Attempts At Adulthood

Preface: Stephen King once mentioned that he was opposed to keeping a notebook of writing ideas because this is where bad ideas went to die. True to the spirit of making my own mistakes and failing to learn from them, I have now accumulated over 100 topics in my notebook of writing prompts. All of these are bad. Problem with having no particular theme to one's writing is that opportunity is infinite and one shirks at the scale of it. In an attempt to shrink the infinite pool of possibilities and focus the mind, I've decided to impose a constraint on myself by writing one essay for each letter of the English alphabet. Did it help? Not one bit. While it is true that some infinities are smaller than the others, they are still infinite so my non-solution rightfully failed to solve the problem. With that being said, let us begin anyway.

A for Attempts At Adulthood.

Like Cassandra in Dodie Smith's I Capture The Castle, I too find myself living in a castle. Though, unlike Cassandra, I am not writing this sitting in the kitchen sink. I hoped to escape London's chilling winds out here but as I look out of the window I can see the wind running from the coast, down the valley and up the castle hill, ruffling tree tops as it goes. Here's a problem with travelling - you have to pack your baggage with you. And as I walk down deserted grounds and hallways of the castle, I can feel the wind running up behind me; its echoes all around. But is it wind or is it Time's winged chariot hurrying near?

It's been precisely 10 years and 2 months since the last time I was in Cannes. Back then, I was on the verge of crossing into adulthood by turning 18. You are an adult now, I heard them say with a wink-wink and a nudge-nudge. Ten years on the joke has ran out of steam. Offers of adulthood have become a lot more insistent, less compromising and altogether inattentive to my protests.

Growing up, I always viewed adulthood with apprehension. On the one hand, I envied adults - their certainty, wisdom and, above all, courage. No adult of my childhood was afraid of a dentist or, on reflection, admitted to it. Fear then was exclusive to childhood. And so I thought that just by the virtue of being older, courage, wisdom, and certainty would be bestowed upon me. I simply wouldn't be able to get out of the way. On the other hand, day-to-day activities of an adult appeared to be impossibly dull and duller still as one aged. Adulthood then seemed like a type of societal disease that one contracted and eventually died from.

They say time accelerates as you get older and it certainly seems like it. Past 10 years have been a blur and I can't help but think that some lazy Sunday afternoons of my childhood lasted longer than that. If Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man are to be believed, I am now too old to be a youthful lover and nowhere near bearded enough to be a soldier. And yet, I am still waiting for said courage or wisdom or certainty.

'What have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.' Orwell made this point to illustrate how identity of a nation stretches continuously into the past and future. It evolves and adapts like a living being but something about its innate nature persists through the ages. I have now embarked on my 28th year and the figure is moderately horrifying. It's not the number itself that makes one shudder (though it is). Nor is it how dangerously close it is to 30 (though it is). It's how different it feels to what my perception of what 28 was. 

Here's a thing about adulthood, it never quite feels real enough. And how are you supposed to know when it actually begins? I'm asking because doing it certainly feels like a game of play pretend. In a 2012 movie Liberal Arts, old professor delivers what a much younger me thought was the edgiest line ever written: 'No one feels like an adult, it's the world's dirty secret'. As years pass by I am starting to think that it is, in fact, the truest thing ever written. 

I am writing all this because recently I have been invited to visit primary school and talk to children about what their future may hold and their career prospects upon reaching adulthood. The ludicrous practice of engaging 4-7 year old kids in career talks, comes second only to the notion that I'd be suitable for such a task. Regardless, I went and glad I did. The kids I met were courageous without certainty, and what they lacked in wisdom they made up in curiosity. They too understood that the world is big, but unlike those of us who have crossed the threshold, weren't afraid of just how big it was. Infinities and their opportunities did not scare them. I'm starting to think that adulthood is much more marked by fear than childhood is. 

All this talk of children and infinities reminded of a paradox that fascinated me as a child. Zeno's dichotomy paradox states that if someone wishes to leave the room they first have to get half way to the exit. Before that a quarter way, an eighth, one sixteenth; and so on ad infinitum. Which is to say that to do anything at all, even the most simple of tasks, one must overcome infinity first. Viewed in that light the prospect of infinite possibilities does not seem so scary. After all, overcoming infinities is just what we do.