Surrender to the process of growing up
Being an Adult — what does it all mean?
Growing Up
‘Wait till you turn 13, it’ll be a riot’ I was told at age 9. So, naturally, I couldn’t wait to hit my teens.
From then on I thought “Teenagers are so cool, they get to dress however they like, listen to whatever music they liked, go to parties, and, most importantly, get to hang their pants as low as they wanted no matter how many grown ups told them to pull them up(sorry, this sounds like an ad campaign for kids growing up in the 90’s.)
My first year as a teen was okay I guess, the only person who seemed to have made a big deal about it was my step-mother. ‘Nick, the word ‘teen’ has now been added to your age! You’re a big boy now, and a role model for your little sister!’ was the recurring theme for the next 6 years, which involved plenty of scolding, a smack or two from my dad(in the face), and people in my congregation expecting me to get baptized so I could take up some manly responsibilities in the Kingdom Hall (I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness, by the way.)
But alas, I am gay, so I guess I turned out to be a role model for my little sister after all!
Jokes aside, “this teen stuff really sucks”, I thought. The only difference from before my teens, was that I now have more that’s expected of me, and having to deal with fluctuating hormones while being a gay kid growing up in a strictly religious home.
I couldn’t wait to turn 20, have a degree in something awesome, have my own car and house, watch as much Anime as it pleases me, buy my very own PlayStation and eat as many tins of condensed milk as I wished! (I was a geeky kid — still am.)
When I achieved my Matric certificate (the last year of high school in South Africa), that dream seemed to be well on it’s way. Of course, I hadn’t anticipated life getting in the way. Who would have thought, right?
By the age of 20, finance made getting a degree seem impossible. At that point, all I wanted was to get out from under my parent’s roof, so that’s what I did. I got an entry level job and the realities of life kicked in.
Rent. Transportation. Food. Clothes. Tooth paste.
There was absolutely no room left for entertainment, not even for one tin of condensed milk, let alone a PlayStation or a TV to play it on.
“Well this sucks!” I thought again. The only difference now from when I was a teen, was that I had even more responsibilities, but even less freedom and luxury.
From then onward, there wasn’t even time for my favorite hobbies anymore, like making music.
Was this it? Was this what it meant to be an adult?
The Death of the Real Me
It got to the point where, I couldn’t recognize the person in the mirror going to work everyday. The years of domestication from my parents, religion and the new found world of adults had altered key elements of my personality — the real Me had been lost.
I remember my step-mother throwing away my artwork because she called it demonic and Satanic. Those drawings were good by the way, I’m talking crazy good, and not nearly as evil as she claimed it to be.
The file she threw away included poetry so beautiful, that my English high school teacher thought that a poem I had written for an assignment, that was about my biological mother who had died when I was 10, must have been stolen from the internet.(In retrospect, I don’t believe she knew that poem was in there, otherwise I’m sure she would have kept it.)
Looking back objectively, I was a true creative genius for my age, and the motivation stemmed from a true and real place within: a need for a creative outlet, a place to calm my mind, because such a place just didn’t exist in the real world(other than within the albums of Linkin Park of course).
So when that file, a collection of years in the making, was thrown away, the creative side of me had died and was never revived.
I was hungry to leave home and follow my own path, but I was so lost and so confused when I got out that the path became unclear, and the fog just seemed to be getting thicker and thicker everyday.
At 25, I really began to question what it meant to be an adult, because it just didn’t seem to me like adults actually existed. I can hear the people in the back saying “Not that I was one yet. Wait till you turn 35, kid”. But so far, it seemed as though adults were overgrown children with a bunch of responsibilities and knew what fancy words to use to describe things(This was clearly during my “Woke” stage). This mattered to me because I looked up to a lot of older people than me, who seemed to have had their lives put together.
In the black culture down here in South Africa, you’re actually expected to listen to your elders no matter what your own opinion is, or regardless of whether or not your point of view makes better sense.
It wasn’t until I discovered the Four Agreements by Don Miguel that I started to realize that people everywhere had been enslaved by the dysfunctions of their inner children, enslaved by the insecurities that dictated how they navigated life and dealt with other people, especially themselves.
This took away a lot of pressure, because suddenly I wasn’t the only lost soul, that even the most successful people had some sort of insecurities.
It was important for me to define adulthood because I needed to know how far away from the true path I was, the path that so many adults set up for us. They defined for us what this path should look like, so when we got out into the world we realized it was nothing like we could have ever imagined.
Be honest, how many of you are still waiting to feel “grown up”? I wonder how many people can say “I do” without mistaking that for the ego that thinks it knows everything there is to know.
I, for one, have always been waiting for the signal, the defining moment that would affirm my adulthood. But it never arrived, and I don’t think it will, not in the ways I had expected anyway. Instead, life is filled with these defining moments, from childhood all the way through life.
We need to use these moments to help mold and shape us, that’s what I would say makes an adult.
Epiphanies
The fears of not knowing who we are, what our purpose is, where to go next, is what cripples a lot of people, especially as we age. We all just want answers to calm our restless souls caused by the uncertainty of life’s purpose, so we subconsciously look to the structure created by our parents or society to make sense of it for us. The frustration comes from not having this structure work in our favor.
Another freeing notion that the Four Agreements helped me understand was that I couldn’t blame my parents for my dysfunctions or the structure they had set up for me, nor could I blame them for how they brought me up. They did the best they could with what knowledge they had, because for a long time I carried the burden that there was something wrong with me.
The years of harbored anger and disappointment slid off my back like warm butter at this realization, that they too were flawed and it was okay for me to admit that, and that it wasn’t any one person’s fault. They were wonderful people, but not perfect. This took off the pressure to try and be perfect. Knowing this can heal those crippled, so that they can have purpose to continue growing and not to be afraid to fail or be imperfect, because it is a part of the process and the path towards maturity, experience and success.
There is no story line to follow
This is something I wish I had been told a long time ago: It is okay to not know what the hell you should be doing. I have found that surrendering to the process is what actually takes things forward, it’s in those times that you get “light bulb” moments and inspiration.
One of the many social constructs that plagues us humans is the unrealistic contents page we make for ourselves.
You should have a car at this age
You should have a certain type of job at this age
You should have kids by this age
You should be emotionally mature at this age
You should own a house at this age
You should be making a difference at this age
All the expectations set up either by our family, friends or society. We measure ourselves by these standards. And when we feel lacking in any of these areas we condemn ourselves to not being worthy to even be alive.
As I always say, ‘We are all victims of our circumstances, but it is up to us how we respond to them.’ So we should never judge others who seem to be lagging behind us, because we don’t know how we’d cope with the demons they face everyday. It is impossible to have two identical lives because we all have different experiences that happen at different moments.
Therefore, there is nothing you should be at any given time. It is truly all random after all.
What to take away
Being an adult is just a social construct used to control how we behave from whatever socially accepted age in whatever culture. But it should never be a word used to describe what you should be doing with your life or where you should be by now. Surrender to the process of growing up.
Engage
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