Becoming something…

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Fearless Lover Podcast: How Spiritual Grounding Provides What Therapy Can’t | PLAY

When love is of yourself and of the relationship.

There is only one thing you can bring to relationships, yourself. To do this you need to spend time on it but not in the way that common culture defines. Also, to build a relationship that you can bring to everyone else you need to spend specific relationship time too.

What space isn’t:
•  TV
•  Internet
•  Hanging out with a group
•  Even reading a book

This is because you aren’t truly alone, truly taking space. Deliberate effort is required to make room for space for you and your relationships.

A great reality is mentioned in the above podcast, that scientists have discovered that atoms create themselves in a vacuum out of nothing. New things can’t be created if space is stuffed full.

Be a bit more empty, leave room for things to come to you.

Are adults made? A recent article by Kay Hymowitz from City Journal suggests something about young men today in our society:

Today’s single young men hang out in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood.

Child-Man in the Promised Land by Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal Winter 2008

The suggestion is that for various social reasons, we are bypassing the previous generations’ milestone of marriage and a family when we supposedly begin our adult lives with the start of our careers. That first main job and first step now equals independence. Am I socially stunted, stuck in a culturally locked puberty (video games, the internet, and career changes)? I’m not in college anymore and much of that activity has gone by the wayside. There isn’t much like the structure of a full-time job, other personal pursuits, and a growing long-term relationship to have other things take favor. Yet, I still long for the long nights, long papers, and long haphazard days.

My relationship and new job is the cornerstone to a growing foundation that I think is moving me beyond this immature middle ground. Priorities change and whether or not I like to admit it, I’m heavily invested in both. This is by choice. This implies that this stage is under our own self-control. Is it important to take action?

Action would be contrary to what is rewarded in our culture; action which requires forward thinking loses to the many short-term excited battles our cultures supports. How can the weekend (or even every day) be one of exciting battles if you are settled into a life track, one long battle with something or short ones with quick feedback and results? Immediate gratification is clearly our cultural winner. It usually takes an event or emotional commitment to be able to recognize the importance of the former, long-term action, possibly to just return back afterwards.

Even today, they say SYM (Single Young Males), Hymowitz’s term, or this millennial generation in general is distracted by many new things, a world of instant gratification. Take your college life for example.

[Jones, S] (2002) indicated that 72% of all students check their email daily, and 26% of college students use instant messaging on an average day. A similar survey in 2005 found that 83% of adults in the 18-29 age range participate in online activities [Demographics of Internet Users] (2007 ).

Digital-Distractions

We learned in and with this environment. Conveniences have become crutches.

So what of women? I don’t necessarily think they are excluded from this phenomenon but they sure are talking about it. The child-man article continues,

In Internet chat rooms, in advice columns, at female water-cooler confabs, and in the pages of chick lit, the words “immature” and “men” seem united in perpetuity…Men feel threatened by female empowerment, these thinkers argue, and in their anxiety, they cling to outdated roles.

Child-Man in the Promised Land by Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal Winter 2008

The CEO phenomenon is one example of the ever growing worth and exchange value of a single individual. Females with this power, on this scale, is historically rare; they have a right to enjoy it, even in the face of the above mentioned masculine uncertainty. It would be wrong to not point out that only twelve of Fortune 500 companies are headed by female CEOs, which debunks Hymowitz’s argument above.

I’m not sure if I see it as gender specific because I feel like many women face the the same cultural pressures that us males do.

Are these trends any different from the activities of young women who are often unwilling to surrender personal freedoms to be “shackled” by motherhood? The Sex and the City generation who see marriage as an anchor and drag on their personal lives, who embrace disposable relationships and are obsessed with designer clothing?

Editorial: Beware the Child-Man?

I’ll admit my cravings and notice that I see many peers expressing their freedom. I even would go as far to say, because of a different social experience in my youth while dealing with my sexuality, I am even more immature in certain areas. My immaturity is supported. More than ever we are rewarded for growth of self and not of family or relationships if it is in the way.

So, do we continue because we can?

We all may need to read more, converse more, and look at how thin we are spread in our social world (especially if it’s virtual). I keep wondering if I should be focusing harder or caring less? I am not a SYM, the relationship disqualifies me of that title, but the cute voices on my shoulders are both telling me that the SYM life is calling. Most of us now have the freedom to develop in the context of something, say a relationship, or develop outside of that structure.

The child-man, gay-infant, and adult-girl are real. Stuck playing video games, exploring deep relationships for the first time, and keeping time with image and power, we are our own segment of society. We will become a generation around it. It feels good, but I feel detached. Our 30s will come soon, but should our goal be to cum as much as possible before it does?

Adults don’t emerge. They’re made.

Child-Man in the Promised Land by Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal Winter 2008

Another stranger

Strong teeth nibbling at the soul,
a midnight snack of attempted progress.

My feet treaded new footsteps,
from the moment I woke up.

Sore eyes for similar,
familiar lies. I’m fooling myself again.

Putting out isn’t the same, the
first time, second time, third time around.

Give me stone eyes. Eyes that find hearts
cold. Minds that build false homes in me.

Now, I’ve opened the front door, but
nothing looks familiar. Not even
his now familiar beard.

Someone else has made my bed,
and although new things feel safe,
I’ve encountered another stranger.

Like a strong dialect, we speak different languages within the same. “I don’t understand those kids,” from the g-rents telling us more about the language we speak than our peers. My friends have trouble speaking the language of relationship, a topic to cover later. It appears as though that as we get older the WEs and the USs enter our vocabulary more smoothly than the I and ME of independent youth.

Are there intergenerational dialects? Songs speak different and cultures can be worlds apart, that sounds like grounds for a different language. Thinking of ourselves, is the youth that different? I still don’t think I have the vocabulary for my relationship and my friends still leave out the WE and US when referring to it.

I was recently told that this is the time of life to think of ourselves. It can be hard to really look at life beyond the simple sphere of ME.

So we aren’t alone and we can’t ALWAYS focus on ourselves. So heres some tips on acting and speaking in a healthy selfish head space while acknowledging the US and WE in those around ourselves.

1) Take pause because sometimes when you feel extended, taking some time to pause and center yourself can actually enlighten yourself to others around you. I think in a time of when we are supposed to be focusing on ourselves we need to remember to do just that. We’ll get the language and get the awareness of the spaces around us through this openness to others. This openness which comes through recognizing and appreciating ourselves first.

2) Don’t hide from what you do and don’t know. Age brings experience, not always knowledge. Experience will build off of knowledge, one depends on the other. The fear of letting someone know that you don’t know something really says I’m not open to learning. It’s called being real, in our language, or honest in theirs.

3) One IS the loneliest number. Thinking only of yourself, just yourself and no one else, isn’t expansive. I encourage a focus on a group of people but not at the expense of forgetting that you are more through others. To look at this from a selfish angle, people can and will enhance you. Interact and learn from everything around you. Feed yourself.

Live to learn because that will help you to learn to live. Know that time and space won’t stop for you so the best way to “grow up” is to move with the times and the spaces. WE will get through it, even if I am using you to do it.

Am I casual in my use of others? Can being selfish be a good thing?