Wondering, Is better to be a kid or an adult?

#3

Photo by Laura Rivera on Unsplash

The Game

I have a sister in law (translation: a sister who I had to wait for until she married my brother and came into my  life) who has, as one of her super powers, the ability to create and organize games. She is so good at (and enthusiastic about) this that her grown sons still roll their eyes when she gets going in game organizing mode. But I’ll tell you what, my SOL’s games are fun, make us all laugh, and bring us together in a way that nothing else does. She gets us to play.

This past Christmas Eve, all sixteen of us gathered for dinner in the way we sibs have gathered since we were kids. My SOL hadn’t had time to invent a game, so instead she had these question cards that, before everyone arrived, the two of us read through and distributed in smaller quantities around the table. Toward the end of dinner, she rang her spoon against her glass with great glee, and said, “You will notice the cards…,” at which point her sons rolled their eyes and the rest of us laughed and groaned. 

Here’s how the game went: a person from one section of the table chose a card from the pile near them and read it aloud. The whole group, now fifteen (our smallest member had drifted off to sleep on the couch), took turns answering. 

When you play the question game in this way, it doesn’t really spur true conversation. I mean, people are less likely to get vulnerable in large groups. Instead, it becomes humorous because it’s more performative, people play off one another, and so eventually we were belly laughing in the way we so infrequently do. Usually it’s: How’s work? How’s your dad? Your mom?  School? Your job hunt?  You know. Not many chuckles there.

When we were at the final question, because it was time for peppermint ice cream and chocolate crumbles, my great niece (who was six) read: “Is it better to be an adult or a kid?”

Boom. 

And more than eight months later, here I am still, wondering in loop de loops about this question and this moment because wondering sits in your pocket, on your shoulder, in your heart.

First wondering today

What do you think it’s better to be? A kid or an adult? Why?

Spend a little time here. Do your best to be honest; use more words than one.

Ok, back to the scene.

Before I go further, it’s important to lay out the seating chart. Not in a specific way, but more so you can understand my literal view at that Christmas table. 

If you don’t have a dining room the size of a half court, you know that you need to do creative letter shaped things with mismatched tables when you have a huge crew come to eat. That night, our tables made a fairly traditional L, and I was sitting at the top of the L in a way that I could see almost everyone. It was like I was at a play. So, when we got to this question, I had a pretty clear view of the whole thing unfolding. 

Oooh, everyone said when she read the question. At some point, my great niece weighed in, which we’ll get to in a minute. But first, here’s how it went with the adults. One by one, they unconditionally said that it was better to be a kid. All these people I’ve lived in relationship with my whole life, loved my whole life, still plan to live in relationship with for each of our whole lives, every single one said Kid. 

They each talked about how hard it is to be an adult and how easy it is to be a kid. You know, words like carefree, no worries (I guess those are the same thing but feel different to me), young bodies, no responsibilities, lots of time to play, etc. When my great niece spoke, she said with great and serious thoughtfulness that she thought it was better to be a kid because adults had a lot to worry about and had to work all the time and were always tired. 

Everyone nodded.

Now, not everyone at the table had talked yet, but the answer, KID!, had gained a rising momentum. You know, like if one person chants Lock her up! and the person next to them gets the jazzy vibe (even if they haven’t really considered what this phrase means or if it makes logical, legal, or moral sense to them) and begins to chant it, too, and soon the whole place is shouting.

Anyway. It also wasn’t like everyone was sad or contemplative as they said Kid, there was even a bit of joy and laughter and a lot of nodding and commiserating as one by one the adults (some as young as 19) proclaimed  Kid. 

Kiiiiiiiid.

I want to replay that scene in slow motion for you now. You know, like when the movie slows and the voices sort of womp womp in deep weird alien slowness? That’s what I want you to see. 

Kiiiiiiiid. Kiiiiiid. Kiiiiiid. Kiiiiiid. 

I’m slowing it down for you because, there at our beautiful Christmas table, the situation had slowed for me in almost this way. From my theater seat, I felt a bit like I was watching a train wreck unfold. 

No one else was watching a train wreck, at least it didn’t appear that way to me. This was just one more question in the game, and people were having a great time with it. 

But because this is my essay, my finger on the replay button, let’s slow it. Picture my great niece's beautiful six-year-old wide-open face, listening in all earnestness to the role models around her, one by one, say that being an adult is unconditionally worse than being a child. Not even any debate. As it kept going, all I could hear in my own head amidst the slow alien womp womp was NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

What is our impact on children when we proclaim without thinking? 

