I turned twenty yesterday. A few days prior, I was talking to my dad about what it means for me, now that I'm a "proper adult" (not the phrasing we used). His opinion on the matter was surprisingly simple - I should just continue doing as I have done previously. I have, he told me, consistently done my best at everything, and if I continue doing my best and continue doing as I can, then I will be a perfectly good adult simply by doing what I did to be a perfectly good teenager.
A few days prior to that, I had to give a presentation in my Human Development crisis about the developmental stage of adolescence and what goes on during that time. I talked about Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial stages and how adolescence is characterized by a crisis of identity versus role confusion. I learned in my studying and emphasized in my presentation that, while adolescents can't figure out who they permanently are at that stage (no one can, really; we're always changing and it's futile to have a permanent sense of identity), they can have an idea of who they are at the time and an acceptance of the fact that they will change, knowing that they can still know who they are during whatever stage of their lives they're currently in.
It's a bit like that for me now. I'm entering my twenties and I suppose some people might expect me to know who I am and what I'm trying to be in my life. And while I do have some understanding, there are some things I'm still trying to work out. They're finer points, admittedly, but they're important finer points and I want them worked out. Though I know I'll never fully have them worked out, or if I do, it'll only be for a temporary phase of my life.
I hesitate to talk here about the novel I'm writing, because the last times I blogged about my projects, they ended up going uncompleted, but the novel I'm writing coincidentally deals with themes of identity when coming to the end of an important phase of your life. It's funny; it was on total accident and yet here I am, asking myself questions (or not so much asking as watching them become answered) about something I didn't realize I was writing about. Writers often say their work surprises them, isn't that right? My work's surprising me by being very timely as far as my own life is concerned.
I've also heard it said that writers should talk about their own truth - that is, their own experiences, the things they know to be true because of their own lives. I've tried to talk about other people's truths for so long because I didn't think I really had a truth myself. Now I realize that I have a truth - multiple truths, really - simply by being a person and living in a world where everything that happens is true by virtue of it happening in a real place. The conclusions my reality have led me to come to are not conclusions that are shared by a lot of people, and they're not the conclusions that most other writers seem to have come to (judging by what people seem to say, or mean to say, in their writing), but I suppose that there's nothing wrong in writing my truth. It's the only truth I have, after all. It's selfish perhaps to write about a truth that no one else shares, just as it's selfish perhaps to want to do or talk about things that no one around you much wants to do or talk about, but what can I do?
If I understand who I am, I can write my own truth and the truth my experiences have led me to accept. Naturally I'll never know who I am really, who I am fully, I mean, but if I have a good enough idea, I'll be able to do that. And I think I have a good enough idea. I have a good enough idea of who I am to the point where I can write a novel about identity, and to do so on accident and then realize it, eh?
My approach to my life up until this point was to do whatever it was I was doing and do it well, even if I didn't want to do it or even if it was hard (or, in many cases, both). That's who I am, I suppose, a person who does what they're doing and does it well. It's worked for me through some of the more difficult times of your typical person's life as well as some of the more difficult times for me personally, and I suppose I can keep going like that as time goes on and I grow older and the things I have to do become harder.
It's an awfully funny way to say "happy birthday" to yourself, but I suppose what I'm trying to say is, happy birthday, me.
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