0093 – transitioning to adulthood, maladjustment
I was doing some reading (blog.asmartbear.com today) But then a swarm of schoolkids boarded the train. I can’t actually tell if they’re primary school kids or secondary school kids. Probably lower sec.
They came in as a tsunami of noise, crashing through the train of quiet, weary adults. It’s 11:42 in the morning. They’re laughing, screaming, joking. The contrast between them and the adults is staggering. The kids are full of life and energy. They alight at Bishan- I’m switching trains. Several boys race each other up the stairs.
I’ve been meaning to write something about my transition from school to NS to work, but I’m not sure if I’ve actually published anything. I wonder if there’s a gap of knowledge there, because nothing really prepared me for this. What is “this”? Whatever it is that distinguishes me from the kids. Because I was one of them. I was a noisy rambunctious kid. I still am sometimes, in some contexts, but something must have changed for me to now look at them with a tinge of annoyance. They’re like a different species. When did I transition?
[…]
“Nothing in the first 22 years of my life really prepared me for what a mortgage feels like over your head. That’s over 100 months of work. About 10 years of non-stop work with no money for food, living, etc. The loan is technically 30 years. I’m almost done with the first. 29 years more to go.”
0163 – Turning 24, my problems have not changed
“What have I learnt? I think the most important thing is that you have to make time for stuff that matters to you. When I was a teenager I could count on randomness and serendipity because I has fewer commitments. But now I have a job, I have a daily commute to work. I have less space for randomness. Randomness is insufficient at giving me what I want. I have to schedule. I have to set aside time purposefully- dates with the wife, coffee with old friends, time for reading, time for exercise. I mistakenly believed as a kid that life would turn out fine if I just followed my nose and did whatever I felt like doing at any given time. The problem is that starting on the good stuff is always tedious. I very, very rarely find myself in the gym on a whim. I have to commit to it in advance. Same for reading books, same for dates with the wife. So my central challenge seems to be to manage my time better. I’ve read a lot of literature about this in the past, so I’m familiar with the plethora of options that exist. What’s hard is starting.“
“I’ve come to believe that the most important thing to do is to describe reality as accurately as possible, with the most precision you can muster. (And work into that model the assumption that you’re probably wrong about a bunch of things to some degree, in a way that you do not realize.) I borrowed this lens from my boss, and I used it initially as a sort of auxillary lens. Over time I’ve found that it’s been of great help to me, so it’s quickly becoming my primary lens.”
“My problems have not changed. I have been talking about the need for focus and routine sincw 2009, perhaps earlier- maybe even 2007. These aren’t new realisations. This has been a recurring problem. And the first thing about recurring problems is that they can’t be solved simply, just by taking a single action at the surface level of the problem. Perhaps there may be a one-step solution, but it’s buried at a deeper level. (Ie if you end up smoking because your friends smoke, you can’t just say no once. You have to say no every single time. The one-step solution might be to leave the country permanently. That sort of thing. Simple doesn’t mean easy or cheap.)”
0240 – destroy your limiting beliefs about food
“I had a really emotional moment a month ago when I was eating chicken rice at the nearby coffeeshop on my day off. I realized that… I’m an independent person, a pattern in space-time trying to sustain itself, feed itself. And I’m doing okay, you know? Life often seems to me like a series of failures– every success is just a stepping stone to the next failure.
And I was dependent on my parents for that when I was a kid, entirely dependent. Parents, fast food, hawker fare. And I didn’t know how to prepare my own food, apart from toasting bread and eating it with peanut butter, or cheese. That was really the limit of my ability to prepare food for myself, and because of that I was bored really quickly and didn’t eat all that much.
But now that I’m an “adult”– married, working, paying off a flat, I can and should start thinking about how to feed myself in a sustainable, suitable way that makes sense for me. The idea that I’ll never eat healthy, that I’ll never be able to prepare my own food, that I’ll never be able to take care of myself– all of those are incredibly painful, frustrating limiting beliefs that have no place in my life. If they were ever valid, I’ve outgrown them. Things like my parents worrying that I’d hurt myself or burn myself in the kitchen– I’m not even sure if those worries were real, but they’re certainly not valid anymore. I’m entirely capable of teaching myself to use knives, to use fire, to use pots and pans to cook and prepare food. And I like to think that I’m a person with taste, so I do believe that over time I’ll actually prepare meals that are fun and interesting.”
