The Work of Growing Up

I spent a lot of my childhood working on growing up.

I worked hard to exceed expectations and be responsible. I was the first child and the only son in a family where the parents did not think they could have any children. I grew up around more grownups than children, at least until I started going to school.

I was a serious child.

When I was a child, I was impatient to become a grownup. Grownups could do things that kids could not, and had conversations kids were not welcome to join.

Growing up apparently included spending a lot of time and effort learning things. Fortunately, I was good at learning things. I loved to read, and I learned things in school, at home, at church, and pretty much anywhere else I went.

Growing up takes a long time. Eventually, even after staying in school as long as possible, work replaced school as a place to learn and grow.

Then I realized something that came as a shock, that changed the way I understand growing up.

I saw all the expectations and responsibilities that had defined growing up for me, and I felt trapped. There was nowhere for me to go, no way for me to escape.

I realized that I did not even consider what I wanted to do; I just did what other people expected. I did not even know how to think about what I wanted.

I could not accept that was what it meant to be a grownup.

I began the work of growing up. It took a lot of hard work, and a lot of time. Slowly, gingerly, I began to emerge.

I continue to work on growing up, and I help other people work out how to be grownups.

How do you do the work of growing up?

Who is helping you work into your deeper grownup?

[Image by Cheryl DeWolfe]