Adulthood Isn't an Age

Yes, all those other parents were right: kids grow up too fast. I look at these two middle schoolers that we’ve got at home and I can barely get over how big and mature they’re getting. Facebook’s memories remind me so often of when these big guys were just little guys, and it moves me every single time. My little boys are growing up, and they’re growing up too fast.

Yet, we all sort of know that getting older isn’t the same as growing up. Those countless times that my older siblings told me to “grow up” and stop annoying them wasn’t them asking me to get bigger and get older; they wanted me to act more maturely.

Our societal rite of passage into adulthood is graduating high school and turning the legal age of 18. There may be other familial, religious, or biological rites of passage too (such as taking care of younger siblings, bat mitzvah, and menstruation), but most of us tend to agree that 18 is when we become an adult.

Biologically, we’re ready for reproduction in early adolescence. Neurologically, we’re not fully grown until 24-28 years old. Emotionally and spiritually, many of us don’t ever seem to make it to adulthood.

Until 25 years old or so, our lives are in rapid transition. We change by the month or by the year at the longest. Then, when we finally are adults in a neuro-biological sense around 25, we still experience so many transitions, changes in life status as well as biology. The changes seem to be more subtle beyond age 25, but they’re certainly there (I'm in the midst of a mid-life transition myself).

I think our culture is making a mistake by thinking of adulthood as beginning at a specific age. There's nothing wrong with making this mistake, but there is a missed opportunity. I prefer to think of adulthood as a way of being, an approach, or an experience.

How many of us have lost someone close to us from alcohol or drugs, or watched someone’s life wither in the face of addiction of any kind? How many more of us experience general struggle, stress, and anxiety as we grapple with life’s responsibilities and our own well-being? Then there’s the sense that there’s something more to this life, something just beyond where we are but we can’t quite seem to get there or tap into it.

Add to that our vastly larger shared challenges like social disruption and inequality, environmental degradation, large-scale extinction, and a consumerism that doesn’t satiate our desires yet carries an often unseen wake of negative environmental and social impact.

I don’t write this to catastrophize or try to scare you into caring about what I care about. I’m just being honest about the facts. We face our own individual challenges, we face local and regional challenges, we face national challenges, and we face global challenges. And we face them without a consistent level of awareness, accountability, and realization of our own innate capacities to creatively solve problems and live life in wellness.

The promise of adulthood is realized capacities for well-being, satisfaction, enjoyment, appreciation, community, love, and effectiveness. We, our loved ones, the human race, and the planet are crying to be well. And we’ve all got the capacity for it - we always have and always will.

Whether we know how to tap into it is a different question. There are consistent, effective ways to tap into it, and that's the game I want schools playing.

I propose that we add to the high school foundation of knowledge a foundation of awareness: an awareness of the self as an agent in creating, fostering, and transforming our experience of life; an awareness of the self as innately capable, free, and desirous of living a life of well-being; an awareness of the self as part of a community in fostering well-being in others and our environment.

To me, the real definition of adulthood is fully realizing our response-ability - the capacity to creatively respond to any circumstances without constraint. We all have that capacity built into us as humans; most of us just haven’t learned yet how to effectively and consistently tap into it.

Let’s change that.

Thanks so much for engaging with my work. ❤️

What Do You Really Want?

When traveling in Turkey a number of years ago, I crossed paths with an Israeli woman who was trying an experiment: she was following her impulses. She would only sleep when she was tired, she would only eat when she was hungry, and she would only move when her body craved movement.

I was reminded of her last year when I heard of a student at our school doing the same thing. As an experiment, he was following his impulses to see what life felt like. He had a number of late nights and rough school days, but he stuck with it.

Most of us listen to our desires as if they’re significant and pointing us in some direction that we really want to head. As if the mere idea of refusing our cravings is in some way refusing a part of ourselves. As if the the objects of our desires are what we’re really after and would really lead to happiness.

