There’s this pervasive, I don’t know, myth, I guess, that most adults have it down. Especially if you’re a GenXer like me. I mean, sure, in our generation there was much more of an emphasis on self reliance, toughness, and etc. than there might be today, but that doesn’t mean that if you’re not GenX, life is going to eat you alive. To begin with, life is gonna eat all of us alive, but that isn’t a dire prediction of what awaits all of us. OK, it is, still though, I’ve always been fond of saying that it’s not what you see, but how you see it. Sure, adulting is hard. That’s written in the stars, people.
Now, lemme give you something I’ve learned from my time in this fishbowl: Not everything, but at least some of what happens is amenable to being manipulated, either by us, or by someone else. Especially how we choose to respond to the world around us. Wouldn’t you rather it was you doing the manipulating? I do. In that vein then, I suggest to you that, as a writer (or whoever, really), you have an ability many people don’t have – you are probably better than you think at using words. Using them to your own personal benefit is your first step.
Someone recently expressed to me their dismay at having to do the adult things. I sympathize. I’ve been doing the adult things since I was about 5. Cooking, cleaning, working, paying my own way (as much as a 12 year old can, that is). All the grown up things. I remember learning to cook, standing next to mom, listening to every instruction with the intensity only a 5 year old can muster. I remember having to go with my mom to the welfare office and translating for her so the nice lady could help mom fill out the forms she needed to fill out so we could eat. I was 6. I remember my first actual job – washing cars. I was 12. And so it goes…
I don’t remember ever having thought of any of these things as horrible, traumatizing things. I remember the pride I felt in mastering cooking rice without recourse to a rice cooker. I remember the pride with which I gifted my mom a rinky dink wall unit made of particle board, and a tiny little blue ornamental miniature vase. She still has that thing, it’s sitting on the same wall unit shelf it has been on since I got them for her. I remember gluing it back together after a living room mishap when I was 9 or 10 (actually, that was when I was about 13, there was another sentence there). She also still has a tiny blue plaster thing my elder brother made for her years before I was even a twinkle in my father’s eye.
We use the word ‘traumatic’ far too often these days. I don’t mind most of the other advances we’ve made since I was a child, but pathologizing nearly everything is one advance I think we could all do without. For sure there are traumatic experiences that children go through — and I’m definitely not trying to minimize those awful things. However, I would offer you this: if you think of them all as traumatic, you’ll never get past them. You might do yourself a favor if you stop thinking of them that way. You might do yourself a favor if you begin to think of childhood as a proving ground, rather than as a minefield. You survived your childhood, right? Hold on to that. Stop thinking about everything that happened to you. I know, easier said than done. I get it. There are things in my own childhood I might be tempted to change if I could. I’m glad I can’t, though. I would be someone else if I did, wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t be writing this, or thinking about this. Today would be a day where something different would be happening, instead of being able to reach out and throw someone a lifeline, give someone some hope for their future, maybe I’d be, IDK, doing ‘X’, whatever that might be.
Yes, adulting is hard. Childhood is even more so. Don’t despair at the state of the world, no matter how much shit it generates on a minute by minute basis (and oh, it so fucking does). Sure, a racist/fascist is the ‘leader of the probably soon not to be so free world’. Sure the economy sucks. Food, gas, rent, mortgages, and medical insurance are insanely high. Sure, uber-rich assholes rule the world. Sure, your parents could’ve done a better job at being parents. No doubt about any of that. Still, with few, admittedly very serious objections, you often have a choice, and no one can take that choice away from you: You can let these realities live rent free in your head, or you can make them pay their rent. They can continue eating away at you, or you can use them as fuel. You can let them dominate every minute of your existence. I’ve seen it happen to lots of people, and from time to time, they have dominated my own life, most recently when I was living on the streets of NYC. Times like that will reoccur. The shit will happen. Just another bit of the universe that’s baked in.
No one can fight their demons incessantly from birth to death. But again, from time to time, you will have the courage, and most especially, the strength to fight them, at least to a standstill. That’s another thing baked into the fabric of the universe, and of who we are. If you choose to think of them as companions, as motivators, as prods, then you stand a chance. A good chance, actually. What you can’t do is give up, or think of these monsters as mere obstacles, mere antagonists. However you identify, you, my friend, are a predator. YOU ARE A MEMBER OF THE SPECIES THAT HAS COME TO DOMINATE THIS ENTIRE PLANET. Deep within you are the instincts of an apex predator – use them. Reach for them. You would do well to think of those demons you’ve got, as well as the instincts to fight them, as being a part of you, since that’s what they are. You would do well to remember that without them, you wouldn’t be you. Without them you’d never have developed the resilience you obviously have if you’ve made it this far. And if you’ve made it this far, you keep going.
Just to bring this back to where we started: In Plato’s Apology, Socrates learns that the Oracle at Delphi has declared him the wisest of men. He responds thusly:
“I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know.” (Apology, 21d)
If us GenXers know anything about adulting, it’s that we don’t know anything about adulting. Every moment, every challenge, is different —even when they look the same to our eyes. We improvise. We adapt. We overcome. Be like Socrates, my people. Like Socrates. (Like Socrates, but without the proto fascism stuff). Don’t be that. That’s bad.