In seventh or eighth grade, we had a lesson on child development. I learned the bare basics of when a child develops abilities through the years, from sensory awareness and motor skills to language acquisition and socialisation. And I remember being surprised by the fact that abstract thought doesn’t come along until very late in the process, around the ages of ten or eleven or twelve.

I must have been twelve at the time, going on thirteen. And I had the capacity to think abstractly, but I thought I had always had it, for as long as I could remember. Was there a time when I could not engage in abstract thought? Was that time really just two or three years ago?

I thought about first graders. Ours was a K-8 school, so there were plenty of chances to see lines of first and second graders milling about the hallways. I wondered what they would think if a seventh grader were to tell a first grader, “Did you know you aren’t capable of abstract thought yet?”

How would I feel if I were a first grader and an older kid told me that? In all likelihood I probably would detect that that kid is mean and I might cry or tattle on them to a teacher. But could I wonder, what is this Abstract Thought of which you speak? How can I do it? Can I learn it soon?

I am twenty-five. My friends in their thirties assure me that there are certain truths I can only learn when I am in my thirties. Truths like When you’re in your twenties, you really don’t know anything and Thirty is the best year, you have enough experience to be grounded but your joints haven’t started aching yet and You really have to be thirty-five to fully understand Company.

And I understand, abstractly, that I can hear them say the words and still not understand viscerally what they mean until I’ve reached their level of cognitive development. Yet still I yearn for a way to short-circuit this process, grow five years more mature in one week or one month, leapfrog over the other twenty-five-year-olds, and reach a point where I no longer feel like I’m behind everyone my age, playing a depressing game of developmental milestone catch-up.

Is this so impossible?