0277 – adulthood is about learning to parent yourself
“I guess that’s it. It’s all about managing my own psychology. And it can’t be all about Big Bad Me giving all these angry directives and orders to myself– my subconscious simply scoffs at that and punishes it for me behind my back. The really is a boss/management/organization thing going on inside the head, and it’s very humbling to realize that your subconscious team doesn’t belong to you, won’t simply do as it’s told, needs motivation and cajoling and appreciation and all of the things that regular folks need in the context of larger organizations.
I suppose an interesting side-thought might be– where do people learn how to manage their inner selves, who do they learn it from, and why am I so deficient? I went from total non-management at some point (I think…) to an attempted strict-abusive type management, as though that was going to make up for all the years of neglect.”
“When I represent this in a parent/child setting, it becomes so clear that it’s bad and wrong. You shouldn’t give a child free reign and give in to his whining and worries and concerns– you need to be stable and strong and firm around him. And at the same time you need to be honest, and you need to play with him, give him attention, celebrate him. Enjoy him. You can’t go from free reign to suddenly becoming a prison warden. He will hurt, and he will resent you, and your relationship will sour and both of you will have a terrible time. I think this has been going on inside my head for a couple of years now and the byproduct is really toxic.
My parents did their best for me with what they had, with what they could. They gave me some things I really appreciate, but they also left me, shall we say, opportunities for self-improvement.
I’m on my own now, and it’s up to me. I can’t depend on others for it– that’s just passing the buck. The buck stops with me, and I have to figure this shit out.”
“The point is– I should learn to parent myself. I should acknowledge that that is my current role in life. Manager of self, Parent of self. I have to listen to me, figure out what my wants and motivations and desires are, pay attention to subtle non-verbal cues, all of that good stuff. And I have to acknowledge that I have been very presumptuous when it comes to myself. All of my criticism of parents in general– my own and of others– apply to me too, with regards to myself. I allow other people’s ideas and perspectives to color my own ideas and perspectives about what my child (me) wants. I ought to be paying more close attention to myself.”
“That’s it– as with predatory thinking, as with how to win friends and influence people, my problem has been that I don’t treat myself as a person with interests and needs and desires and curiosities. I simply attempt to impose my will on Me, as though I have the right to speak on behalf of Myself.”
“So I have more reason to listen and meditate now. It’s not just about staring into space, it’s about allowing the repressed little boy inside of me to come out and play, that I might listen to him and be a better parent.”
[1] I realize that “Young Adult”, because of “Young Adult Novels”, typically refers to people from ages 14-20 or so. I’m 25. When I say Young Adult, I guess I’m contrasting that with “Full Adult”– which I suppose I reserve for people with more responsiblities, people with children, people who have experienced real hardships in their lives like cancer and miscarriages and elderly parents. I feel like I’m not really an adult until I have to deal with all of that. But from a “14-20 Young Adult” perspective, I’m someone who’s married, who has a full time job, who has a mortgage and bills to pay. That’s more than most of my colleagues, actually. So the whole thing is a bit of a clusterfuck, and makes you realize how the terms we use are very loaded and ‘poisonous’ – not necessarily bad, but they influence and shape our thinking far more than we ever realize.
0395 – procrastination as Parent vs Child breakdown
Another thing is fear. And fear is a primal response, but it’s also this really complex multifaceted thing. Different people experience fear in different contexts and to different degrees in different ways. I’m reminded of Chris Hadfield’s TED talk about fear, about being an astronaut, and about deliberately reprogramming your brain by walking through spider webs, for example. Procrastinators have a certain fear of certain kinds of work– we associate those things with intensely painful or negative thoughts, and so we avoid them altogether. There’s a great post about this on LessWrong called “Ugh Fields” which I think captures it very well.
Another thing is a breakdown of communication between Parent and Child. Very often procrastination is the Child failing to do what the Parent is ordering to do. From the Parent’s point of view, this is the failing of the Child. The Child is bad, naughty, lousy, petulant, needs disciplining and punishment and such. Needs systems, orders, structure. This can sometimes work out, but more often than not the Parent first needs to truly listen to the Child and understand the Child’s needs and concerns and fears and such, and work WITH the child rather than try to WORK the child.
