Approaching Adulthood

Driving home last week, a flashy car passed me and I felt myself entering into the life of the person I imagined driving: the aggressive presentations, risky business decisions, and tedious professional relationships he had to make to earn his money. I began to feel anxious and unworthy, shrinking from a world where posturing, competition, and ambition are the only way to survive. I do this a dozen times a day, trying on the lives of each person I encounter as though searching for a hipper outfit at a second-hand store. Are they happier, more secure, more fulfilled? I ask myself. What would it take to have their life and am I up to the challenge? The answer is always “yes, they are happier” and “no, you don’t have what it takes”. Much of the fear, envy, and fragility I’ve been struggling with, I realized, is not the reality of the world or who I am, but the sense that arises when I disconnect from myself and enter someone else’s life, even the life of an idealized version of myself. So I’m trying something new.

“Stay,” I whispered softly to myself. “Come back to me,” I coaxed as I pulled my awareness back from his world into my own. I breathed back into my own belly, refocused on seeing out of my own eyes the scene right in front of me, relaxed around the feelings and let them pass. “Maybe that’s his life and maybe it’s not,” I counseled. “Maybe that’s the way the world is and maybe it’s not. What we know is that today your basic needs are met. You have time for what matters to you. And if circumstances change, we’ll find a way through.”

What I noticed in that moment of coming home, and what I later told my sister, is that I can’t remember the last time I was hugged, and I don’t miss it. There is no aching emptiness in my heart, no itchiness on my skin. Even at dance, I find I just want to feel more deeply into what it’s like to be me, in my own skin, following my own rhythm. My sister was amazed and wanted to know what had changed. She had, after all, made a speech at my wedding acknowledging that now that I was married, my deepest wish was granted: to be hugged every day. That ache had led me into many questionably compatible relationships with friends and lovers, and left lots of collateral damage, eventually including my marriage.

This shift feels like the outcome of years of my own lament, self-reflection, and determination collaborating with Mystery or, as she understood it, grace. Firstly, I encountered an unparalleled sense of isolation which felt as though everyone around me was either unable to love me or I had lost the capacity to receive their love. Secondly, there was no place to hide. All of the places I had felt cradled were gone and there was no authority figure to soothe, protect, or lay out my path. I felt like a newly molted lobster, tossed raw and exposed into a cold and abrasive world. Thirdly, my belief that we cannot escape, only delay, the lessons we need to learn kept me from giving up completely. I knew I would not survive the strain of this without a dramatically new way of living.

I was gradually becoming aware that my suffering was being perpetuated by the ways in which I was still living like a child, waiting for someone else to choose me and provide me with safety, comfort, confidence, and guidance. I knew many people cared for me, but they all had their own challenges and couldn’t solve mine. It was no longer appropriate or even possible for me to be parented by anyone but me. With that realization came deep grief, and a profound sense of relief. No one would ever see, hear, or love me as deeply or unconditionally as I needed, but I could, and I am always there. I was ready to step into a fuller version of adulthood.

With mentoring from several elders who appeared when I was ready, I have begun rebuilding a much simpler and more manageable life based on a truer assessment my needs, gifts and limitations and more supportive of my continued unfolding. Adulthood is being revealed to me as grounded in these key elements.

 

Freedom from entitlement

No one owes me anything – affection, appreciation, cookies, promotions – so I am free from the need to manipulate and the tendency to resent. I am free to simply feel blessed and grateful for those moments of kindness, connection, and opportunity that come to me. I also don’t owe anyone anything. I can say no to a job, to a dance, to a chore, to a friendship, to a whole city, lifestyle, or belief system. There are no right or wrong choices, just consequences I can choose to live with or try to do something about. I am my own unique and special self, and I am also completely ordinary. I am simply trying, like so many of us, to live the best life I can given my best understanding of the shifting nature of myself and our world.

 

Living with Discomfort

Michael Meade defines becoming an adult as reconciling opposite pulls – sitting with discomfort long enough for the third element, our soul or genius, to reveal new insights and solutions. And Francis Weller defines maturity as the tension between grief and gratitude, encouraging us to form an apprenticeship to grief and to walk always in its company. Practices from Michael Brown, Robert Masters, Pema Chodran, and Kristin Neff all expanded my capacity to be aware of and allow a broader spectrum of feelings without being consumed by them, and to treat myself with acceptance and kindness.

When we can access a sense of love and acceptance no matter what is happening in or around us, we are free from a sense of entitlement and compulsive pleasure-seeking, which often perpetuate suffering for us, our communities, and our planet. We know we can feel unhappy, frightened, and lost, and still care for ourselves and meet our basic obligations. We gradually become more authentic and generous in the way we express ourselves and contribute to the well-being of others.

 

Soul-Rooted Service

Shifting our orientation from personal healing and gratification toward fulfilling our unique calling isn’t a simple choice between giving up or diving in deep end. Real change in ourselves and the world, as Mark Manson says, is like turning the Titanic. It starts with breaking what Bill Plotkin describes as the agreement we made in childhood to hide a part of ourselves away so we could complete the developmental task of creating a socially acceptable personality. We must then access considerable self-love to tolerate the uncomfortable period between becoming aware of a prickly deficit in ourselves, a brilliant gift we are afraid to give, or a crying need in the world and our ability to do something meaningful about it.

Over time, honing and offering what is uniquely ours becomes our most potent source of sustenance and belonging regardless of outer validation or compensation. We come to embody a more soulful life, which the poet Lorque describes as characterized by duende: “bitter anguish and passionate intensity mediated by the discipline of artistic expression.”

 

The transition from dependent child to grounded, responsible, contributing adult is a journey from external definition, validation, security, and entitlement to living, partnering, and serving from the core of our inner self. And in between there is a space of damp darkness and lostness. The blessing of not having the protection of wealth, social status, and extensive community – the blessing of essentially fasting in the wilderness – is having to lean into the struggle to be fully responsible for our own life.

Through this struggle, we discover that adults ask for what they need and accept or adjust based on the response. They don’t manipulate, steal, or complain. They meet their needs for food, shelter, clothing, and rest. They don’t rely on charity or on others to set boundaries for them. They treat others with respect and relate to them appropriately based on their understanding of who they are. They don’t shame, resent or envy others, or try to please or be accepted by everyone. And adults make decisions, stand by them, and practice self-forgiveness. They don’t wait for others to decide for them, or expect perfection.

What initiates this transition, guides us through the process, and grounds us in our new form is Mystery. Just like the imaginal cells in the body of the larvae or caterpillar, Mystery knows when the time is right to dissolve and what new form we will take. Our job is to let go and then to learn to move in the world in a new way, slow and steady, and with awe and reverence for how it has all come about.

Nancy

There is only one life you can call your own and a thousand others you can call by any name you want. Hold to your own truth at the center of the image you were born with. Whatever you hear from the water, remember, it wants you to carry the sound of its truth on your lips. Remember, in this place no one can hear you, and out of the silence you can make a promise it will kill you to break. That way you’ll find what is real and what is not.” – David Whyte, “All the True Vows”