The objects of our desires are not what we're really after, and the happiness they lead us to is not everlasting.

So, what do you really want?

The first thought that comes to mind for me is a Tesla (any model, please), abundant passive income so I never have to work again, good health for me and my family, and the ability to travel any where at any time.

But that’s not what I mean when I ask what do you really want? I mean what do you want as a way of feeling or being. That’s really what we’re craving anyway. We think it’s the object of our desire that we really want, but it’s not. We are really after the feeling we get to feel when that craving is met.

It really seems like desire is an emotion that can only be satiated by getting what we’re craving. While doing so can satiate our desire at least temporarily, our desire is perhaps not really even pointing to that specific object. What if, like fear, desire is actually pointing somewhere beyond the object of our desire?

Just like fear, desire is a clear emotion - we all tend to know what it feels like. Whether it pulls us strongly or subtly, desire seems automatic and it’s nearly always present to some extent or another. Like fear, desire comes with some of the oldest and most primitive parts of our brains. And as with fear, it’s a really good thing that we feel desire.

You see, the obvious desires are biological in nature and highlighted by biological impulses. Other desires, cravings not sourced in biological needs or desires, are more like longings. In both cases, our desires serve one purpose: maximize reward. When we maximize reward, we increase our chances of survival. Well, that was at least true earlier on in our life as the human creature.

Today, however, maximizing our reward by satisfying our specific cravings is no longer a signal of greater survival. In fact, in a world abundant with unhealthy ways of satisfying our cravings, desire often points in a direction that hurts our survival chances. Sugar, sex, substances, video games, netflix, etc. - when we follow those cravings for too long our quality of life diminishes.

This is because our cravings have never been about these objects of desire. Our cravings are about our well-being.

Let’s take an extreme example of desire: addiction. Those of us who have struggled with addiction of any kind or any level know the strength, danger, and possible pain of desire, as well as the all-too-common interpretation of desire as immoral or wrong. However, we might just be misinterpreting our desire.

Joe Bailey, a psychologist, addiction counselor, and author (one of my favorites), has written that addicts, like the rest of us, are really just looking for a path to a feeling of well-being. Addicts have allowed themselves to consistently find that feeling in substance use. Joe suggests that our desires are always pointing us in a single direction: toward well-being. If we can see beyond the specific, momentary object of desire to the source of all our desire - a feeling of well-being - we might find some additional will-power to skip the cookies and appreciate a feeling of health or turn off the iPad and head to bed.

Fear and desire are always pointing to one place: well-being. It may seem like our desire is about that shiny or sweet object laid in front of us on the table, but it’s not. Mostly, our fears and desires highlight insecurities that we feel, and the fears and desires point us toward feeling secure and well.

It’s not actually Chick-fil-a that I want - I’m looking for a feeling of satiated well-being. It’s not really the alcohol that I want - I’m looking to feel good, secure, and self-expressed. It’s not really winning the argument with self-righteousness and justification that I’m after - I really want to feel loved and supported for who I am.

Here’s a magic question that helps us see through the cravings and fears of the moment to the well-being we’re actually looking for: What do I really want?

Just like with fear, look beyond the immediate objects of desire to where the desire is really pointing. And then remember that true well-being isn’t something we ever have to go looking for, because it’s always with us - always has been and always will be. Allow your inner wisdom to highlight what you really want, and the craving for those Doritos might just disappear.

For me, it's to be unconditionally in love with life, at ease and compassionate, and to be acting in line with my commitment to the well-being of all life.

What do you really want? No need to push, but don't hold back.

Thank you for engaging with my work. ❤️

Look Where Fear Is Really Pointing

In our two-week Adulthood: Tools We Should’ve Learned Years Ago workshop that wrapped up last week, participants got in touch with some of the default roles and roles determined by their former selves. While the workshop was more about the how of human being - the mechanism of it, getting grounded in our true nature, and developing the capacity to transform unworkable situations - the question of why we have these default reactions and ways of being still comes up.

