So am I grown up yet?

Forty six years old, and I'm still waiting for grown-uppedness to strike. Perhaps it will just be a quick swoop from a prolonged adolescence into unremitting old age. I think my father never felt grown up. I remembering him saying that you keep moving the goalposts, and then a couple of years ago, approaching eighty, he suddenly seemed ready to drop of the perch.

As Helen Keller said "Strength of character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved." My life has thus far been too quiet and easy, and while it seems mad to wish for trial and suffering, how is my soul to be strengthened otherwise? Where will the inspiration for ambition come from if not from tribulation? Not from watching Britain's got Talent; that for sure.

Not that I feel my life, thus far, has been squandered. I have a wonderful family, live in a beautiful place, have a great job (not completely free from the occasional trial)and really good friends, but somehow I can't seem to get away from the nagging conviction that there must be more to life than this.

All the people I know who have been through periods of immense suffering seem to me to be the strongest, most well-balanced and most of all, genuine people. Perhaps there isn't more - it's just that the suffering makes you appreciate the calm, undemanding, pleasures of good friendships, a nice glass of wine and decent conversation. Blimey, this is one from six years ago. I'm 52 now and don't feel any more grown up, though I guess this car accident and subsequent handicaps could be called a tribulation, I don't think it can really be seen as a period of immense suffering. However, I'm rather hoping that it will lead me to find my strengths and change my life in some small way and make me a better person.