When we big people get together, we make a lot of noise. Come on, it’s true. We can be really fun. AND. We love to talk about our suffering and worries. Ok, not all of us, and maybe not all the time, but yep, it happens. Stressful, busy, tired, overworked, hurting, frustrated, medicated, waiting, worried. 

I ask you, how often do you hear someone say, My work is really stimulating! or My body, damn I’m so grateful for it! or Last week I played in this way!  

Not that my sibs and nephews and nieces should have lied, but still, what a message for my amazing open-hearted great niece. At six tender years, she was basically learning she was in the best time of her life and after this it was all going down the drain. 

I wish you could have seen her wonderful face, her gaze as it moved from face to face as they answered. Taking it all in.

Is it even true?

Were you ever terror stricken to stillness in your bed at night because there was something in the closet, under the bed, sitting on the chair in the corner of the room? Too terrified to call out for help? Did you ever have a group of friends, or non-friends, be mean right to your face? Talk about you behind your back? Threaten to beat you up? Lie about you? Did you ever have an adult exert their power over you in a way that was impossible to escape and terrifying or debilitating? Did you ever wet your pants in your new fourth grade classroom in your brand new school because Ms. Swan was effing terrifying and took no pause in her talking for someone to raise their hand and say in front of everyone, Can I use the bathroom? Did you ever turn bright red from running around in P.E. (gym class on the East coast) and have everyone call you Tomato Face? Tell you you didn’t have eyebrows? Were you ever not invited to a party, sleep over, playdate? Made to have someone who you didn’t like but your folks did come play in your own personal room with your own things ? Been forced to hug strangers, or worse, adults you didn’t like? Have someone touch you in ways you didn’t like? Get picked for kickball last? Get left on the bench? Yelled at for losing the game? Made to take up a sport/instrument/activity you didn’t like but your folks thought would be good for you, and have to do it multiple times, if not daily, every week? Had your schedule so filled with activities you couldn’t find time to sit under a tree to just study the leaves? Had gum put in your hair on your first day of kindergarten because you were new to the country? Been not called on because of who you were born to be? Had to go to school for eight hours straight, day in and day out, and then given hours of homework to do once you got home? Been afraid, bullied, teased, left out? Been mean, bullying, silent, loud? Listened to your parents fight in the other room, heard things on the news filled with hate or fear about the demise of our world? Been told to turn your frown upside down? Had to eat all of your effing lima beans?

Do you remember those parts of what it was like to be a kid?

What does it mean to have your experience denigrated?

We’ve all had that happen. Young and old. You know, when someone says, Been there done that, to a story you just told and you see there is no hope of being heard. Or You’re being too sensitive. Or worse. I invite each of us now to consider when this happened for us. Not to get on a victim bus, but to remember, to honor, to see. Remembering helps us see others.

Well, my great niece, who I really just call my niece and she calls me Aunt Amy, bless her heart, she was experiencing that very thing at the CHRISTMAS table. Though she was too young to register it as such, let alone articulate it, she, at the tender age of six, was hearing us denigrate her experience of being human. She heard, person after person, say that being a kid was easy. In the midst of my family’s joy (and I know this was not at all their intention), they were telling her about her life and what it was like. 

But, sister? Her life is not easy and carefree. She is a human being.

My G. niece has her own fears and anxieties and worries and hurts and betrayals. They are real and hard. And, here’s the thing about being a kid: she has very little control over any of them. I know her life is beautiful and fun. I also know it can be really challenging.

I kept waiting for a shift, but everyone so far was hopped up on the childhood is best train, and though they were funny, I was in that slow motion movie seat which gave a whole other perspective of what that train was doing before my niece’s eyes. 

Have you ever been in a seat that shows you the world at a different angle? 

So, because the time to answer hadn’t gotten round to me, but the NOOOOO in my head was now too loud, I raised my hand. I did this because it’s fun to do (try it, it’s kind of hilarious); I did this because the conversation was rollicking with a life of its own and I wanted to be seen; but most of all I did this because I wanted to full stop the conversation so my niece would hear what I said.

The Best Time of Your Life

When I was getting ready to leave for college, my future school held a series of picnics for incoming students around the northeast, and my parents and I went. It was a nice event and of course fraught, as most icebreaking things created for young people by older people are. At that picnic, under willow trees and humid skies, I ended up in a conversation where a number of us were circled around a man, somebody’s dad. He’d gone to my future school and was holding forth. He had LOVED it. And here’s what he told us, “You kids are so lucky. Those four years were the best years of my life.”

Just like my niece did at the dinner table, we all nodded. I mean, it’s likely most of the people my age thought, Duh, dude, of course, they were. You are practically dead. But I was horrified, and in my head, a pin dropped. And that location finder found its way to me at a Christmas dinner 40 years later and went ping.

