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Adulthood – Conversation Lesson

AJ: Y’know, walking around San Francisco, especially in this neighborhood, the Mission, there’s so many what we used to call yuppies, y’know, young urban professionals, basically young rich kids.

Kristin: Yeah.

AJ: And I say kids because what strikes me is that on one hand, y’know, technically they’re adults but they…I’m just struck by how they still act and behave so much like teenagers still. And I’m talking about people in their 20s, even their 30s, that they look like they never grow up.

Kristin: Or older, even.

AJ: Sadly, sometimes even older, right?

Kristin: Yeah. And that’s not everyone in the city, but definitely there’s…there’s a large population of what you’re describing.

AJ: It’s a cultural trend, I think, too. We see it strongly in San Francisco but, even in, even myself I know that…like for me, growing up, there was never like a clear point where I felt like I became an adult. Now I’m a man, y’know?

Kristin: Right. Y’know, having done some training with Malidoma, he talks about how…well, in his culture and I think other indigenous cultures also…

AJ: Yeah.

Kristin: …that there is an initiation that boys and girls go through. I think at like 12, 13 years old.

AJ: Quite early.

Kristin: Yeah, that is that coming of age, that passing from adolescence into adulthood.

AJ: Yes.

Kristin: And how he says, like, in modern society, not just America but in more Westernized countries, modern society, we don’t have that.

AJ: Yeah, I’d say beyond the West. I see it in the East, too. It’s everywhere.

Kristin: Yeah. And it’s unfortunate then because it creates a lot of problems.

AJ: Well, yeah, you get this phenomenon of people who never quite grow up, who never feel completely as adults. I mean even myself, I don’t know when it happened, where I could say I completely felt like an adult, like a man. I mean, in some ways, never, I guess. But I guess for me really it was my late 30s, way in my late 30s when I finally launched my own business and really became very, very, very independent. There were other things that happened earlier in my life in my late 20s, but it was probably not at least until my late 20s where I really began to feel like an adult and before that in many, many, many ways still felt like a kid, a teenager in some ways.

Kristin: Well, there…I don’t remember how old I was but I do remember there being a point where I was conflicted with gosh, I’m not really a girl anymore but I’m not a woman either.

AJ: Like it seems negative.

Kristin: Yes, it seemed so negative to think of myself as a woman. And so I struggled with that for a few years, several years, I don’t know, and then at some point it just kind of clicked with me like, I’m a woman. And it just seemed very natural. But the funny thing is, it must have been before I met Joe that I actually started thinking, yeah, I’m a woman now, and I felt comfortable with that. It’s probably like mid-30s maybe.

AJ: Which is so late, traditionally.

Kristin: It is, it is late. And then I met Joe and to this day we have this silly argument about where he doesn’t like to hear me refer to myself as a woman. I’m a girl to him because he, y’know, I think Joe would really like to hold onto that younger image.

AJ: Yeah.

Kristin: Which so many people do in this culture.

AJ: Yeah.

Kristin: And it’s just the unfortunate thing, like I was saying again, where we don’t have that initiation where we go through and so it is…to get older it’s viewed as very negative.

AJ: And I think it keeps people weak and I think maybe it’s designed that way, not to get too conspiracy theory with it, but, y’know, young people, kids, they’re more easily manipulated. They’re less confident. And so if we can keep people in that sort of state of mind it, I think it keeps the people in power feeling safer. But the other thing is that by this kind of youth obsession, I think it’s because…I know for me, like I always associated being a man, being an adult with boredom. Because I looked around, I saw so many other men, who just seemed so damn bored and boring, who weren’t excited about learning. Who weren’t enthusiastic. Things that were important to me and still are.

Kristin: Lost their passion for life, basically.

AJ: Right, right. And so it’s sad that we associate adulthood with that.

Kristin: Yeah.

AJ: It doesn’t need to be.

Kristin: Yeah. Y’know, it’s to me, like, to look to some indigenous cultures, like Native Americans, for example, and how elders were…they were considered to have so much wisdom and people actually looked up to them.

AJ: Yeah, we did that old lesson about elders where…

Kristin: Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

AJ: …that’s healthy, that’s a healthy society where all different age levels are respected and contribute to the society…

Kristin: Yeah.

AJ: …for their different strengths. And what’s unhealthy is what we have now where it’s all about being young and so you have 45-year-olds, 50-year-olds still trying to do their obsessive best to appear young, which is just insane.

Kristin: Yeah, it’s really…it’s unbalanced actually.

AJ: And like you said, like initiation ceremonies or rituals to come into that adulthood. In those traditional societies, it was about claiming your power, I think.

Kristin: Yeah.

AJ: Like, I am now autonomous. I am a full adult. I am a full contributor to this society, this family…

Kristin: Community.

AJ: …community.

Kristin: Yeah, exactly.

AJ: And that’s one of the big problems and you see it with the so-called kids, whatever their age, here is that there is no sense of community. There’s no sense of caring about other people really or the society as a whole. It’s just me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me and that’s part of the youth culture because, y’know, youth are narcissistic.

Kristin: Well, but that lack of community, that’s a part of modern society as well.

AJ: For sure, yes.

Kristin: Y’know, keep people isolated…

AJ: Yeah.

Kristin: …we’ve all become so very isolated.

AJ: Isolated by age. Y’know, we talked about it again in that elders thing, about how unnatural that is. But it’s also unnatural for people to stay stuck, y’know, in a certain phase of life. Y’know, stay stuck in childhood or stay stuck in adolescence. It’s not good, I think, for individuals because it keeps you feeling kind of weak and it’s a bit of a feeling of powerlessness. I know, y’know, you feel like you’re not responsible and it’s fun but on the other hand, y’know, I think that if you don’t feel like an adult even when you’re in your 20s, 30s or above, you’re also kind of, you’ve given up a lot of your personal power.

Kristin: Yeah, I agree.