My son had his last day at school this week and, as if rewound back through the years at pace, I was transported to his first. Nervous at being left, often tearful, and unwilling to grasp the concept of this brutal wrenching away from his mother being a thing of permanency for the next fourteen years. So began a slow process of sometimes painful familiarisation and transition from the simplicity of childhood to an understanding of how to be a grown up.
Taking responsibility.
There is nothing much we can achieve without it, and it is a clear dividing line between childhood and being grown up. Strange then that so many of us seem so intent on swerving it. When nothing is your fault, when change is too difficult, when everything is against you, and when you try hard but nothing works, you are refusing to take responsibility. These are days when the sadness is brought about by our own inaction, and this is the most unforgiving sadness of all.
Keeping the child alive.
It is impossible to function well as a grown up without acknowledging the child within. As a little boy Tom would stand in the garden with the hose and spray it high into the sky standing directly underneath the shower of falling water laughing hysterically. These days, he turns the hose on the kitchen windows when I least expect it while he is watering the garden, or catches me with the water mist sprayer I use for creating steam in the oven. The child hasn’t gone, but he is carried by a young man, and it’s wonderful to see.
Laughter.
Listening to The News Quiz on the radio last night I mused on what a joy it is to laugh. In NLP there is a technique known as “breaking state” which is designed to move you quickly from one emotional state to another. We can become stuck in difficult emotional spaces because we have lost the ability we naturally had as children to be sad one minute and allow our attention to be caught on the breath of something funny the next. We use the phrase “grow up” to point out the need to take on a more serious demeanour, but it’s nonsense. To be a grown up means that we have the wit to utilise all of the emotions at our disposal without fear, without judgement, and with the ability to laugh at life and ourselves.
Taking what we need and leaving the rest.
I knew I was becoming a grown up when I started to understand the separateness between me and my own parents. For years I felt unable to criticise them, compelled to confirm the strength of those relationships and their dazzling parenting skills. To do anything else was acutely painful. The reality was different, as it was bound to be. They couldn’t possibly understand and provide everything I wanted, and to acknowledge this is not blame, it is truth. Only with this clarity could I decide what I wanted to carry and what I didn’t need. My mother’s compassion, kindness, tenacity, and skill with a cake tin. My father’s love for his children, appreciation of the arts, his humour and wide vocabulary. I can leave behind the rest, because it is not mine and never was.
Being who you are.
It’s only relatively recently that I have realised this is work which never really finishes. Being me is a constant shift, a destination impossible to reach. It’s this which makes being OK with who you are today so crucial. In my work I meet scores of people who are not alright with who they are, and work tirelessly to be someone else that they believe other people will like. Being a healthy grown up is to be unashamed, to expect the world to accept you as you are, and to be unapologetic about it.
So being a grown up means we must hang onto childhood and the innocence and sense of joy which defines it. For some of us this is a challenge because we were never really allowed to be children. Others of us were parented by children. It is not so much the experiences we had when we were growing up which create the challenges and obstacles we face in adulthood, it is more the dynamics of those central relationships. If it was OK to be a child, it is easier to become a grown up. If we felt valued as children, we are more likely to feel worthy as adults. But whatever happened in the past the integration of child and adult is the route to greatest health and happiness. If your child was ignored or repressed you need to find her!
Tom is bigger than me now and I already notice him navigating aspects of his life more effectively than I did when I was eighteen. I hope he recognises his separateness in the same way that I expect him to notice what he needed which I didn’t manage to provide. We are different but the same in one crucial way. We are both still learning to be who we are, and it is a lesson that neither of us will ever complete. Understanding and accepting it is what it is to be a grown up.
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