All my life Americans have been accustomed to thinking of theirs as 'the richest freest' country in the world. By most measurements it was long a contender for that honor and - among the larger countries if equal weight were given to wealth and indices of freedom - probably did deserve to be so described.
When you're young you're always wondering when you're actually going to feel like a grownup. And I think you probably fear it in a sense too. There's a danger to feeling like an adult... like this whimsical kid in you is going to die or something. And then all of a sudden one day you kind of feel like an adult and it's really nice.