My answer

I told the table my answer. I like being an adult best. 

It’s true. 

When I was a kid, I probably would have said I liked being a kid best. I mean, galloping around the lower playground as the Black Stallion with 40 other kids in the herd, all neighing and rearing and galloping, too? Not caring that the older kids stood there and shook their heads and said (very) disparaging things? Or that even when I graduated college, I believed being 30 was akin to being dead? I’m certain I would have said kid. (Except I wanted to be a jockey, or the Black Stallion, both of whom are adults, so who knows?)

But that Christmas Eve, at the fairly newly minted age of 60, I said to the table, adult.  And though I said it for my niece, I meant it, too, and then I filled in my answer.

I get to decide what I eat, when I go to bed, I have loved my work and still do, I can go somewhere without someone giving me permission, I make my own money, I go out with friends when I want to and stay home when I want to (and I love my friends, and it doesn’t matter if they’re not cool, and they don’t stab me in the back or suddenly disappear to be besties with another, more popular, person). I can vote, and march, and write, and give money, and and and. If I want a book, I can get in the car and go to the library myself. I have a car. (Her name is Penny). I still have a bike and though I’m not as reckless as when I was young, by a longshot, I still pedal and grin. (My bike’s name is Pearl). I don’t worry like I did when I was small because, almost no matter how big something is, I’ve learned that I will find a way to handle it. I don’t have to eat one more effing lima bean. (Ok, I didn’t say that last one, but it’s true.)

And then I looked right at her and acknowledged for her, and the table, that being a kid is hard, too. I was a teacher for a long time, and teachers get to see what it’s like to be a kid. We are schooled in it. So I talked about being a kid for a minute, how it isn’t only easy and why. And she nodded. And everyone else, bless their beloved hearts, did too.

I don’t think this next thing is a wondering, so I’ll just say it. Being human is hard. But being human is glorious, too. If you let it.

Being an adult human is hard

I don’t want to downplay any of what makes being an adult difficult. Oh my God, we could make a list that is its own train wreck. 

We have responsibilities, for some of us these rest on only our own shoulders. Sometimes, due to a variety of reasons, we don’t have agency and must do what’s required of us even if we don’t like it. We may need to feed people, and take care of them, and often we come last. We can feel so tired. The load we share isn’t always truly shared. We can be awake at night with the world, and its possibilities, spinning off its axis. If we’re a member of a marginalized group, have someone in power over us who is evil or unconscious, are in economic hardship or sick or dying or losing someone we love, or or or, well, damn, being an adult can be so hard. 

And. And. Children have most of those things, too, with the exception of being financially responsible for someone else, and I will remind (ask a therapist) that children take on the burden of feeling personally responsible for the adults around them far beyond what is ever possible, let alone makes sense, and that there are many many children in this country and world that must economically contribute to keep their family afloat. Plus, there are a number of states in the U.S. that in the past two years have been working to lower the worker age-limit so children can work in ‘non-dangerous jobs’ in factories and processing plants and fields. Though in the chart below, many states have a clear color which means age not available, with a quick internet poke, it’s available, this undoing of child labor protection, as, for example, 12 and 13 year olds can work in Nebraska and 12 year olds in Georgia and… (1,2)

(3)

Oh, I could digress further. (Why are some lawmakers pushing to lower the working age to middle school, and WHOSE CHILDREN ARE BEING SENT TO WORK?). 

Ok, I’m back. But the wondering challenge flag on this topic is thrown.

The fifty-five/twenty comparison

So, in the eight months since Christmas, I wondered first about this kid/adult question from a more personal level. What is my answer? Why? How do I feel about that? What are the pieces of it? Was this always my answer? And then, Why did so many of my sibs, maybe all of them at the table, say kid? Why did the younger generation, the X/Z/Millenials who answered before I chipped in, say kid? What do we show the young people in our family that being an adult is?

I think these are really critical questions. One buddy I took a walk with said, You know what, Amy? As parents, people know their children as adults for much longer than they knew them as children.

Is this relevant? I don’t know except for one piece: we, if lucky, are adults far longer than we are kids. So for the answer to remain kid? 55 years of living a life that we wouldn’t choose? That pales in comparison? Wonder that.

Do I know the answer for anyone else?

So, here is the wall in the wondering I hit a few days ago. Because in these essays I don’t want to pose a stunt wondering and then pontificate the answer. That’s not a real wondering; it’s a lecture. 

With this in mind, I wondered, what’s beyond my own answer? And I’ve taken walks and drives and sits, wondering: does the question stop at my personal answer?

