“One of these days you’re going to stop being so emo”, she says.

She has a point. Hell, I look at writings of mine, like, say, the post before this one and part of me just cringes. It’s all so immature, so junior high.

Do I need to just grow up? I wonder.

Growing up has become less and less important to me in the past few years. I feel like I’ve had it up to here with growing up. I spent my childhood growing up at an accelerated rate, learning to be a responsible little adult in a chaotic world. Where many of my peers are just now discovering the calm and empowerment that comes with maturity, I’m disallusioned with it. It’s a worthwhile path, but it only goes so far. It can teach you how to cope, but not how to live.

I can out grown-up anyone my age and a good percentage of my elders. I’ve been there, done that. I had to. I can do patient acceptence, and Taking The Long View, and sound financial decisions, and all that jazz. Don’t talk to me about maturity. If I’m not handling something in a suitably “adult” manner, it’s not because I don’t know how.

It takes more than just maturity to make up a complete life, just as it takes more than youthful verve and vitality. If I’ve learned anything from psychology it’s that you can’t expect parts of your soul to just go away if you ignore them long enough, like teeth will. Every facet of the soul craves expression at some time or another. Maturity has long been my most expressed attribute. What of the others?

I used to be proud of the fact that I never went through the period of rebellion that most teenagers go through. I’m realizing now that rebellion isn’t just a backlash against insufficient parenting; it’s an essential part of human development in and of itself. Maybe we all need to rage against The Man at some point.

I clung to the formula I had been given like a magic spell: home, job, wife, children. But life is not like a referentially transparent language: order matters. You can’t skip whole segments around and expect the soul to be satisfied. I understand that now.

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5 Comments

  1. I used to be proud of the fact that I never went through the period of rebellion that most teenagers go through. I’m realizing now that rebellion isn’t just a backlash against insufficient parenting; it’s an essential part of human development in and of itself. Maybe we all need to rage against The Man at some point.

    You know, I wish I had “lived” a bit more before I got married. If I had raged against the machine, life and sown my wild oats I wonder if I wouldn’t be where I am now. Rebellion, experience, doing all the stupid things we know are wrong is a huge part of growing up.

    1. I did all those things, and am I really that much better off for it?

      There’s an addage that goes something like, “when I was a child, I acted like a child, but now I’ve put away childish things.” Another goes, “There’s an appointed time for everything under heaven.”

      Maybe I’m just old fashioned.

      Hell, maybe I’m just old.

      But you know what? I’ve “been there and done that” too. I’ve been the spoiled brat, I’ve been the rebellious teenager, I’ve been the grown-up-too-early.

      Bottom line, life is what you make of it. Acting like a child when you’re an adult is counter-productive. It may be my opinion, but I do not believe I am alone in it.

      Chalk it all up to, “What the hell do I know anyway?”

  2. I’ve learned you can’t throw discipline to the wind either. It took years of learning, but I finally understand that now.

  3. You don’t know me (I am a friend of and was reading his friends list), but I just had to respond to this and tell you how close to home you hit.

    I ‘grew up’ at a very young age and was forced to be a ‘little adult’. I am only now (in my mid-thirties) realizing that there are things I am still missing because I did not have those childhood experiences.

    I have missed out on some important lessons in independence and rebellion and socialization that probably would have been so much less painful to learn as a child.

    I realized that part of becoming whole is making some valuable mistakes. I also realized that you are given a lot more leeway when you are a teenager to make those mistakes and recover from them. Being an adult going through some of those same issues is scary because the tolerance is just not there.

    I know I can never get those moments back, so I’ll just make do with what I have and see how it works in the long run (now mature sounding of me!), but it does present some unique challenges.

    Thanks for putting into words something that has been on my mind so much lately. It is sometimes nice to know I’m not the only one.

  4. there’s a lot of this post that I could have written about myself.

    Right there with ya.

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