The most pernicious strains of
adulthood are those which rob a person of their sense of wonder, and
yet most of us accept this kind of mental affliction as a fact of life: just part of
growing up. People will occasionally grumble wistfully about it, as if finding wonder in this world is no longer fathomable, a long lost luxury reserved for only the most
young and naïve. It had since been beaten out of them after years of workplace
deadlines, household chores, and countless cookie-cutter conversations.
From time to time, a ray of reverence will pierce the carapace of even the most jaded and broken creatures. Sometimes it is just a tingle of awe reflected from a toddler's unmitigated glee as we watch them encounter everyday creation. But other times it is a direct revelation that stops them us in our tracks as we re-discover one of the many daily mysteries
unraveling beyond the grasp of our comprehension. Too often,
though, we step back from this perplexity into the safety of knowing, and
we label this retreat as 'maturity.' Possibilities are contained, wily imaginations tamed.
"We grow to be proud of our world-weariness and misanthropy, mistaking this for insight."
During the first instar of adulthood, normal operating procedure is to project what we think we know about people and how the world works onto both people and the world in general. Many times these expectations are measured timidly to the minimum standard in an effort to thwart disappointment. Over time, our embittered sensibilities forge a kind of vanity from this cynicism. We grow to be proud of our world-weariness and misanthropy, mistaking this for insight.
At some point along this path to maturity, I came to see the grown-up state of "disillusionment" as something of a misnomer. It began to feel much more like conceding to a contrary process of grasping at the comfort of easy answers, even if they were bad ones. It felt more like illusionment, as the world drifted out from under our feet. Better to have a dismal understanding than to face the chaos of not knowing.
"For the sake of consistency, we learn to spell our names correctly every time. For a sense of safety, we have slain all the dragons."
When I was young, I was a weird kid. All kids are weird kids, I know, a fact which accounts for a large measure of why we love them. Some of these little weirdos don't calibrate to the culture around them as quickly as others. Scripts must be memorized; experiences get pinned to narratives like captured specimens. No child starts out with notions about anything at all, let alone how to fit the many marvels around them into neatly labeled boxes. It takes time to rein in the oddness of being, to dull yourself to marvels and mysteries. For the sake of consistency, we learn to spell our names correctly every time. For a sense of safety, we have slain all the dragons.
As I advanced beyond my own larval stage, I could only see the things that I now knew. The
more orderly the world became, the less distracted I was by all the noise
around the edges. This is contrary to what artists, visionaries, and iconoclasts experience. They see things in non-normative ways, noticing
details and mining insights from outside the sociolinguistic
frameworks that guide our perceptions. They are fringe-folk. Disruptors. Galileos and Picassos.
"The phrases of poets that have resonate most with me are those that make small semantic dents in my psyche, evoking larger things I don't understand, allowing access to the senseless undercurrents of existence."But most of us stay tuned to the mundane expectations that cloud our peripheral vision. Our ability to predict events, project the truth about others, and to constrain ourselves leads to comfort, ego, and boredom. Since that first moult, my own eyes have set to record the world of things that fit neatly inside of words, and yet they crave more. The phrases of poets that have resonate most with me are those that make small semantic dents in my psyche, evoking larger things I don't understand, allowing access to the senseless undercurrents of existence.
My first adulthood is still very much with me. This stage in humans is known to last
for decades. Many of us never fully achieve the second adulthood, a special time
when the sense of wonder creeps back in, when all known systems of
thought are realized as inadequate containers... when you can gaze
upon something that you have seen a thousand, maybe a million times
before, and cannot recognize it any longer. It is the return of magic and monsters to that space between the rhythmic pulse of employee time clocks and rote conversations, a gentle
unmooring of identity from grounded discourse.
Some experience this newfound maturity
as a crisis of faith, and paddle themselves back to safe harbors
where the standard models account for all that needs to be accounted for.
Others, though, give in to the great relativity glimpsed now and then
through compound eyes, able to sense unutterable Truths flickering as composite
images in low resolution. For these individuals, the fear
of not knowing gives way to the fear of false knowledge, and humility
erodes the protective shell of constructivism.
"A second adulthood refuses to yield wonder and growth to the demands of gravity and cohesion. It is here that we strive to shed the tyranny of singular selfhood and embrace the endless cycle of becoming... whether as an individual or as a species."This relapse into the freedom of unknown possibilities is not regressive, and not a second childhood. Likewise, as beauty shines through cracks in reality, the playfulness of the growing-up is not an embrace of human ignorance. Wisdom retains importance as a way to vanquish darkness and bind societies, but it is mutable and can be revised. The wont for mastery gets replaced with a desire to transcend the fearful need for control. A second adulthood refuses to yield wonder and growth to the demands of gravity and cohesion. It is here that we strive to shed the tyranny of singular selfhood and embrace the endless cycle of becoming... whether as an individual or as a species.
The world stays new only when we squint through the lumpy cortices of evolution, rubbing from our eyes the jaded gaze of expectation. Eventually, the metamorphosis of consciousness creates a self so large it becomes meaningless, its quantum filaments standing in unity upon the membrane of the universe, fluttering in awe above a welcoming abyss.
This is how I see myself, anyway. Your
results may vary.
