Anthony : As we start on our post, I would like to ask the first question, “What does it mean to grow up? Why should we?” Susan, since you’re kind of the expert here so I’ll let you go first.
Susan: didn’t know you were going to just put me on the spot like that but, its ok. To me growing up is recognizing the disconnect from what life is actually like and what everyone makes it out to be. Most programing for children and adolescence paints adulthood as a very grim fate. They all look one step up from a zombie; except for the one grown up that refuses to you know, grow up. Then you start getting older and the responsibilities of an adult and the reality of growing up is a constant process make people rather just stay immature while they still can. While everyone is always saying to just grow up and get used to it because it’s the same for everyone and no one can escape it.
Anthony: I completely agree, I feel like after reading your book, and also being a recent grown up, I find myself being caught in two different worlds. For me everyone always said to cherish your childhood because you won’t have it forever, and you know what, I listened to them. For some reason it seemed pretty reasonable to so I basked in it for as long as I could and I still somewhat feel cheated but, I also love the newfound freedom that being an adult fully affords you to. So, I would say that growing up isn’t about letting go of your “childish ways” or, conforming to what it’s like to be a boring adult. It’s about realizing that the world isn’t how you thought it was but still trying to make it fit into a realistic mold of your aspirations.
John: Growing up to me is an experience, an experience that for most people seems like a very scary and daunting process. It seems to suck the life out of a lot of people or keep them as immature as they can possibly be, trying to not face the reality. It’s an experience that some don’t survive. So, for me growing up is about the choice of keeping yourself in one piece as the years start pilling on, about not giving up and regulating yourself to a life of sadness. To me the most grown-up people I know are the people that understand that life is whatever you make it and choose to make it count.
Rousseau: For me, to grow up is a complex and time-consuming task. For us that weren’t raised like my brainchild Emile, growing up is realizing that there are two worlds. Those two worlds are the, “is and the ought” we all have come upon a fact of the world that we don’t want to accept because accepting it would mean that the world isn’t as nice or fair as we have previously thought. But just like that initial disappointment with the world the ones that come after it hurt less and less and it becomes something that we just accept as fact.
The actual world is the one "we just accept as fact," the world as it ought to be is the one we must aspire to create. As Neiman says, maturity is embracing both.
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