Don't Give Up

There is something about growing up that has become cliche. I don't mean the phrase "growing up", I mean the action. Somewhere along the way, it started taking on water and sank into this vague ocean of stupid compromise, giving up on hope, and "finding out how things really are". Cliche, in the wrong hands, is a word that is not unlike Santa's bag of gifts. Technically, it's a sack, but I couldn't bring myself to write "Santa's sack" without laughing. I'm twelve, so what. The point is, I used to stay up at night trying to imagine how all those toys found themselves in comfortable accommodations in a sack that Santa could carry around. I refuse to end that sentence with "on his back". I'm not Beatrix Potter. My best idea was that he shrank the toys down to a molecular size and that they would only become their real size again when he took them out and put them under a tree. I was a weird kid, but honestly, what better explanation can you think of? Anyway, I've been thinking about how/why it is that so many things became cliche. My Greek professor always told me that if there was a problem with my understanding of a passage the problem was on my end, because the Greek hadn't changed. Having a family hasn't changed, falling in love hasn't changed, Paris hasn't changed (well ok it has, but I'm talking about the kitsch of Paris, the attraction of Paris, not the lay out of Paris), apple pie hasn't changed. What seems to have changed is how people interact with all those things. In case you're worried, "apple pie" won't appear again in this post. Since when was having a family and finding a job mediocre? Since when was love overdone and archaic? The word love doesn't mean anything other than what it has always meant, it  has just been abused and used in the wrong context so often that people begin to forget that it ever meant anything, like when people who don't like thinking about things decide that an idea is less relevant or true because it was proposed a long time before their great-great-grandparents where plying their trade as sperm. I've been thinking recently that growing up has become just as abused. When you read about the coming of age rituals that ancient cultures had, they were centered on adjusting the children to reality and on giving the children a forum for proving that they belonged in the social strata that they all aspired to enter. I don't care whether you think fire-jumping or simulated combat or isolation were good practices for this or not, that's not the point. The point is that growing up used to mean a further step into reality, a closer brush with the real. In some circles, it still means that, just like how in some circles parents still encourage their children to be curious about the world. More and more, though, it seems to me that growing up is being overrun by a blight of mediocre acceptance in which people don't ask themselves what it is that they love to do, or whom they love, but rather they allow themselves to be taught to expect to be told those things and to accept what they are told. This is only a question. When was the last time that you asked yourself what it is that you love to do? Obviously, since we are accountable to a Creator, we are under an authority that isn't rooted in our own desires. However, given the fact that God encourages wisdom in Scripture, and not waiting around for explicit direction from Him on all things, this question is directly applicable to all of us. Honestly, when have you allowed to yourself to ask that question? Even more importantly, when have you acted on your answer to that question? Does your vision for your life extend any further than financial security and vague domestic bliss? I'm not hitting you, or myself, with the revolution hammer and trying to imply that we should all live out of a back pack and distill our pee into drinking water while we serve remote tribes in the land of Distant Somewhere, although some people should be doing that, but I am curious about what it is that motivates the decision making for each one of us. If growing up means becoming more real, which I think it does, then I think that the way we interact with things like work and love and art and science and people and ideas ought to be maturing with us. Actually, if you aren't maturing in those things, and if I'm not, then neither of us is growing up. I don't care if you're 50 and don't spend time with your family or if you're 23 and are about to marry someone only because it's safe and the people in your church like them. If you're not actively connecting yourself to the richness of like family and love, then you are not mature/maturing. Words like love and friendship and work all convey a complex and deep reality, and growing up is becoming more aware, and more plugged into, that reality. This is as much to myself as to you. The words we use carry a tremendous weight, whether you admit it or not. Live under that weight. Don't give up on yourself. You're going to have to work your ass off doing something, it might as well be something you love. You're going to have to argue and fight with someone, it might as well be someone you love. Don't settle for comfortable.