0424 – the yin-yang nature of our inner child and parent
I’m thinking about what it means to be an adult, and what it means to be a child, and I’ve been trying to revisit what it felt like to be younger. I look for clues in my writing and in old videos and pictures, and in old comments and statuses on Facebook. It’s really obvious to me now how much I sought the approval of others. I still do, obviously, and I probably always will, but it was a much more intense ache of sorts then. I wasn’t doing very well in school after my early success, and maybe I needed to prove to myself in some way that I wasn’t a total fuckup– that my fuckups were intentional and by choice, and that I could still get people to acknowledge my greatness and superiority in the spaces that I chose. So all was well, eh?
It’s all so silly on hindsight. And I’m sure I will be looking back on today and think that I’m being silly right now, too, in ways that I cannot even perceive yet. Probably for spending so much time thinking and writing and deliberating. Previously I was performing to others. Now I’m performing to myself. Solitude adds a certain honesty to writing and thinking, which is good [2], but I think there’s something beyond that… which is action, obviously. I should be taking a lot more action each day.
I’m still bumbling around, I’m still meandering, I’m still waiting for all my wounds to heal and for all my soreness to fade before I start taking massive action. But I know intellectually that the soreness never completely fades. The athlete has to play hurt.
So about the passage of time, adulthood and childhood. I’m thinking about Einstein, and how he accomplished his greatness by focusing a child-like curiosity upon physics with an adult’s persistence and focus. Same for all sorts of high-performing innovator type folks that I really love. Take Da Vinci, for instance. He was clearly highly proficient, but he also had that child-like sense of wonder.
People tend to talk about this in a very simplistic sense… I don’t often hear people talking about how HARD it is. To simultaneously be a child and an adult. When you’re sick of being an adult, it’s tempting to be completely childlike– to be irresponsible, short-sighted, pleasure-seeking. When you get burnt one too many times from childlike curiosity, play and exploration, it’s tempting to be ‘completely adult’– that is, straitlaced, dreary, boring.
The good stuff comes from doing both at the same time, being both at the same time, embodying the best of both worlds in a constant yin-yang fashion. Being at once the artist and the manager. Discipline with joy, curiosity with focus, wonder with verification, awe with persistence.
0448 – parents, peers and other benevolent plagues
When adults treat children like people, with their own minds and interests and curiosities. Encouraging them to explore their OWN interests, not just what Daddy wishes he was good at as a child. The parent or authority’s job isn’t to decide for the child outright, but to provide an environment and context in which the child can explore and learn and grow.
And here a bunch of nice pictures come into my mind. Kahlil Gibran– “Your children are not your children / They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.” A Truly Great teacher who really cares– the teachers that everybody remembers their whole lives. A football coach and his heartfelt pep talk. That darkroom scene in Boyhood with the photography teacher. All of Good Will Hunting.
If you have a young person in your life, pay full attention to them and ask them what they’re interested in. And it’s genuinely interesting! Every person is a glorious kaleidoscope of curiosities, shaped by unique perceptions and perspectives. You’ll see the universe in their eyes.
And the scary, terrible thing is that these things can be really fragile. A few dismissive sentences can crush it outright. (ZenPencils: Kevin Smith – It costs nothing to encourage an artist) So you have to be really gentle with people’s dreams. Never tell them that they’re stupid or wrong. Just ask them if they’ve thought about X, if they’ve thought about Y, and so on.
AND really, this applies just as much to adults too, just that we tend to take a little longer because we’ve often internalized a lot of BS over the years and we forget what we care about.
So, what do YOU want to do with this precious, fleeting life? I’m all ears.
0534 – becoming a man means accepting responsibility
I get the sense that in some ways, masculinity and manhood, in the classical sense, is fundamentally economic. In tribes or nomadic bands, you become a man when you begin to hunt, begin to provide food, become able to provide for a family. A child is fragile (literally). It’s a dependent on its hosts, like a parasite. [1]
I’ve come to think that manhood is largely about being able to take care of business. Being able to create a structure and a context for yourself, and for the people around you. I know that it’s 2016 and there are all these ideas about how “manhood is not about X”, “manhood is not about y”– for instance it’s supposed to be damaging that we perpetuate ideas like “boys don’t cry” or “a man must be physically strong”. But when I examine it myself I find myself asking, what is the spirit of those ideas, rather than the letter?
