Grow Up

"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd." -- Flannery O'Conner

What does it mean: to grow up?

To grow up means to cease to be a child; to fly past childhood, to the next level, the “next step.” Well, then what does it mean to be a child? A child is a person who is provided for, who doesn’t know his way, who is blooming into himself.

You are an adult, in worldly terms, if you provide, whether for yourself or for others. You are an adult if you make money, because money is the great provider. It doesn’t really matter how you make it, so long as you do make it; irrelevant if you put all of your being into acquiring money, relevant if you just reach it, even if it’s provided for you. So long as you keep the appearance of providing: that’s what matters.

So then: an adult isn’t one who provides, per se, but is one who has the means of providing -- who has money. Because this money can be the result of no real work -- chalking out routine, doing your job out of conditioning rather than authentic intending, thinking, suffering -- it isn’t necessary that the one who has it is responsible for having it. You are an adult only maybe if you have money.

So it goes.

The world reasons backwards: money, therefore he must be a hard worker, a decision maker, a diligent person, a worthy citizen; no money, therefore he must either be lazy or lost, time to get in line.

The Christian understanding of adulthood eschews appearance and dives inward: you are an adult if you -- really you -- make choices, if you struggle to be the person God has in mind for you. You are not an adult if you provide, you see, but if you yield to God as the provider, if you do His will, which is more than sufficient in providing. The problem, of course, is that to the world letting God provide is indistinguishable from not giving a damn.

There comes a time in every life -- many, many times for some -- where the choice between adulthood in the worldly sense and adulthood in the spiritual sense come into conflict. This choice is essentially one of appearance: whether to appear like you’re making choices and cashing in, or appear like you’re childishly aloof and really being authentically you.

I’m at this time in my life. Virtually everyone I know, most of whom I make an attempt to hide from, either explicitly or implicitly point out: be an adult, it’s time to grow up, time to make decisions. Stop screwing around and make money. Plan ahead, think of a family. Stop being aloof. Stop reading so much. Get back into society. Pick out a career; pick something and run with it. Stop wasting so much damn time.

But the outer isn’t the inner. I read a lot, in order that I might be who I am, that I might actually learn the layers of life instead of just greedily, passively passing by; in order that I might one day have the fuel to be a decent enough writer, transcending the excremental prose and sensationalistic plots of contemporary writing; in order that I might actually have something to say to someone, to teach them -- “what arrogance!” -- what it means to live. The world leaves no room for an individual’s in order that, unless it’s making money. Pure and simple.

Take a moment to observe the grownups. They have inner rings with small circumferences. They know routine, whether sports, television, gossip, church (without spirit), or anything you can think of. They claim to know decisions, but few of them ever make decisions, which is why routine is so pervasive. They know work, even intellectual work, but be it externalized, sweat-drenched, muscle-pumping work or internalized, intellectualized, brain-burdening work, it’s all analogous to an ox pulling a cart: on and on, go where routine compels you, don’t question why, enjoy your cheap rewards.

We speak of adults as ones who make decisions, who are independent, who provide, but really they don’t make decisions, they aren’t independent, and they don’t in the deepest sense provide. They pull the cart and call it decision making. They annul their independence by shacking themselves up in routine; take away the routine, throw them into a completely new situation, and they would die from despair. They provide in the sense that a falling stone thinks it’s providing its own fall. A child closes its eyes and thinks the big bad world is no longer there. An adult closes his eyes and calls it sight. Adults, see, are worse than children.

This rambling diatribe might simply be a warning. I warn you, reader: if you meet me in the outside world and I seem a little strange, uninspired, squandering possibilities, it’s probably because I’m interested in things like truth, meaning, and other moneyless routes. Should you try these things?

Well, do you want to grow up?