Becoming an Adult

A few weeks ago a colleague of mine gave a talk to teenagers on the topic of adulthood. At his own expense, he began with a story from childhood in which he remembered having spoken to an elder about how the “kids” in his family were innocently attracted to the new cartoon channels being offered on Cable TV (also new), while he, being older and wiser, preferred the news, in particular news of the New York Mets. To the best of his recollection, he was eight-going-on-nine at the time.

At the wise age of twelve, my son Richard had an admission interview at the private school where I teach. It is a pretty good school, and his mom and I were not at all sure he would be accepted. During the interview, he was asked how he and the school would fit together. He replied, confidently, that since he and Dr. H, a veteran teacher in his late 50s, were friends, he thought the fit would be fine. I wondered, when the story was told to me later by the admissions officer: Does accompanying dad and Dr. H on a trip to Wendy’s for a hamburger secure the fit?

We’ve all met that unusual child who is “three-going-on-thirty”. You attempt to engage him or her with a riddle or a curious trick, but it does not work. The child sees through you, and wants you to know it.

When talking to adults about right living, Jesus said, “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” I take this to mean that children have a certain innocence about them that they should never lose. They can be wise as serpents and at the same time innocent as doves.

Many years ago, my wife Mary and a friend were wandering around their suburban neighborhood. They were a couple of bored adolescents looking for something to do and decided to release the emergency break on a neighbor’s car so that it rolled down the driveway and into a ditch. As it rolled, the girls ran away, filled with fear and elation.

Children can be innocent, kind, and loving. They can also be selfish and destructive. My mother used to say to my brother and I, “What you are to be, you are now becoming.” Although I did not understand it then, I see now that my mother was warning me against building adult foundations on selfish and thoughtless choices.

So how, we ask, do we do as adults are supposed to do, and still be, as Jesus says, like children?

I was once invited to a Halloween party at the house of my childhood schoolmate Debbie. We were in second grade at the time and the party was in the evening. My mother did not want me to go to this party because it was on a school night and would last until after my bedtime. Reluctantly, she gave in when I informed her that “all the other kids were going.” Dressed in my cherished Popeye costume, complete with plastic mask, I, Popeye-the-Sailor-Man, walked to the door of Debbie’s house, waved to my mom to let her know that I would be fine on my own, and rang the bell. Debbie opened the door, and, much to my shock and embarrassment, I looked beyond Deborah to the big-girl and big-boy Halloween party that was in full swing. I knew right away that I was not ready for it. Nobody wore a costume. The girls had on dresses and leather shoes. They boys were in slacks and loafers. There were soft drinks, pretzels and napkins on the table. A top-40 hit rang out from the hi-fi, and I could see that the furniture had been pushed back for dancing. I realized that I had not read the invitation carefully. Deborah, however, was cool about it. She guided me to the den and told me to leave my costume on the chair and join the party. But Popeye panicked. Underneath, he had on pale blue pajamas.

That seven-year-old boy aged ten years that evening. He never put on the Popeye costume again. It would have been childish.

Several years ago, Mary took our son Andrew and one of his friends to a movie in our small town. Both were about six at the time. Our son was so happy to be at this movie with his friend that without thinking he put his arm around him and said, “You are my best friend. I love you.” Mary and I thought this was a sweet and genuine act of friendship. And she was right. But Andrew continued to wear his feelings on his arm over the next few years, while little by little, the culture of his middle school and high school taught him some stinging lessons of adulthood. Among these were: be careful about sharing your emotions; sometimes it is best to hide your feelings.

On a certain level, I believe that Jesus was countering such life lessons by reminding us that God is not impressed by sophistication or status. Rather, God would have us speak the truth in love, and acknowledge that in order to be fully human, we need to build honest relationships with others.

At the end of Shakespeare’s play King Lear, a set of values emerges that changes how human beings view the human condition. An all too trusting Edgar, a character who has been innocently stripped of most of the things that he valued, concludes:

"The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long."

There is much in our culture that teaches children to become adults by suggesting what they ought to do instead of what they know is right. As my colleague continued his speech, he revealed what he called a secret about adults: they don’t always know what is right, and, even when they try to make careful decisions, they often make mistakes.

All of us make mistakes, and we will continue to make mistakes because none of us, child nor adult, is perfect. The older we get, the more convinced we are that our decisions are the ones we ought to make at the expense of our childlike impulse to speak what we feel.

Perhaps the best we can do, as we strive to live life to its fullest possible measure, is reason through issues and problems to the best of our intellectual abilities, but to always remember that there is a child within us who loves us without shame or doubt and who would have us love others the same way.