This whole thread reminds me of one of my favorite quotes...
Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
-C.S. Lewis
There is a world of difference between something that is inherently child-like (in this case, Pokemon) and something that is inherently childish. Being childish pertains to behaviors that are juvenile, immature, and unsophisticated. Whereas being child-like can pertain to a sense of new found discovery, innocence, delight, and wonder. I am very much content with that, despite no longer being a child. In becoming an adult, my aim is to remove myself from my previously childish ways, but at the same time to hold on and cherish those important child-like elements.









