Today I had the overwhelming feeling that despite being 26 years old, I am still firmly within a personal era of childhood. Not a childhood of skipping around on the playground carefree, but one of being somewhat powerless over the circumstances of one’s life.
In this way, it seems that childhood extends throughout our lifetimes. What does it mean to be an adult? I have the wherewithal to cope effectively with this powerlessness, despite the fact that it is frustrating and sometimes painful to me. Hopefully, I also am able to use the shifting ground of circumstance to my benefit, by taking opportunities as they come and seeing the potential in each situation. Although that’s not the carefree life, maybe it allows me to lessen my cares as I remember that I’m not in charge, nor do I know the ultimate solutions or answers to each question.
In fact, the childhoods we experience transform over our lives, I think. I have responsibilities now that go beyond keeping my room clean, but I still have this powerlessness, and oftentimes a feeling of vulnerability. Powerlessness and vulnerability ebb and flow throughout our lives. So too, I hope that I can say that sometimes I have moments of uncomplicated thought, moments of wonder and joy, moments when someone else takes care of me. Those moments may come sporadically or infrequently, but they are a part of the ongoingness of childhood. Now, with those moments, I have an adult appreciation of what I am experiencing.
I wonder, with the gaining of skill and the establishment of a pattern of living that’s not based around the paradigm of school, how the childhood that I inhabit will transform. I know that in a new job there will be plenty of powerlessness and vulnerability, plenty of moments of discovery, and hopefully an encouraging amount of wonder and help from others. Does the feeling of childhood eventually melt away altogether, as responsibility and the constant consciousness of thought expand, or does it always remain, even as the thinnest residual film? Perhaps one day I will be able to answer my own questions, and at that point I will know I’m no longer a child – but it seems to me that day is illusory, and happily so, since the reliance on others we learn in childhood is one of the greatest gifts of that age.