It’s
a rainy Sunday, and the only thing I’ve done today is laze around, listening to
podcasts, reading, and play with the orphanage directors’ dogs. I was particularly struck
by one episode of the podcast “Millennial,” in which our melodramatic hero
Megan interviews a guy who sailed around the world after college about
postponing growing up and trying to be Peter Pan. He tells a story about a friend
who is married, has a stable job he likes, a house and a dog, and sailor guy
feels like he “need[s] to start sprinting just to catch up.” Megan asks why he
wants to be Peter Pan, what he’s afraid of. He says that he’s afraid of
“missing out on what [he] really want[s].” Megan uses this opportunity to go
off on a soliloquy and says that at some point, she knows that she needs to
“face [her] shit,” go through the storm, and deal with her
problems/insecurities/uncertainties head on. Now, after this guy has done what
he thought he really wanted, which is sail around the world, he doesn’t
know what he wants next, or at all.
Megan
then switches gears to talking about how she sees social media presences
differently now. “When my friends are standing in front of a volcano or on top
of a mountain in a far-away country,” she wonders if those smiles are forced,
if they’ve actually got real problems they’re trying to deal with that you
don’t see in these happy posts. Wow, girl, sounds like you’re just trying to
make yourself feel better, given the fact that you’re having problems with your
boyfriend and getting rejected from fellowships and things. “Are they climbing
this mountain because they don’t want to grow up?” she asks. Ouch. Right in the
feels, that one. Are these posts, she asks, “the best way to hide what is
actually happening?” OK there, sweetheart. First of all, climbing mountains in
a far-away country (AKA my life) doesn’t mean that I’m escaping tons of
problems at home, and that I’m trying to put oft growing up. I think she has a
skewed idea of what “growing up” actually means. No one really knows for sure,
but I don’t see it as having to face problems instead of running away from
them. You do this literally your entire life, not just when you enter
“adulthood.” Growing up may mean that you have to solve these problems more
independently, or that you build character by learning to deal with new and
different problems, but a no point in my childhood could I get away with not
facing my own problems head-on. Growing up doesn’t mean that you can’t go out
and have fun and climb mountains It doesn’t mean that you have to be stuck in
one place and start turning into stone. You don’t have to be sucked into that
mindset. Just because that happens to some (most?) people as they “grow up”
doesn’t mean that you have to accept that as the status quo and do the same. If
you need to feel included in a club of people going through the same
experiences as you, there’s not just one way to do that. You don’t have to only
join the club of people who get cubicle jobs, get married, have some kids and
ferns on the windowsill, and plant some immovable roots and turn into a boring
old person. There are so many other (legitimate/successful/respected) life
paths you can follow.
When asked about
growing up, a faithful and wise friend said that it is “in a sense, yes, being
tied down. Putting something besides oneself first: job, SO, kids, whatever.
When you’re not #1 anymore, then you’re grown” So there’s another perspective
to think about.
Now
this begs the question, did I join Peace Corps and move to Lesotho and learn to
climb mountains to escape my problems and put off growing up? Absolutely not.
Sure, I did it in part because I didn’t really know what it was I actually
wanted out of life, like sailboat boy, but my time here has helped me narrow
down what it is that I do want. I wasn’t so naïve that I thought I could run
away from my problems by coming here. Whatever problems I may or may not have
had, I would be taking them along with me. There’s no such thing as leaving
your baggage at the door. I have taken these two years to try to solve my main
problem, which at the moment is “WTF am I gonna do with my life?” and have
spent a lot of time hashing out my many options. So, in a way, “escaping” to
Lesotho has really helped me solve my problems, not run away from them. Lesotho
has not postponed my growing up. In so many ways, it has forced me to grow up
as I have navigated a new country/culture and too many unforeseen speed bumps (and
also many successes!) along the way.
I
read in This Side of Paradise that the joy of youth is actually the loss of it
by experiencing new things. Then there are fewer and fewer things to do for the
first time, until you may (if you’re not careful) stop looking for new things
to do. This is when you’ve lost our youth: by failing to seek out new
places/people/experiences. So I guess, in a way, coming here has scratched that
itch of losing my “haven’t done”s but at the same time, my youth-ometer isn’t
dwindling because I’m crossing things off. The level is the same, maybe even
rising, because I’ve seen just a taste of what there is still left to do and
where there is still left to go out there.
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