In a lot of religious and philosophical traditions this theme comes up of being little children. It’s often hard to remember what it was like being a child. The level of emotions, the level of attachment, the level of fear. And then we grow up. But what does it mean to grow up? What is it that is actually taking place?
How we move from childhood to adulthood varies, but the underlying mechanism is almost always the same: we place limitations on the imagination. To say it more bluntly, adulthood is a coping strategy.
And we come up with all these ideas, or maybe I should say that we cling to all these ideas. A way or a method of protecting ourselves from ourselves, from our imagination. We grow in certainty. We grow in certainty by placing limitations on our imagination to fuel our desire for causality. We desperately want to have a model of how the world and ourselves work, to protect ourselves from our imagination.
We come up with ways to rationalize or justify behaviors and scenarios. And this goes on and on, with no signs of ever stopping. We categorize certain attributes or the human experience. This is what that is. The reasoning behind this experience is that that person is a narcissist. The reason they had that experience is because they are mentally ill, it’s a malfunction dealing with the chemicals in the brain.
But it’s just a rational, a means to contain. In the past, the reason was the devil, or the reason was demonic possession. Before that it was the gods.
We will always find a way to box the infinite, so we don’t have to look at ourselves. We will always find a way to contain our own imagination. We will always find a way to limit creation in our attempts to feed our desire for causality.
And those strategies play out in whatever way they play out. I made this happen, she did this to me, he did this because he wanted…
Causality…
Even the personality itself is a coping mechanism, and that includes the personification of adulthood.
I know what’s going on. I know what is right and wrong. I know what I should do with my life and I know what others should do with their lives.
Wisdom?
Certainty in the idea one even has thoughts, has emotions, has an individuality. The denial that one is merely being pushed and pulled by exterior forces, an external framework. I am an individual, I have this many years, I have gone through this many experiences.
At the end of the day, I have placed limitations on my imagination so I don’t have nightmares, that’s what happened. I’m an adult because I have stifled myself enough that I don’t freak out when I look in the mirror. I’m an adult because I can judge others for being inconvenient to my coping strategy.
The whole experience, a lifetime, just a blip, a momentary existence. In an act of desperation to contain our imagination and our emotions, we strive for adulthood. But there is no true escape, we will always hit a point of being reminded of our own ignorance. We cling to ideas, we make judgments, we rationalize and justify ourselves and existence to protect ourselves, ultimately, from the one who exists in the bathroom mirror.
