sadeewhip

Driving home this morning after dropping John at work I saw a man that I know you’ve seen. He was standing in the street walking up to cars with a sign that said something about needing help. He was filthy with white hair, brown skin, and red clothes.

I saw his bearded face for just a moment. And in that moment he looked every age he has been…a young boy, a teenager, a young man, middle-aged. And I thought of the illusion that skin gives - it’s a prison.

There is something about aging that suggests you should reach a point where you are grown up - that you have it together in a way labeled “maturity”. And this man, in his dirty clothes no younger than 60 asking for money is a glaring symbol of not being “grown up”. He has somehow failed to be his age. He’s not supposed to be needing help.

And it made me think of all the ways I am not “grown up”.

I wondered how I am undeveloped and overdeveloped and still developing and how I can pass as some kind of an adult. And I wondered what maturity really is and what being an adult really is because most of the “adults” I have met aren’t very fun and lack the maturity for direct and honest communication. They have stopped being curious about life and discovering themselves and the world.

So what is it to be a grown-up?

That man standing in the street is certainly grown up. He is just a version of a human that most of us don’t want to be. Is that why the picture of “adult” is so static? Is it some kind of veneer to hide the things we think we should have grown past? Is the obsession with looking youthful - “50 is the new 30″ kind of thing - really a stand adults are trying to make to buy more time or leniency to finish growing up before they are held to a rigid and boring standard?

I don’t really have a point or a conclusion. I just don’t like what is expected of me as an adult because it keeps people from learning about me as Sadee. And I don’t like the self-criticism that goes along with being 40 = ____________ and all the ways I haven’t gotten ____________ down yet.

Honestly, I like the aspects of myself that are “childlike”: playful, curious, adventuresome, daring, fun, creative, spontaneous… and I like these things in other people, little or big, old or young.

I think my biggest beef is that I don’t like what happens to people like the dirty man standing in the street. He is looked at with an otherness that allows others to hide their own flaws and weaknesses because, compared to him, they are doing okay and not him. It’s like the way he is viewed is as some social juxtaposition that reifies the barriers between us all.

Children don’t seem to have barriers like this.

So what is the magical line when we become dull, judgmental, closed-hearted, and isolated and slap a label on it calling it adult and use that label to insulate us from the world while feeling proud about the accomplishment? I feel sorry for people like this. And I feel angry that it happens because perfectly beautiful human beings become dried-up versions of what they once were and it’s viewed as a good thing.

I am all for maturity. I am all for being responsible. But more and more I feel I’d just be insulted if someone called me a grown-up.