Nope. Here’s the next wondering that arose. Are there people for whom kid truly is the best answer? Who? And what makes this so?

I have born witness to lives at least in part shaped by death and rape and abuse and war and poverty and illness and addiction and loss and discrimination. At our own Christmas Eve table are the lives of recent refugees and the trauma that is an inevitable part of that.

So I can’t say what someone else is up against when they answer this question. And, I don’t know have any idea what a person imagines when they answer: kid.

Is it being again with someone they love? Being back with family in their country of origin? Not having yet watched the disintegration of their parents or partner or child? Not being held in the vice of mental illness? Addiction? An abusive marriage? Not having to be afraid of their child going out in the world because they may get killed simply because they’re Black or raped simply because they’re a woman or attacked simply because they’re LGBTQIA? Not being in deep and constant physical pain? Not being suppressed by a system that makes it possible for others but not them?

So this wondering led me away from my own sureness to the understanding (again) it is not for me to suggest what a person’s answer should be. Or how much control they have beyond the experiences that have made up their lives and psychies. Only each of you know what your life brings to the table of the question is it better to be a kid or an adult. Only you.

Culture

Goodness, I shouldn’t take walks because it makes my essays damn long. But we have a great bike path here and so…

came the next wondering: what’s in our control in how we view our stage in life, and what’s working to control us?

On my walks, in addition to considering/imagining the trauma and hardship that life’s accumulation can give a person (and we all have some, though the amount and intensity varies widely), I wondered about the power that culture plays in our ability to value being an adult as a wonderful, chosen, thing.  

My definition of culture here: our family, community, groups (like a church or political party or club), nation. 

Have you ever sat by a tree and wondered, what does our culture teach me adulting is? What has my family taught me? My religion? My politics or club or sport? My nation’s leaders? What does adulting look like? What adulting role models have I witnessed whether I realized it or not? 

I’ve been wondering about what we’re taught we’re supposed to be and not be like as adults and how that impacts the literal way we inhabit the world. We’re certainly taught that we’re supposed to be responsible and successful. And, yes, serious. We don’t stop doing cartwheels only because of gravity.

And it’s true, there are a lot of responsibilities as an adult, roof over the head not the least of them, and this ‘a lot’ is true especially for a person who must care for a sick child or parent while sometimes even working multiple jobs for the barest of wages. But doesn’t life still offer up opportunities to laugh? And yet, personally, I can’t remember either of my grandmas laughing much, let alone playing, nor most of my other relatives. The laughter that did happen was mainly on the paternal side of my family, and interestingly this was true even though that was the side with much more tragedy in its history.

Let’s look at laughing

In teacher school, I studied with the Ed Psych professor, Anabel Jenkins, a renowned emotional intelligence expert, and she shared some startling statistics with us. Part of her education-based point for us teachers was that we adults have driven a lot of the joy out of learning, joy that should naturally be a part of discovery and growth. Wonder about that for a minute. (Plus, how many teachers did you have who encouraged laughter in class?) What does this do for a person’s perspective on learning? What skills does it give us to navigate adulthood? What does it leave out?

One specific thing she shared is that children laugh about 400 times a day. And adults laugh about 15 (4). If my math’s right, every 27 times a kid laughs, we laugh once.

Why do we laugh so much less than children do? How often you laugh each day? What are those laughs like? about? I mean, do you like to laugh?

Do we see the details?

Humor comes often from noticing the smallest of details. That’s a thing I’ll hand the kids, they notice the small stuff and they let it tickle them. On my dad’s side of the family, in addition to playing Aw Shucks deep into the night, my dad and my uncle were amazing and hilarious story tellers. They noticed the details of the most ordinary events and brought them in, making us laugh until we cried. And I’m thinking now of an essay Ross Gay wrote in Book of Delights about a fig tree on a city street in Indiana, and his amused pause as he watched all the characters of his town standing under it looking up, partaking, discussing, and then how he himself joined the group. It’s a funny and touching essay filled with the details. And here’s the thing: if I asked, are people and fig trees funny, who would say yes? And yet, turns out they are.

In my mind that’s it. The world is filled with chuckles - pickles and dog strollers and hermit crabs and sea cucumbers - even if we are the only ones to see it. 

Seeing is a slowing down muscle that needs to be built, it interrupts, just like wondering is and does. And I wonder, is this also true of letting ourselves laugh?

Rainbows

We’re in such a hurry, and the sirens call us to the cliffs of busy because there’s some odd adult success notion associated with being so busy. (and also in sounding smart, serious, and assured) Who taught us this model? Who does our being busy, smart, serious, and assured serve? Is it possible that if we were silly, we wouldn’t buy as much?

