Some Growing Up to Do

500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider

It might be the heat of this summer day, but do you notice those spectral beings? They look like adults, but they’re not. They are the twenty-somethings who float through college and then boomerang back to live at home, and fifty-somethings who have a mid-life crisis, then morph into Mustang owners who date teenagers. Delaying the onset of responsibility and the start of life is so common now, it’s hardly a trend; more like an epidemic. It can happen at any time, not just when you’re young. Life isn’t in drive so much; often the shifter gets punched into reverse and people are suddenly moving backwards.

First, a little compassion. According to an article by Robin Marantz Henig in the New York Times Magazine, the average 20 year old is going through a lot of changes. One third of 20-somethings change residence every year. Forty percent move back home with parents at least once. Many hold seven jobs through the decade between 20 and 30. That’s a lot of turmoil.

I had a lot of that in my 20s certainly, as my father will attest, but I never moved back home. That simply wasn’t done back then.We wanted to be out in the world, and yes, we held lots of jobs. I worked in restaurants with inflammable chefs and later, when I wrote cartoons, I worked with inflammable executive producers.

Life is supposed to be an old song that goes something like you grow up, go to school, start a career and a family and watch the sun set with a spouse who shares the journey. Everybody experiencing that lately? I didn’t think so.

I’m noticing that there’s no long and winding road. It’s more of a spiral, and it’s not spinning just the 20-somethings until they are dizzy. The dizziness is widespread. Marriages of decades implode and partners become single again. Whole sectors of the economy evaporate and people need to re-train. Natural disasters are taking away homes. Because of these changes from within and outside us, no matter what our age, we’re all adolescents again. Erik Erikson’s eight-stage model of development might turn out to be an infinite-stage model. As had been said before, we’re living life in the first draft.

“The first draft of anything is shit.” – Ernest Hemingway

Have another glass of wine, Papa, and chill. I prefer what Elmore Leonard has to say.

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” – Elmore Leonard

It would be great to live in drive all the time, never having to shift into reverse, and it would be great to skip a few boring parts, like Elmore Leonard does in his novels. But life’s first draft turns out to be a pretty bumpy rehearsal for a (hopefully, soon to come) master performance. Surprisingly, for me, I’m feeling for those parents who aren’t encouraging their kids to grow up right away. Some of those parents regret punching the accelerator and rocketing into marriage-career-family-mortgage so soon themselves.

I’ve been trying some breathing exercises lately (called pranayama by the yogis) and some meditation, too, and finding that instead of relentlessly punching the accelerator, a pause now and again has helped me move forward with even more purposeful energy.

Photo by joiseyshowaa via Creative Commons License

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