Adulthood

Adulthood seems to be a funny concept these days- something one pins always on people just 5 years older than you. My parents tell me that you never reach that fabled stage where the world makes sense and you just live your life in a grownup fashion and it all works- i.e. that you never Feel "grown up" in the mythical sense of the word that children have (and that some college students, like myself, are awfully slow to give up on). This seems to me to be both a fabulous thing and a very dangerous one (probably like all fabulous things, but that's another discussion for another day that wasn't the first day of classes for the semester). I mean, if we are never fully adults, then that means that we have an awareness of how much more there is to learn and how much more growing we could do- i.e. it's a tool for maintaining an awareness that if you stop growing, you're just stagnating. On the other hand, it seems like a marvelous (by which I mean Not At All) tool for avoiding responsibility.

The positive side seems to be very much related to a lovely conversation I had with Dad last Shabbos while at camp about the universe and G-d and the like- exactly the sort of conversation that I always thought adults didn't bother with after some point because they were too busy. (This is possibly one reason I find politics so obnoxious oddly enough: somehow I gained the feeling that politics was the thing that took up in adults' minds the space that ought to be given to those unanswerable questions of earth-shaking importance. I don't know how I put the two together, but I did.)

The latter, negative side seems connected to an assertion one of my directors at Lishma made, that by the time we are college students, we ought to be labelling ourselves, and our peers, Men and Women, not boys and girls. And I do find it interesting that slightly older books and the like refer to "college men" while newer ones talk about "college boys". We seem to have associated being a student with being a child, when no such linkage is really necessary. Our definition of youth seems to be growing and growing- yet people of my age are not only parents, any number of them are responsible, prepared parents- not people who made mistakes that put them in unfortunate positions, or whose backgrounds didn't prepare them for success. Those are for sure men and women. So where's the line? Why am I still a little bit uncomfortable using the terms for myself and my peers, and why are my peers so uncomfortable with them as well? There seems to be a question of responsibility for our own futures that people want very much to avoid. I sometimes share that desire. But I'm not at all sure that it is a healthy one to indulge.

Adulthood

Adulthood seems to be a funny concept these days- something one pins always on people just 5 years older than you. My parents tell me that you never reach that fabled stage where the world makes sense and you just live your life in a grownup fashion and it all works- i.e. that you never Feel "grown up" in the mythical sense of the word that children have (and that some college students, like myself, are awfully slow to give up on). This seems to me to be both a fabulous thing and a very dangerous one (probably like all fabulous things, but that's another discussion for another day that wasn't the first day of classes for the semester). I mean, if we are never fully adults, then that means that we have an awareness of how much more there is to learn and how much more growing we could do- i.e. it's a tool for maintaining an awareness that if you stop growing, you're just stagnating. On the other hand, it seems like a marvelous (by which I mean Not At All) tool for avoiding responsibility.

The positive side seems to be very much related to a lovely conversation I had with Dad last Shabbos while at camp about the universe and G-d and the like- exactly the sort of conversation that I always thought adults didn't bother with after some point because they were too busy. (This is possibly one reason I find politics so obnoxious oddly enough: somehow I gained the feeling that politics was the thing that took up in adults' minds the space that ought to be given to those unanswerable questions of earth-shaking importance. I don't know how I put the two together, but I did.)

The latter, negative side seems connected to an assertion one of my directors at Lishma made, that by the time we are college students, we ought to be labelling ourselves, and our peers, Men and Women, not boys and girls. And I do find it interesting that slightly older books and the like refer to "college men" while newer ones talk about "college boys". We seem to have associated being a student with being a child, when no such linkage is really necessary. Our definition of youth seems to be growing and growing- yet people of my age are not only parents, any number of them are responsible, prepared parents- not people who made mistakes that put them in unfortunate positions, or whose backgrounds didn't prepare them for success. Those are for sure men and women. So where's the line? Why am I still a little bit uncomfortable using the terms for myself and my peers, and why are my peers so uncomfortable with them as well? There seems to be a question of responsibility for our own futures that people want very much to avoid. I sometimes share that desire. But I'm not at all sure that it is a healthy one to indulge.