I

Sitting, waiting for memories to come. Memories of childhood, a time when life had space to move about, when mystery and incompletion were allowed in. The delirious time before our tyrannical quest for that holy grail, “the right way of being:” that proper, exclusive, impossible person we felt breathing down our neck, casting its shadow on our life. And we stopped, turned around, and had the courage to face whatever specter we felt there: and came across, in its stead, such an awful nothing: and were freed. Once this illusion had vanished we could wheel and turn about in this world, could believe in ourselves, what we saw and what we felt. Experience was as open as the world we could run in. Oh, how many oceans of ourselves did we sail in, touching shores, peering out: how many oceans left uncharted, un-sailed in, wake unbroken. 

I’ve been thinking, as I’ve written this, about a memory of childhood, the Chico Rooks soccer games I occasionally went to during my elementary school years, at the Chico State stadium. The attending kids would often run on the field and shoot on the goals during halftime, and before and after the game. That was a fascinating experience. Other kids, outside my school and neighborhood: other kids were always fascinating to me. I was always blown away by them: they seemed so free, full of life, happy. Or, if not happy, then at least “of themselves:” they seemed self-possessed, and that intrigued me endlessly. So I’d be nervous, afraid, shy, on edge: would only ever think about going onto the field if I had a friend or two with me. Nighttime, under the lights, Chico State stadium. Running around, taking a shot on the goal, “doing my best.” Nighttime amongst strange kids, who seemed so confident. Those nights were like out of a fairytale. At home later, back in the old bed, blankets on and lights off: the transition to dreams would be smooth that night. 

II

What is it, to “grow up”? Clearly there’s some sense of growing up out of something, of leaving something behind: that “up” is different than where you were before. Even now, as a 27-year-old, I sometimes hear a voice in my head, “grow up, Louie.” And it comes with a desire to change, perhaps to mature. Or a desire to be stable. As a kid, we held ourselves and our judgments light: we didn’t feel like we had to sign our name to anything, didn’t have to understand anything too fully. We didn’t understand how “the world” worked, and weren’t expected to. Instead, we sank back into our ambivalent indeterminacy, and let the issue pass. And yet, we had planted another seed of curiosity for what it would be like to feel ourselves as part of something, of signing our name to this world. Of mastering its up-to-then unintelligible systems. Not now, we told ourselves, but there will be a time when we know. Know what? Everything. And that time will be when we are grown-ups, when we will pass from ignorance to knowledge, knowledge of the self and knowledge of the world. There will be no more anxiety. There will be no more uncertainty, privacy, loneliness and shame. This is what we thought would be the adult life. And perhaps what we still think the adult life should be. 

When one finds oneself indeed growing up, passing through those gates at the speed of life, one is confronted with the trauma and collateral damage that this wished-for relationship to the world contains. So many people mis-signing their name, or signing it to the wrong things, mere dreams, fantasies, self-delusions. So many people eating disappointment, who, “once they are bowed/ so low for long, they never right themselves” (Frost 127), as Frost said of his birches. This awareness is perhaps the first warning we receive, the first mis-step out of dream land. Being a grown-up, we find, can be just as haunted with blindness, self-doubt, and double-guessing as youth. Or, rather, we are just as wary of ourselves and the world as we ever were. There’s the faith, the feeling of birth-rightness, and the seeming ability to discover who we are in this world–but there’s no guarantee that the answer will be there, or that we’ll like it. 

Part of me wants to say the following–to grow up is to have lived with this rebirth of self-wariness, and to become known of its deep springs, its ever-refreshing doubt, distraction, and power over our life. The journey is an inward one. Growing up is going back, and starting again, with a new target, and hopefully with enough strength to see the effort through, and courage to think the effort worth it. 

Only part of me wants to say such things. All of my mind cannot agree with this description. It’s a little too teleological, assuming that there is some mission, some target to be hit. It assumes that one lives with a sense of purpose, a strong sense of self. I’m much more uncertain of such assumptions now. But still, even though I have become skeptical of such self/world/life making projects, there does still remain the desire to understand and feel connected to this world, the desire to indeed know what to do with one’s desires and attitudes toward the world.  

For example, tying it back to childhood (for this concern dates back to early childhood and still persists): how is one to understand, what is one to do about, and how is one to feel about, their attraction, draw to, and enchantment with the romantic other? The mystery and magic of this attraction draws even the most reticent people out into the world, the world of interactions and the world of others, and makes us feel vindicated: as if to say, “here is a truly magical, divine object, not merely a searching for status and symbol in this world, as so many other pursuits are.” In childhood this realm of romance is one of the most alluring (as well as disgusting) prospects of adulthood, perhaps the major rite of initiation that holds us in awe, and bewitches our anticipation of the future and the mystical lives of our future selves.