We have the luxury now of being very inclusive, so a lot of older ideas don’t seem to make sense anymore– seem needlessly harsh, cruel and so on. But I think those old ideas evolved out of a different time– times of scarcity and hardship. Physical strength absolutely mattered if you needed it in order to make a living, in order to put food on a table. Whatever your social justice politics or beliefs, you wouldn’t marry or advise someone you cared about to marry a physically weak person if that meant (as it must’ve been centuries or millenia ago) that you were probably going to starve. Even the very idea of love and romance is quite a luxury, in a sense.
It’s not too difficult to imagine how it might all go to hell really quickly. It just takes some devestating circumstances– war, disease, pestilence, floods. Once people don’t know where their next meal is going to come from, the resulting anarchy will almost definitely revert to more straightforward, conventional heirarchies of power.
But of course, that’s not why I asked this question. A modern collapse of civilization is an interesting thought experiment, but the selfish reason I explored that idea was to make sense of my own value as a person. People will say nice-sounding things like “everybody is valuable”– sure, each human life is a universe by itself, but that doesn’t make everyone valuable. There are economic realities that we live in. It’s a little frustrating when they don’t get properly acknowledged or discussed, but that itself is the reality of the meta-game to that question.
Ultimately, manhood involves knowing when to break the rules, how to look out for yourself, how to take care of yourself and of others– and that includes your own emotional state, and that in turn means crying when necessary.
0590 – continuing to grapple with adulthood
When I was a teenager, I was always looking forward to being an adult. And in many ways it’s been great. Having your own place is incredible for your psychological well-being, and I think it’s rather tragic that so many Singaporeans are stuck living with their parents for so long. It’s also great to earn your own money and to spend it as you like. I live with less internal anxiety than I did then, I think. I was a sloppy mess trying to pretend everything was cool. I’m a lot less of a sloppy mess now, but I have many more responsibilities, and I’m no longer trying to pretend everything is cool.
I guess what I’m trying to say without saying outright is… this stuff is hard. Adulting. Growing up. Making progress means being kind to yourself without enabling the shitty sides of you. It means challenging yourself without being hurtful or self-destructive. That’s a tough balancing act, and I don’t think it’s possible for anybody to get it perfect. We inch towards something more equitable through trial and error, by getting burnt, making mistakes. I imagine some people tend to be chronically in one side or the other- kind but also too forgiving, or firm but also too harsh. And some of us have the delightful worst of both worlds- too tolerant of things we shouldn’t tolerate, and too harsh on ourselves for almost no reason. (I think there’s a theory somewhere that sometimes we just internalize the anger and frustration of our elders- we learn everything first by imitation, so their annoyed voiced become our internal self-taught. )
And I find it so weird that people don’t talk about it more. Do people only talk about it in private conversations behind closed doors? Is there some taboo against speaking about it out in the open? I suppose it comes across as attention-seeking, or needy.
It’s funny- to get the best possible help that you might really need, you might have to ask for it in a classy, non-needy, enlightened way. But if you were so enlightened and non-needy in the first place, did you even have a problem? It’s like an emotional version of the rich-get-richer problem. It must really suck to be hurting and not even be able to convey that you’re hurting in a way that people sympathize with you. I suppose that’s at the heart of a lot of ugliness in the world.
monotasking
prioritizing
saying no
putting yourself first
I’m clinging on to my sort of happy fantasy, that everything is okay and everything is good and everything will be like this forever. I know intellectually that this isn’t true, but something in my subconscious clings to it. And this clinging isn’t just to the good things, but to whatever is familiar. So even my patterns of guilt and shame and things that I dislike, my subconscious keeps going back to those scripts, keeps playing those things on repeat. It’s like I’m stuck in one phase of a video game and refusing to trigger the event that would lead to the next phase – because I know that I can’t go back.
I learned a few weeks ago that I still have some weird responses wired into me from my childhood. I have a habit of freezing up in the presence of conflict. I go quiet and avoid saying anything – which is an odd change from talking so much all the time.