--{ growing out }------
I became a year older last week.1 To celebrate, I spent the weekend in Boston, Massachusetts,2 my favorite place in the world. It was a great weekend, though I will relay only the over-introspective, related- to- growing- older parts and omit the juicy parts. Because it's my web page, that's why.
It's terribly cheesy, my need to write a weird steph-retrospective around this time of the year,3 which I invariably do. But I also think that it's healthy to go through this sort of thing once in awhile, and this seems as good a time as any.
And, besides, now that I'm living away from Boston, my visits there always make me feel nostalgic in a happy, anticipatory kind of way. So there are external factors that also make this a good time to think about how I've changed and what getting older means to me.
assumptions about growth
value. Before I get all look-back-ey, though, I just want to address one assumption that people make: that growth is good. I suspect that this assumption has some agricultural / economics roots. But I always find it amazing that in this day and age, with buzzwords like "smart growth" and "limits to growth" and critiques of unrestrained growth all over the literature of developmental economics, growth continues to be treated as an inherent good in discussions about personal lives.
So I note here that when I talk about how various people have "grown," I ascribe no inherent value to growth. Rather, by "growth" I mean the slow accumulation of experiences that comes with age, to an individual's benefit or detriment.
directionality. Nor do I prescribe to the view that growth must occur in only one "direction," which is the problem that I have with the term "growing up." Experiences push and pull people towards all sorts of outcomes. And sometimes, the same experience can even push two different people in totally different directions, like a hate crime making one individual more fearful and introverted, and another individual more vehement about her rights than ever.
For some, growing "up" means buying a house, living in the suburbs, having two-point-five children, and investing in retirement funds. Becoming more aware of internal needs and desires rather than dedicating oneself to the flailing ideologies of youth.
For others, growing "up" is less material and more abstract, like accepting some sort of responsibility towards a greater whole -- be it a family, a neighborhood, a local community, a nation. Thinking of long-term goals rather than short-term.
I've seen both extremes referred to as "growing up." Me, I've got no linguistic preference either way; I just want to note the non-specificity of the term.
me and growth
internal. So what has been my pattern of growth? It's hard to say. I know that I am not the same person that I was four, five years ago. I am sad and reluctant in admitting this, because I really liked (and still do like) the way I was then -- assertive to the point of macho, angry, and a hell of a lot more sexual. But intervening events have made it such that I don't think that I can ever be quite that way again.
Which sucks. I spent the last few years dealing with it, with how my self-image-me and my actual-me didn't/don't match up anymore. Sucks, let me tell you. Sucks sucks sucks, trying to rebecome the self-image me (which was the same as the old-me), and failing.
So. For better or for worse, I am finally accepting that I am different from how I was four or five years ago. I am even more detached and analytical and left-brained than ever. Although I still feel strongly about social justice,4 I limit myself to fewer political arguments, and even with those, I fight them in a very controlled legal way. I get screamy much less often. I'm a lot less sexual and a lot less trusting.
But I am (dare I say it) more mellow. I don't (again, dare I say it) desire so much craziness and unpredictability anymore. Not so much. I am much better at budgeting my time. Strangely,5 although I have been getting better and better at avoiding procrastination, I have become less and less hurried. Do not ask me to make sense of this.
What is definitely for the better, though, is that I've recaptured some of the joy that I had back then. Which, believe it or not, feels like a huge achievement.
I was thinking about all of this while I was reading this essay in the Boston Globe book reviews by David Maloof, titled "The Authors Changed Or, Rather, I Did." All about rereading the books that Maloof thought were just amazing when young, and finding them disappointing when older. Or how accumulated experiences made Maloof, as a reader, identify with entirely different characters (as in Death of a Salesman) at different times of his life. Or how they made him notice ironies and complexities that he hadn't noticed before (as in F. Scott Fitzgerald's stories.)
And I was thinking how this applies to me as well. How I've progressively identified with more and more aloof characters, while at one point I would have identified with the jackass hero or the crazy sexpot. Good? Bad? Or just the way it goes?
external. This is a much easier tally to take. I still look young, I still have various piercings (though less than before), I still dress like a kid. The other day, one of my dad's friends asked me if I'd turned twenty yet. And random people keep asking me if I'm home for vacation from college.
But I'm finally occasionally in situations in which people address me as older. Like on the plane, the woman next to me told her daughter, "Don't bother the nice lady. She doesn't want you to make her sticky." This was, however, being said to a four-year old.6 Most people still perceive me as a youngster.
Not that I mind so much. I mean, I do, in the sense that I do want to get some sort of professional respect, and looking older helps with that. But at the same time, I hate even more getting too much respect, which is often what happens when my various degrees come out. So my appearance makes it easier to be dodgy when I want to be.
Nor have I started developing all the material desires that so many people seem to get with age. I would still feel fine living in a cheap apartment that's falling apart. I still don't have any desire for large material goods.7 Indeed, these material desires seem to have diminished through time -- back when I was in grad school, I actually enjoyed scoping out home furnishings. And now, I'm not so desirous of even those things.
Though lately I've been thinking how nice it would be to have somewhere permanent to put all my books. And the idea of settling, while it doesn't seem to be in my near future, is becoming less antithetical. The library thing, I bet, would be the tipping point. That, and maybe having someone with whom to share it.
So, yes, I suppose that I have developed some external desires as time has passed on. Though I've lost some as well, so maybe it all balances out.
what any of this means
I honestly don't know. The difference is that while at one point I really really would've needed to know, I'm actually quite happy with not understanding and just seeing how it goes from here.
032401
1. A quiet day turning twenty-eight with the family.
One of the most diffuse birthdays I've ever had, very low-key and
spread out.
But full of great coincidental events that in the back of my head, I
thought of as birthday presents. Like me getting my offprints for my
paper, yay. Like the Mattaponi getting standing to proceed with their
lawsuit. Like getting kudos from another judge on our panel for this
supplemental memo that I wrote. Like increasing my military press by
another 10 lb step.
It is all irrational, of course, me treating these events as birthday
presents. My subconscious has conveniently ignored all the awful events
that have occured over the past week, like Shrub's repeal of various
environmental regulations, like his cutting the ABA out of the judicial
nomination process to make way for super right-wing, Federalist
nominations, stuff like this. I do not pretend to ascribe intellectual
meaning to my birthday week.
2. By Boston I mean Cambridge/Somerville.
3. Dan suggested making resolutions at birthday-time, and we even came up with one that I could make, but I forget what it was now. I have a terrible feeling it had something to do with my Mr. Spock approach to sports.
4. A nod to Fonda, and what she said for my FBI security check.
5. Even more strange, but perhaps not so consequential, is that I have become more and more tolerant of cats. I think this is at least partially because I know that I will be living with a cat next year, when I share an apartment with my friend Ed. Plus being able to watch Ed and his cat has helped rid me of some of my stereotypes of cats and little old women, as Ed is the total opposite of little old women. I still prefer dogs, though. And I like my iguana.
6. The little girl, by the way, was adorable. (Gah! What's with me? I actually enjoyed sitting next to a little kid! This should probably be in the growth category, too, though under some reluctant- to- admit subheading.) She had a funny, smirky smile, and kept exclaiming, "I'm gonna play with my nipples!"
7. Not being able to drive really helps.