It has been an absolutely dreary day in Streeterville. It's currently 40 degrees with light rain at the Mini. It' what I think of as Arkansas winter outside, wet and cold and windy. Not that it's that cold really, but when you add drizzly rain and wind, it kind of goes right through you like winter wind through a house without insulation. (Insert big sigh here.) The view from the 14th floor is just gray, or should I say grey (British spelling) since grey, cold, and damp is ultimately very Londonish, or San Franciscoish for that matter. On the subject of San Francisco, I believe Mark Twain said, "I spent the coldest winter of my life, one summer in San Francisco."
The sad thing about the current weather is that it's mid-April and it was Cubs Opening Day today. They went ahead and played in this crap. At least they won. I hope no one got frostbite, or consumption. I've always loved the sound of that. Consumption sounds so much more romantic of a way to cough up blood than to say you've contracted tuberculosis. OK, so no one gets TB from the cold and damp, just pneumonia. Not so romantic sounding either, unless the winning pitcher threw a no hitter with.....Ready? "walking pneumonia." Get it? No one got any hits. They all walked. He had "walking pneumonia." Oh never mind. I just cannot help myself sometimes.
I've been wondering a lot lately about just what it is that makes a person a grownup. Babs just finished co-authoring a book about why young people today are postponing the traditional markers of adulthood. Now academia has laid out some very definite signs of adulthood, marriage, living on one's own and not with parents, buying a home, having children... But that's not what I'm talking about. I suppose they have a point in a very academic way, but when someone says to you, "Oh grow up," what exactly do they mean?
In this last case, I suppose it means behaving in a fashion not considered juvenile. Sometimes that means don't laugh because someone farted. Sometimes it means "Get a job and keep it." To some people it can mean, stop moving from city to city, stay in one place, and live a semblance of a normal life. When you start looking at what is grown-up in that way, it becomes a very individual kind of thing, and who's to say what grownup is?
My older sister once told me that she thought no one ever is really grownup until they have children, and have to care for someone other than themselves. She has a view of grownup in which grownup means to quit being selfish and self-obsessed and learn to give to others. I also believe she saw her children as extensions of herself and thus a means to show her own success when those children succeeded as a result of her own giving. This means of measuring one's own success and grownupedness, in some cases, can be a bit disconcerting. Children have free will. (Any Calvinists out there still, who don't believe that?) They do things despite the parents' best efforts. They disappoint. If a child never grows up on your personal grownup scale, and they were the measure of your success, does that mean you never really grew up successfully?
I have many friends who are artists and general counterculture ne'erdowells. Many of them have rejected getting jobs that at one time would have been thought of as "Selling out to the man." They have cobbled together existences and managed to live a non-traditional and personally meaningful life, but they never had the kind of job that promotes comfort in one's retirement. Are they grown-up? There are those who would say to them, "Oh grow up! Get a job and sock away something for your retirement. Get some health insurance. You're going to get old and what are you going to do then?" Good question. Is that being grownup? That is to say, "Is behaving in a responsible manner by planning for your old age what it means to be grownup?"
By many of these measurements, even by the academic definition, I most certainly am a grownup, though I probably never became a grownup until I was at least 40 years old by those definitions. I never set out on a real career and began saving for retirement until I was 40. I never even owned a new car until I was 40. I didn't own a house until I was 46. I still don't have any kids, and at this point it's highly likely that I never will. I'm happy with that. I hold a decent job. I make a decent living with a decent pension attached to it. I've been married to the same person for 20 plus years. I pay my bills. I have an accountant, a lawyer I use when I need to, and even a semi-regular mortgage broker for when I buy or refinance a home. I think I'm pretty grownup.
Yet, there are many things about me that lead people to question that. I don't have children. I travel all over the globe and spend scads of money in the process. I take guitar lessons at the age of 58. I go out and run distance races with 25 year olds. I still find puns humorous. I still think I can write a book, and haven't given up on that. I still like listening to loud music (and playing it on occasion). I drive a Mini Cooper, and not what most people think of as a sensible car. Hey, Babs boxed in the Golden Gloves when she was 40 and won. Are the two of us refusing to grow up? Are we behaving in an unseemly manner for middle-aged people? Or are we just re-defining what it means to be grownup?
For the record, my parents didn't have a lot of money, and I put myself through college. I've been supporting myself, and making my own life decisions since I was 17 years old. That means I've been doing what it takes to survive without assistance for 41 years now. I think I've pretty well earned the title "Grownup." Screw what anyone else thinks about what it means to be "Grownup" I've achieved it on my own terms, and I'm willing to give others the leeway to define "Grownup" on their own terms. I also reserve the right to disagree with them about the appropriate way to be a grownup. Some ways of living are dumb and ill-conceived. Some ways are just different. Trouble is I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, even if I'm already there.
No comments:
Post a Comment