And now, as an “adult?” I can only speak from my experience, although it’s probably felt by others. Do I feel like I have been initiated, granted access to this formerly forbidden, mysterious, incomprehensible fruit? Of course the answer is a mixture of yes and no. But what’s most surprising is how much I do feel blessed, and granted access to such mysteries. I feel that I have been able to establish connections with women that have stirred such felicity, delight and magical feelings that I may as well have been courting in the Hesperides. Much of the purest, most honest, most meaningful work (life work, soul-building experience) that I have accomplished has all been done through my intimate relationships with women whom have either been romantic partners or possible romantic partners. 

However, despite such monumental changes in my ability to enter into the romantic world of women, such a world still feels as mysterious, alien, and frightening as it did as a child. And still such a cry is drawn from me at the sight of a beautiful woman, a cry that asks for a “grown up” knowledge of what her beauty is, what its relation is to me, and how I am to live and be in a way that recognizes and does honor to her, that stands in the right light of such a creature. How am I to be positioned towards such desire, such longing? At the bottom of my heart is insecurity, fear of not being the right one, fear of not being wanted, and jealousy. Jealousy, cowardice, and the opposed hatred of such feelings all sing through my veins, they color all my thoughts. Where is the purifying knowledge and serenity that will free me from such discouraging preoccupations? Where is that knowledge that will include me, and beauty, and everybody, and give us all peace? Is this what I am demanding of the grown up?

III

“Since when did I become so public?” An interesting thought, and problematic. Problematic, because the feeling of everyone knowing you, and knowing about you, is not only incorrect, but also smacks of narcissism, wish fulfillment, and a classic pratfall of being human–everyone walking around worrying about how other people are looking at and scrutinizing them, when in reality everyone is only looking at and scrutinizing themselves. Still, I do “feel” so public now. As if I don’t have complete ownership or control over myself anymore, because I live on in others’ minds. As if I’m only as good as I can communicate myself to be, and show myself to others. When it’s just me I’m missing the necessary onlooker, a tree falling without anyone hearing it. I hate this feeling of being splayed out for all to see, or of not really owning myself, this concern about what is left in the minds of others once I’ve left the room.

  The counter to this position, the contrast that makes us take such notice of it, and bristle at it, is the deep and profound privacy that was childhood. If an adult can’t escape publicity, a child can’t escape privacy. To a child everything is private, one’s own thoughts and ideas forever being bounced back through one’s own consciousness, unsounded. One feels so alone at that time, so achingly alone. And so the child thinks, “this must not be life: I must find something to validate and signify my existence outside of myself.” And one sees adults that are so public, so extremely at home with the world, or so it seems. And so the child fixes that for their goal: “I will become like ________. I will make myself known, and no longer cower under myself.” Thus we start a new project: making oneself legible and intelligible to the outside world, the other humans. And this is a great compromise: whole oceans, continents of oneself must be dropped, left behind. And yet the energy and drive for this task is so great, so god-like, so intimate. Not only does it feel like the “right” thing to do with our life, but it feels like who we are. Too late does one turn to look back at this endeavor. By that point there’s more shadow than earth in one’s life, more not there than there. And one’s left with the mask whose making was our life, the mask that still seems alien, incomplete, cold, fractured. As the poet Fernando Pessoa writes, in “Tobacco Shop:”

I made of myself something I didn’t know,

And what I could become, I didn’t.

The fancy costume I put on was wrong.

They saw me straight for what I wasn’t: I didn’t disabuse them, so I lost myself.

When I tried taking off the mask,

It stuck to my face. (Pessoa 102)

I think this struggle between presenting a public, legible, and comprehensible self to the outside world, and seeking and desiring the richness and truth of my own private self, is one of the greatest happenings in my life. I take it with me everywhere, at all times–this picture of the perfect, at ease public self, and my knowing the falseness and baseness that is forever at its core. No matter how much I want to bridge the two, I know that such an attempt is wrong. And at the center of this great happening is fear: fear that I won’t be able to achieve this perfect, public self, fear that I’ll be condemned and punished for this inability. Fear that such a failure will be a failing of my life’s mission. Fear that if I forego this creation I’ll be cast out of others’ company. Fear that in seeking this public self I am making a mistake, following the wrong path. 

A few years ago, an epiphany: In that epiphany I realized that my true life, and consequently my true self, was being ignored by my obsession with focusing on how others feel about me, how I appear in the eyes of those I want to impress and win the favor of. What was interesting about this epiphany was the sense of fearlessness and clarity that it presented to me, even while it showed me how I waste my life: all of that fear was gone–for one short moment, I was solid in my true self and my path.

Louis Barnett grew up in Chico, CA. He studied English at University of California, Berkeley.