I don’t afford myself too many anecdotes on this platform, so you’ll excuse this small rant.
There’s nothing I hate more than adults with arrested development. I can’t quite pinpoint an exact time one should stop dealing with their adult problems in a childish manner, but I’m fairly certain you should be about done with it when you’re edging 30.
It’s pathetic at any age, but I find when my contemporaries think that because they have the career, and life pretty much buttoned up, that they’re adults; and therefore cannot be challenged on the manner in which they choose to treat the surrounding people in their life. Not only do they not learn by the repetitious nature or their actions, they are content to do it again and again. Dare you say anything about it, and you find yourself battling a wild animal backed in to a corner, they have lost all sense of humanity in thought or action. There’s a lot of “how dare you”’s and “You have no say”…blah blah blah.
While they may have a point on a certain level, namely that hypocrisy abounded everywhere really affords no one the wiser higher ground in approaching the way one deals with life, to disengage because you’re being confronted with your own moral and ethical degradation is defeating. Hence, you will continue the vicious cycle, warm and cozy in your own delusion.
To my main point. Just because you have a lot of adult trappings, it doesn’t make you an adult. If you refuse to deal with your problems as an adult, you are a child, and deserve the loneliness you are sure to obtain. I think it’s less that these people are saddened with the way they’re treating people and more that they are simply running out of time, and cannot in reality afford to act this way.
The arrested development is born out of selfishness and arrogance. The belief that actions don’t have the same consequences and that “the right time” will come and somehow that window will be more a bubble to shield them from the very real feelings they are hurting. They fail to see that actions and consequences are a fine stew, that left unattended will surely make a thicker, richer meal. That every moment left to simmer, it will take on a more complex flavor profile. So that when it is eaten, the fullness of the situation at hand with be full broth.
There’s only so much room at the back burner for things to simmer, to continue my stew analogy. To deal with things as an adult, is to possess a fortitude, that one lacks as a child. To see various lies as varying degrees of color is a childish thought. To hide things away from view is that of a child. The essence of not being caught is the core of arrested development. Children find ways of buying themselves time, thinking there to always be a perfect time to shed light on a moral and ethical decay.
Problem is, there is never a good time to shed light on the failure of self. There’s never going to be a soft focused light with which to lay your burden. If anything it’s a constant buzzing fluorescent tube that casts even harsher shadows on the failure, giving it a ghastly hue and ugly complexion. The longer you wait, the uglier it becomes.
Perhaps it’s less arrested development and more piety that reigns supreme for these “adults”. We often allow ourselves some childlike wonderment and pleasure when it comes to the finer things in life. It all can’t be harsh tones and hushed demeanor. There’s a balance to be sure. But I think when it comes to dealing with fellow adults, some respect must be paid, on the ground level at least.
Acting out is a childish trait. To find some sort of blame in which to couch your odious behavior, likewise. Failing to realize the ebb and flow of life, this childish notion to lash out at someone for a perceived slight. To act out, not to get attention, but to magnify a perceived lack of emotional fidelity. To not understand another person’s trepidation, and to confuse it with ignorance. Because life is mundane, you MUST feel something. Better to instigate than to be the dullard.
To be an adult is to understand these things, and try to maintain your humanity in the face of the utter uselessness of it all. If you fail to respect those you say you love, you’re cheating everyone involved. When the voice of reason is twisted and confused for authoritarian, you have lost your way and have become the child, who hear’s nothing but chiding, and refuses the see the growth. You fail to understand that pain and growth often go hand in hand, and sometimes at great loss.
There is no perfect way to treat a moral and ethical decay of character. If you embody these things for any length of time, you are bound to become them, and you WILL continue to repeat a very nasty cycle. The point of growing up, and becoming an adult is to recognize these failings are try to space them out if at all possible, and at best never repeat them. You learn from them…and grow.
But don’t let your delusion fool you. Because you look old in body, does not mean the mind is equally matched, the mind can and does degrade in time and with misuse.
On the other hand, is it less arrested development, and more one being emotionally tone deaf? Dare I say one could be soulless in their undertaking of a life? If inside of their heart resides nothing but plateaus and recessive valley’s, is this because they are immature, or was this particular character never tilled. They are similar to a robot. A puppet of unknown machination? Unblinking in the “Who I am” and not “Who am I”, therefore they can act as they please, because they’re not really hurting anyone, if they chose not to confront it.
I am waxing too poetically hard on the simple point that these kind of people are selfish cunts. If they hurt us, we must simply pay them no mind. They are perfectly content with burning their own bridges and blaming the matchmaker instead. They are paper tigers who mask their immaturity in a career, college degrees, fanciful daydreams, bills, loans and relationships. They have to posses these things, if they do not, they may fail to exist to anyone else. That is why we must pay them no heed, and let them collect their cats. If they will not even meet you half way, they are not worth saving to begin with. If you try to reach out to them and fail, they will only blame you for not trying hard enough. Let them be.
Let them be.
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