ADULTHOOD

Adulthood can be hard.

This picture may or may not mean anything.

For me, adulthood has been a bad trip. I don't think it's that way for everyone though. And it's not like I can blame all my problems on a stage of life everyone goes through. But I think a lot of my expectations for my own adult life have just continuously/constantly backfired on me. 

INTRO TO ADULTHOOD 
I think there's a person I see myself as; someone who I should attain to be. I've had a blurred vision of this person for years. It's blurred by all the other great things I see around me. There are so many beautiful people and bright opportunities around us, it's overwhelming. I cannot be everyone. I can only be me. 
Despite this blatant truth, this has not stopped me from trying to be everyone at once.
There are a few months of my adult life I romanticize on; most of the 18th year of my life. I think I figured something out then. Because I remember feeling a sense of sincere charity and understanding for others that I have since merely tried to imitate. I remember friendships, service, hiking, my AP English class, acting, musical discovery... The Renaissance of Scott. 
Then I specifically recall my mind being hit with a sense of anxiety and loneliness I'd never felt before. This was some time during my first week of junior college.

THE WEIGHT
Everything I had ever imagined, created or dreamed was slowly sinking down a hole. Over the years, only portions of this have occasionally risen back onto the surface. I've made many choices out of fear of looking like an idiot in the generic public eye. It's so bizarre. I'm always thinking things that nobody ever says out loud, so I never bring these things up. I have felt as though everyone grew up and I'm just a childish boy trapped in a man's body, pretending to be something I'm not: An adult.
This all sounds poetic and negative. Well, I've learned that this is not true. 
**Apparently I'm full to the brim with creativity. 
**...And heaping doses of self-doubt.
I know some of you probably don't believe either of those last two statements, but hear me out.
The college campus is packed with eager business majors done-up in suit+tie outfits from Men's Warehouse and reek of cologne. Engineering majors who are extremely lanky and scholastically intelligent. Art majors who button the top button of their flower-print shirts and keep the hair gel industry alive. Ag majors who were raised on a farm and look like they're literally made out of meat and potatoes. And all these people think they know the answers to life's questions. 
It's overwhelming, really. It's as though I am no longer myself, but a small ball entwined of every character that barks at me as I pass them. The vision of who I want to become gets lost.

A CONCLUSION OF SORTS
Throughout this month, I've had days where I feel like I've been hit in the face with a baseball bat and I'm waking up from some nightmare. I wake up to find that my life is real and that there is still time for me to be me. And the vision of who I want to become is clearer than ever.
I guess it's a constant drive for self-improvement that will keep me alive+well as an adult. Whatever righteous desires and creative ideas I've ever conjured up are for me to share. My views on adulthood have crushed my dreams into oblivion. Some saccharine movie made from gentrification, professionalism and wedding photos has reduced my self-confidence to a crumbled sheet of paper. Somehow, amid this world of cowboys and CEO's, I must be my own person.
No, I'm not gonna go on a backpacking trip to Europe or move to a crappy overpriced apartment in New York City to find myself. All I want is to be my best self possible. The person I aspire to be is willing to help; someone happy and kind. Someone confident in themselves and caring towards others. I just want to do my best in what I do, and do what I feel to be right.
For the first time in a while, I think I can say with a surety that I will accomplish this. Because in a way, it's already happening.

If I Remember Anything

I woke up around 5:00am to kick off this new year. Definitely not on purpose. All I wanted was to go back to sleep. But for any reason, my first thought was to stay in bed and listen to music. So just lying in bed on a dark, cold, silent morning, the first song I listened to in 2018 was "Love's In Need Of Love Today" by Stevie Wonder. Totally unexpected and instantaneously, I started bawling my eyes out.

It's hard to explain these emotionally gigantic-yet-temporary moments that happen to each of us. Because it's as though one moment we can remember the experience vividly and romantically, then the next we can just simply forget. Heck, sometimes we not only forget these personal moments of peace and clarity, but we go into utter despair. As I type this, I'm listening to that Stevie Wonder track. And although part of me is like, "Frick, I was just feeling this earlier today and the aesthetic is already gone," I don't think this is worth stressing over. I've had plenty of moments of complete inner-joy since then, and I will probably continue to have more. I've kept some pieces of these moments with me. If I remember anything, it's that I've realized my despise for superficiality. 

I've spent a good chunk of my life holding on to the superficial. Yeah, that's kinda my word of the day. Here are some terms the Google dictionary uses to describe it:

-Lack of thoroughness

-Lacking depth of character

-Lacking serious thought

-Existing/occurring at or on surface level

It's amazing (and by amazing, I mean ridiculous) how much irrational judgment we make on our initial impressions of others. Or even toward ourselves. I mean, a guy doesn't wave back to you in the hallway, and all the sudden every small mannerism you see in him has some prideful tint to it. Holy cow, we are literally monsters. And on a self-criticizing level, I think I've felt regret for +/- half the text messages I've ever sent. Like it freaking matters!

While I don't think I'll ever crack the code for how deep genuineness can go, I'm learning a lot about just how thick the ice of superficiality truly is. Perhaps your taste in music can say a lot about you. Or the stuff you post on Facebook. But dang, what a terrible way to write someone off. We're all making the same mistakes every day here, and we are all divvying out the pain and joy within us; deciding not only what to keep with us, but how much of it. 

How much joy do you keep with you? How much pain do you carry around? What pain has meant the most to you? What joy has meant the most to you? When you put it this way, it seems obvious that we should be hopeful all the time. Yet when we hit our roadblocks, this is far from obvious.

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah described Christ as a character "acquainted with grief." Due to our human condition, we will all come across some grief and pain. If we let grief become our enemy, we will crumble at its presence. If we allow grief to become our friend, we will stray from cheer. If we sustain an acquaintanceship with grief, we become like Christ. We will have a slight knowledge of it; we'll handle it when it hits us, then continue to go about our lives without it. 

Like I said before, we can never decipher the deepest depths of every person we come across. That would be too emotionally tasking. The fact that there is a surface level to all things keeps life bearable. However, clinging to the surface of things--to superficiality--leads to mere surface-level understanding. We can only assume that perhaps those who seek help truly need it. The happiness that comes from true human connection is totally worth the effort. It's a disciplinary conscious, borderline-spiritual effort to crack through the superficial and truly get to know another person; to truly get to know ourselves.

Through 2018, I have learned to care less about--well--basically anything that appears on the screen of a smart phone. I honestly think that by talking more with other people about valuable things, you learn more about them and even about yourself. You develop a stronger love for other people and oddly enough, learn to love yourself. I gotta admit, the internet is cool, but humanity is that much cooler.

I'm not saying we should all just give up on the material world and gather around a campfire singing "Kumbayah" or something, but...

Actually, yeah. I kinda am.

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