When I was a new mom, a friend told me about trying to leave the house with her three-year-old. If anyone is a parent, they know how challenging it is to get everything together and out of the house, let alone on time. We parents of tiny children are like anchors of love trying to walk against the current. 

Anyway, her three year old was lollygagging in the other room, and my friend’s hair was beginning to go on fire because they were running late. Finally, she marched back to where her little girl was standing still in the hallway, and said, COME ON. And it was then the girl pointed to the upper wall. There, orbing with light-motion, was a prism rainbow. Shining vibrant with all the colors, it seemingly magically hung there. Her little girl was transfixed by the mystery and the beauty and the aliveness of it. Look mommy, she said with awe.

My friend was brought to a stop. Oh, she said.

She walked in my door, because it was us she was running late to see, and plopped on the chair (witness the bags, etc, drop from her shoulders) and said, I just learned that I’ve stopped seeing rainbows.

What would child Amy say about adult Amy?

We don’t stop seeing rainbows because they aren’t there any more. Yesterday, as I wondered about this topic with a dear and very wise friend (who is 97), she said, People answer kid because often we leave the child behind as we age.

What does it mean to leave our child behind? Who was I as a child? Who were you? What would our child selves say if they saw us now? How would they feel as they witnessed the way we walked and talked through the world?

Our cultural definitions of success and correct behavior – giving everything for others without holding any for ourselves, or earning every single dollar possible and making sure the world can see we have done so, or thinking success is worth compromising everything our child version thought important (including our values) – well the impact of this definition on us, it’s a wondering isn’t it? A deep wondering, worth unpacking. What does it do to our laughter and our ability to play? Is this why we leave our child behind?

This wondering doesn’t pause there. Because children don’t only giggle. They ask us, expect us, to take care of them and the world. They count on us. An honor of being a grown up is that we have the power and responsibility and ability to do this, small part or large. To play with the children, to see the humor around us, and to keep them safe. So, to just play, or to disregard the our inner child who’s counting on us as we play, well, wonder about the implications of that one, too.

The end. Really.

We have a whole life of being an adult if we’re lucky. 75% of our life. That’s a lot.

So, to close, I’m going to circle back to the original wondering. And then ask, regardless of the answer, knowing nothing is perfect, and life is a series of ups and downs, still, what does each of us want to feel about being an adult? What can we do to create the feeling? To create the experience? What must we accept? What can we throw out? What are we going to do now? And what in the world are we teaching our kids about these very same questions?

I’m going to close with words attributed to shamanic teaching, which whether the attribution is actually true or not feel so wise to me:

“In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: "When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop being comforted by the sweet territory of silence?” 

― Gabrielle Roth

All of these are actions children naturally do. Do we naturally lessen or lose them as we reach adulthood? Or is there another reason? Can we get them back?

To close, a play/laughter challenge

A friend reached out after reading “Wondering, The Practicals.” And she said, Amy! I have been obsessing for months about getting a basketball, and I haven’t done it. I shared with her that I, too, have wanted to get a basketball (there are frickin courts right across the street!) and simply have not done it. We talked about the threshold that can stop a yearning like this because it feels just enough too high to cross, and so we don’t, and we stay comfortable and ignore the nudge.

And then she added, Older women are not supposed to go shoot baskets. It’s simply not done.

And she’s right. And what the eff is that all about? Really? 

So, we dared each other.

1. To obtain a basketball by this past Sunday. (We did. Mine was $6.49 because I also discovered an awesome used sporting good store!)

2. And then, by this upcoming Sunday, to have dribbled the ball at least once and also taken a shot. Jumping is not required.

It’s good to have friends in this journey to help us get over that threshold that stops us from living. 

So, 

I don’t know what your final personal answer to this wondering is. But no matter, does adulthood have to skip joy? To use the word should in a good way, imho, adulthood should absolutely not skip joy. So, I ask, what’s a threshold yearning for you in order to invite your inner child back into adulthood? What’s something silly or fun or (God forbid) selfish you’d really like to do?

What’s stopping you? What are the ways we can we bring the child along with us? Can this child teach us to expand joy?

If you write your aspiration in the comments, I will have your back. Give yourself a deadline, it helps. And then wonder: What will happen to me, to us, to the world, if we learn to hold hands with our child and risk falling more and more in love with our lives?

See you on the metaphorical court.

“The most radical act anyone can commit is to be happy.” –Patch Adams (4)

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Sources:

1. Nebraska

2. Georgia

3. Minimum work age

4. LAUGHTER AND PATCH QUOTE