I find that there are two ever-present answers to the why question behind human being: survival and reproduction. As a living creature, we have a biological imperative to survive and reproduce.

Survival equates to minimizing risk: minimize risk and you’re more likely to survive. Reproduction equates to maximizing reward: maximize reward and you’re more likely to pass your genes to a new generation.

The only way our ancestors survived was by minimizing risk and maximizing reward. It’s hard-wired into the chemistry of our DNA.

And there are two clear emotions that guide us to minimize risk and maximize reward: fear and desire. Fear and desire can yell at us loudly, or they can be the subtlest, softest pull or push.

Fear and desire are nearly always there and they’re automatic; they came to us with some of the oldest and most primitive parts of our brains. It’s a really good thing that we feel fear and desire. They are important indicators on our dashboard, and they point us toward well-being. It’s just that we often misinterpret the signals.

In this post I’ll be focusing on fear. In Thursday’s post I’ll be focusing on desire.

Fear leads us to misinterpret sticks for snakes, and fear leads us to be guarded and untrusting with strangers. Fear exists to minimize risk and to keep us safe. Fear will sometimes yell, like when our kids get too close to a street. Fear will sometimes whimper, like when we’re terrified of a violent person or when we’re crippled by anxiety.

Besides giving us a poke to second-guess an action that may be dangerous for us, fear also intends to keep us right where we are. Usually, where we are is safe enough. We know this territory, we know these people, we know what this is like. And that’s good enough for survival. This homeostasis, this balance we’ve found in this moment, this is good enough. Stay right where you are. It might not be great, but it's good enough.

So our inertia, whether it’s occasional or frequent, is fear trying to maintain the status quo because this status quo is sufficient to keep us alive.

But what about when we know that there’s so much more out there? How can we step through the inertia of fear and turn immobility into effective action?

To begin, we can get that fear isn’t actually holding us back. Fear is an emotion, an indicator on our dashboard, that simply points to something. One helpful step with fear is to see what it’s really pointing to.

A participant in the workshop last week shared in our one-on-one conversation that she was feeling stopped in her pursuit of a fulfilling career. She knew what she wanted to do, but she was afraid of hurting the feelings of those around her in her personal life who tend to take things personally and feel bad about themselves. By exploring that fear with just a single question - what’s the problem with them feeling bad about themselves? - she saw that her fear is really driven by a love and compassion for her people.

So her fear wasn’t telling her to stop at all; it was just reminding her to bring compassion, love, and support to the people around her. She saw what her fear was really pointing to, and she saw that she could handle it.

This example applies to many more of us than we might think. Do you ever feel stifled or limited in your self-expression? What if the fear that is limiting our self-expression isn’t intended to limit our expression at all? What if this fear is intended to actually just point our awareness to something else, to remind us to bring something else along with our self-expression?

When we are limited in our self-expression, it may be because we’re afraid of looking bad. It may be that we’re afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. It may be that we’re afraid to express something that we later reflect was not accurate for us. No matter what, this fear of self-expression isn't trying to keep us quiet, it's simply pointing us toward something else that we value.

Fear of looking bad is a fear of not being accepted or respected: bring that respect yourself. Fear of hurting someone’s feelings: bring compassion and care to your communication and to the people around you. Fear of changing your mind: you are a living being, so bring some compassion and appreciation to your (and others') creative self.

This is an exercise in reframing, but it’s not just an exercise in reframing. Stepping towards what brings up fear, when it's something we really want to do, is also an exercise in trusting ourselves. Fear is an indicator that reminds us to be careful and honor what we value. Trust yourself that you won’t actually do something to destroy your life, and trust yourself that you can live a fulfilling life and be a support for others to do the same. Trust others that they will have compassion and respect for you no matter what. Trust the world and the universe that life is meant to thrive, not simply survive.

Thank you for reading. On Thursday I'll be writing about our other primary driver: desire.

Have a great week! ❤️