damage accumulates. So that's why our bodies get frail and stuff when we're old.

Because it would seem that life works that way, I don't know if there is an afterlife or what it entails...and I guess you cant really know until you die. This is not to say I am comfortable with the concept, even recently I have thought about it and i am quite uncomfortable with the idea you just vanish into nothing, but at the same time I don't see what else we'd become aside from that.

Perhaps spirits become energy, but at that point would you even remember what it is to be human? Lol I suppose this is why I usually keep these thoughts in my head, some people may be disturbed. Because I like to discuss weird things.

I could discuss weird things with you if you liked!

Yup the brain of some elderly folk might decline but if there's a non physical body beyond in which thoughts can be housed, one's thoughts would be clear again I imagine since there would be no biological limitations.

I'd like to be 20 again but knowing all that I do now!

I also didn't really want to grow up and face the real world as the world of school had enough problems as it was and although I cried on the first day of school, I did so on the last day of school in my final year too, despite the difficulties I had with fitting in.

The second law of thermodynamics at work. The cosmos is also growing old and dying. It will take a long time but it will happen. Eventually the cosmos will be at or near a uniform temperature and no more physical work will happen.

It will be a cold dark place.

There's no "point" to growing up. It's not something nature "decided" to inflict on us. Nature does not "decide" or "want" anything. It's just a result of evolution making things efficient. Once you've aged past childbearing age, your continued survival is irrelevant to the species as a whole. That's why most chronic diseases occur in old age, because the diseases that routinely killed the young became extinct with them. Aging is just a side effect of impersonal forces doing their thing. There's no point in getting mad at nature. It's not personal.