Growing Up
"When you're a little kid you're a bit of everything; Scientist, Philosopher, Artist. Sometimes it seems like growing up is giving these things up one at a time." Sometimes. Butthead.


We come to certain moments in our lives when we just have to face the facts that we are growing up. One aspect of this problem lies in the fact that however the situation of our lives is playing out, as we become more aware of the world we can ultimately control how much we allow ourselves to grow up. We have the final say in how much influence we let the world have in affecting our lives. As I sit here behind a desk at work and type my thoughts into a computer I am reminiscent of the coming of age story of one Doogie Howser, M.D.. Dr. Howser was a young man forced into many adult situations long before most people ever have to experience them. We would watch these play out over thirty minute episodes every week, and the highlight (for me anyways) was at the end of this time when he would summarize his learning into the blue screen of his computer diary.

In my life the best narratives about the joys and pains of growing up have come from popular television characters, including Dr. Howser, Kevin Arnold, Mike Seaver, and to a somewhat lesser extent the Golden Girls. And so as I have spent the last decade growing up I have often compared events to my life to events in these television shows about adolescence. Of course, I never had a Winnie Cooper and I'm certainly no brilliant surgeon, but eventually the tangible elements such as those disappear and what we are left with is very much the same things across the board.

I don't know when I realized everything is not as it seems, but it was certainly before my parents got divorced. It was before I ever saw The Big Lebowski; but I guarantee you it was after I realized Jesus Christ looked nothing like that dude they have hanging up in churches across the world, and well before I was made aware that there was life outside the walls of my car. That sentence brought a very strange element into the equation. As I was typing it I came to the point where my mind was searching for a way to end it, and ultimately I landed on the only thing that has really been constant in my life over the past several years: my car. My 1997 Pontiac Grand Am with power windows that do not work most of the time. Addresses have changed, colleges and life paths are nowhere near their place five years ago; bedrooms have come and gone, my childhood home has been sold, my family has divided and moved across the globe. I don't recognize anything anymore, except my car. Even as I imagine selling it within the year, as I focus on getting rid of as much as I possibly can before leaving in January, it never occurred to me that my car has been the only thing I have had constant in my life for almost everyday of the past seven years. Something as trivial as that, imagine!

This post is nowhere near where I expected it to be, that seems to be happening with these. So I was talking tonight with a girl I work with. She is originally from Venezuela and now lives here with her parents, although they still own houses and business' back home. She is getting her Masters in Education and student teaching this semester. She's a few years older than I am and was talking about her experience at University back in her home country, and how she came here to study English only and then return home. She talked about how when she arrived here she was so naive about the world, about life. She had been raised under her parents, never had to work while she was in school, and generally unaware of many aspects of the overall world. I know, we all can name a dozen girls and boys we know like this, but what she said somehow seemed different. As we talked she complained about her long days and being tired of all this working and going to class (okay, she wasn't the only one complaining!!!) but I couldn't help but correlate her issues with coming to understanding with my own feelings over the past few years. It's interesting what it takes for us to become aware of the world.

For some of us, it seems the more we find out about the world, the more we can't stop realizing how life really is.

This is all starting to look lame in hindsight, this post. Someone out there is going to read this and say "Hey kid, glad you could join the rest of us! The world sucks, we all realized that long ago, so get used to it." And I guess it could boil down to that, but I don't think so. I mean yeah, I have come to realize that we...that this world...well, I mean...yeah. Kevin and Winnie didn't wind up together in the end. But Kevin married someone, and he had a son he was able to play catch with.

There's poverty, and murder, and hate in this world I will never understand. There's physics equations and biological matters that my brain will never grasp. There's books I never will read and girls I never will kiss. There are new cars & CD's I just can't afford to buy; there are friends I just let slip away and others I don't even know exist yet. I've come to realize that by realizing this I am growing up.

The amount I let soak in on a daily basis is dependent on how much I want to grow up that day. Some days go by and I don't give a thought to how much I would like a new car with leather seats and a nice house in a comfortable suburb. Many days go by when I don't spend time in meditation and prayer. Days go by where I don't know what is going on in my world; then there are days when I can't get enough news. There are days where I cry and pray and talk to whoever will listen. There are days when I curse my car and her broken windows and question the direction my life seems to be taking. But regardless of what my brain is telling me that day, the fact remains that it all starts by me waking up. I can be in a bad way for months at a time but it all comes back to being given a chance to witness another day. So I guess there have been two constants in my life, and this one has lasted a lot longer than 132,000 miles. It's waking up; not closing my eyes, but opening them. My brain can be telling me whatever it needs to be telling me, but my senses are the ones I should really be listening to.

There have been days lately where I have wanted to be a kid again. It's on days like those that you question if you really know how to survive growing up.  ¶ 4/27/2005 01:19:00 AM