When a really famous Turkish bard Aşık Veysel said “I am on a long narrow road, I am walking day and night”, he meant every single thing being experienced from birth to death. Most of us think of life as a journey that has a beginning (birth) and an end (death). What I think of the beginning of life, on the other hand, is not being born. I think life begins when we realize that we have to grow up. If life is a journey, this journey begins with the age of 17.

Pre-school period, primary education, secondary education, and eventually high school… In all of these periods, you know you are growing up both physically and morally, however that does not bother you since the mistakes you make are forgivable due to your “youngness” or typical puberty behavior. We, as a teenager, can do everything we can think of not considering the results because our parents naturally consider the results for us. We can spend our money on meaningless magazines or toys and not thinking about financial issues because our parents cover our over the limit spending by limiting their own. Lying is not a problem since we are not mature yet and “everyone is doing it”. In these teenage years, everyone has the courage of ignorance. Illusions about being too strong and too smart make you think “What’s the big deal?” about coming home late from a bar or somewhere downtown. Your mother who does not permit you to go to “a friend of a friend’s” party is conservative and behind the time. Smoking secretly is cool. And the best part is, if you ever get caught, you can always blame the “wrong choice of friends” or “careless family” as they teach you in psychology class.

However, the beginning of senior year in high school, final months of age 17, makes you face the bitter reality. You face some sort of exams for university. And these exams, although they are commonly criticized, is the best thing reminding you that it’s time to grow up. University is something that not everyone can go to. It’s some kind of a “luxury”. That’s why, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to walk that road. No one can force you. To or not to continue your education after high school is the first big choice you have to make. It’s the first heavy responsibility you feel on your shoulders since the person who will have to face the results is you and only you. You realize you have to really know yourself to make this kind of a decision. Then, you begin to ask yourself what you want. You further ask who you are, what areas you are good at, how much money you can make or even if making money matters that much. Age 17 is when you begin to be honest with yourself, when you meet with facts that you’ve been avoiding for numerous reasons, and when-eventually- you say a real “hello” to yourself. The problems which university issue triggers spread in your life like some fatal virus. You end up getting caught to the “Who Am I?” Cancer.

What kind of a person am I? What do I enjoy doing? What are my weaknesses and strengths? Am I in love with that guy or is it just a crush? Do I want to have a career? Where can I find someone rich to marry? … Goes the questions which make you choke. The castles in the air period slowly end with these questions causing you, somehow, to make the biggest mistakes of your life meanwhile. During all these struggle and panic mood, trying to make everything right, you think you end up blowing it all or killing your life itself in the battle between your logic and emotions. Whatever the reasons or the definitions are, the memories of age 17 are the most bitterly remembered ones.

17 makes you cry for the wrong people at wrong times and places. It snuggles to wrong skins, shouts at wrong friends, and calls for help to wrong people. After 16 years spent not worrying about a mistake, you begin to actually feel bad when you make one. Plus, you begin to suppress the feelings that come with your choices. “Mom, I broke our neighbor’s window while I was playing baseball” apology times are way behind now. You must be more silent, think more and find a way to clean up the mess you’ve made. Taking your life’s responsibility in hand is necessary for “growing up”- something you wait for impatiently when you are a child. It’s vital. Maybe that is why it hurts so much- not because it is a must but because it has to be a must.

So all these reasons are why I believe life begins with 17. What happens before that age is like a demo of a computer game or the fragment of a movie. When you are a child, all you see about the adult world is an attractive premier. Plus, you have all the tolerance with you. When you decide to face the responsibility and thus reality, you begin playing the game, watching the movie, walking the road… When you are 17, just as Robert Frost said in his famous poem Road Not Taken, you stand at a cross road. Unfortunately, you cannot choose to walk both roads. When you are 17, you decide who you are. And I hope you are one of those who will be able to say these lines after their choices:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.