Do you remember the first semi-adult realization you came to? We pondered this in my philosophy class one day. The question stuck with me, and I recalled after class that this first epiphany of mine came when I realized God probably didn’t look like Zeus from the animated Disney version of "Hercules." Heaven, however, will always look like Mount Olympus in my mind. I don’t care what you say.
Do you remember the first semi-adult decision you made? That was a tougher question that I thought to ask myself. The memory of staring up at a white ceiling while lying on a padded table in a tattoo parlor while a man prepared to stick a needle through my belly button came to mind. My belly button piercing was my 20th birthday present to myself, and I was very excited about it. #NoRagrets. However, it was a very unintentionally rebellious move. It was an aesthetic and superficial decision, but it marked a change of course in what I allowed myself to consider to be okay. Now, the following may seem incredibly obvious, but I implore you to consider this statement carefully: you are allowed to have your own opinions about your life and your choices. Again, this may seem obvious, however, this statement is the culmination of three and a half years of Saint Mary’s education so bear with me.
Your years prior to this “adult” thing were all foundational. We teach infants to calm themselves. We teach toddlers not to steal cookies at snack time. We teach adolescents to do their homework. We teach high schoolers to obey. When I reached college, my emotions felt new to me. I didn’t have someone to tell me the “shhhh” when I needed to calm down, and I didn’t have anyone to smile and laugh to tell me to be happy. Suddenly, my emotions, feelings, perceptions, ideas, thoughts...they were all my own. I had to learn how to control them and use them appropriately. This construct we call rebellion may actually be more of a realization period. A period of realizing one’s own strength, and growing to learn to use it for good.
I can’t describe that new feeling of freedom. I can recall freshman year at our first dorm meeting when someone asked my RA when our curfew was. Finding out we didn’t have one was like being let off a leash, running away, and then not knowing where to go. So much freedom and where to begin? So we begin at dorm parties. We begin by taking more than the allotted number of cookies out of the dining hall. We begin by watching Netflix instead of doing homework. Rebellion abounds.
The scary part of it all is that when you turn to look to see if what you’re doing is “okay,” you find no one. The adults who used to make up the rules for right and wrong are gone, and the guidelines of home have not made the 3,000 mile trek. I looked around, and everyone looked so self-assured. Self-assured as in they could assure themselves on their own that their decisions were okay. Every day the temptation rose in me to consider my decisions based on the old rule book. I thought about what my parents would think of this or what my sisters would think of that.
The summation of the human race: a bunch of people doing what they think is best. Very recently I had a discussion with a mentor of mine who reminded me that the statement, “Everyone else just seems like they know what they are doing” is in fact very true. Fact: everyone around you seems like they know what they’re doing. Whether or not we actually do know what we’re doing, is an entirely different matter altogether.
I’m now 22, and I’ve literally had this piece in my electronic diary for about two years now. In that time, I can’t say that I’ve made many leaps and bounds in terms of how I handle my emotions. What I feel in this writing of mine is much the same feeling one feels whilst dusting. Much like dusting, self-attainment is a constant rather than an end. I do exist as an individual whose decisions and choices are connected to an endless web of other beings. In as much as my realization of freedom struck me at the beginning of college, the realization of responsibility has come to me in the end. Adulthood painfully means we have no more claim to ignorance.
