Coming of Age

This blog required a good deal of thought. At first I felt as I always do when writing an entry: "I don't know if I've ever experienced that, but I'll come back to it later." For most blogs I can think of something pretty quickly. That was not the case with this one. I had a genuinely difficult time thinking of a coming of age moment. After thinking on it for an extended period of time, I have come to the conclusion that not only have I never experienced a coming of age event, I would go so far as to say that no person my age has. Not only are we all still young; I doubt there is one among us who truly knows what it means to come of age. In a society that celebrates youth, change and beauty, the idea that one could progress to the level of a mature being in fewer than thirty or forty years is completely dismissable.

Besides the fact that no facet of our culture has reached its final stage, the inevitability of which I am hesitant to concede, the modern concept of adulthood is as inconsistent as it is unappealing. If adulthood is understood to mean self-sustaining, independent, and practical, what use does an adult have for marriage beyond emotional ties? Does it make sense that we are raised with the lone wolf/maverick archetypes impressed on us through every avenue of learning, from academia to athleticism, only to be deemed less valuable because we choose not to weave our personal fabric into a tangled mesh of contrary ideals? Marriage no longer serves a practical purpose in this society, and yet it is generally acknowledged as a "normal" adult thing to do. This rejection of the pragmatic illustrates the disjointed nature of the concept of adulthood. 

If I am scared, have I come of age? If I am irresponsible, have I come of age? No single event can shape one's identity so greatly without being greatly traumatic, leading me to ponder: Is maturity born of tragedy? And if so, is cynicism the only appropriate view of the world? To see all life's majesty, and to find it wanting, a dresser who's paint is worn and in need of varnish? And if not, is there any other method to reaching adulthood other than slowly, sometimes painfully, and always clumsily? It appears to me that adulthood is no more a destination than a trail on which to find one's way. Nobody follows the Trail step-for-step, and each person's journey differs slightly from those around them. There is a limit to how many hikers the Trail can fit, and it is being pushed at every turn. The hikers all rush to the middle without heeding the end; as competitors in a canoe race that ends in a waterfall. They paddle as hard as they can, and no sooner is victory claimed than the ground falls out from beneath them.

And so, I have determined that adulthood is nothing more than a path, and one cannot reach it any more than one can pick it up and bring it with them. Everyone strays from the Trail here and there. As their feet crush the underbrush, the Trail widens. New paths are formed, new shortcuts discovered. But shortcuts are dangerous. There are reasons that they are not as worn as the other paths. And once one comes to the end of a shortcut, they find that they missed a piece of the Trail, and are much closer to its End.

The Trail's End is an interesting place. When people see that their remaining steps are numbered, they panic. Some fall. Some try to fight the tides of the crowd, always in vain. A few even try to push others ahead of them, under the false impression that the End might grow full, as a dog might. Only those content to reach the End at an easy pace find themselves Enlightened. That is what coming of age is. No societal influence or ethnocentric ideals, merely acceptance of the futility of struggling against the tide. 

Sunday Afternoons

It's 5:00 PM. A Sunday afternoon. The trees are stagnant, bathing in a lazy sun who holds the day in Its waning stare.  I am, as always, in the basement of a one floor house with the smell of laundry, married with curry powder, clinging to the pleasantly dank air (cool enough to fight the heat, stale and dark enough to pretend that the passage of time could be slowed as easily as the flow of a stream by careless leaves). We have just returned from the large trampoline in the backyard, where our merry play mocked the sun for Its indifference. Though It was present - as It always was- it could not join us. It merely soaked into the treetops, forced to witness our regular jubilation on a day that was supposedly its own.

But the sun would have its revenge. Even in Its final moments, Its rays would tease me on my way home, a fifteen minute walk down one road, then up another, to my own home on Mountain View road. I was never in much of a hurry, though. When that hour sets in, at the close of the weekend and the coming of school with the tide, time loses its step. No longer do the unforgiving Ticks and Tocks that reign over every minute crack unabashedly into the wall of sanity against which I lean. And yet, this is the most frustrating time of the week. Despite the absence of the temporal metronome, the sun keeps time perfectly. Triumphant in Its ballad, the walk home is an encore, a symphony of regrets, who's composer watches every beat. Maybe once or twice, in the early days, I tried to outpace It's meter. But the sun was clever, or perhaps simply petty, and melted the pavement so that it flowed downhill (The entirety of the trek was uphill). I know better now, and my pace obeys Its wishes.

This struggle recurs every Sunday, without fail. Both of us, the sun and I, fail to see the cycle of reciprocated animosity, truly believing ourselves, respectively, to be the one wronged. What right had I to rejoice on Its namesake day? To mock Its dying refrain? And what right had the sun to compose my free time? To demand my complacency for a concert I did not wish to attend? Neither of us were justified in our accusations; in fact, we were both wrong. For my mocking was out of envy- as was Its intrusiveness- It would watch upon every Sunday for as long as It wished. Yet It could never absorb the joy It observed. No amount of fiery yearning, of explosive jealousy, of simmering hate, would alter this eternal dynamic.

And so the Composer wept, for He would never join His audience. And His tears sweetened the music. And the music brought tears to His listeners, because they knew the concert would soon come to a close. And they raged against Him, for they believed him to be an eternal fixture, an undying member of the celestial audience. But he could no longer hear the music. And so the Composer wept.