Thoughts on adulthood

[catsittingstill]

There's a post about "manhood" here.

Hat tip to Technoshaman for pointing it out, by the way.

I'm going to reprint the main points here:

- Responsibility: Owning your shit, and dealing with it in ways that preferably do not stir up more shit.

- Accountability: Being adult enough to say, "Yeah, i did such-and-such" - for good and ill - and accept the consequences (again, both good and ill) of doing it.

- Balance: Knowing where to step, and how to compensate when you step wrong.

- Perspective: Looking out so you don't step in shit to begin with... and realizing that you inevitably will.

- Wisdom: Learning from the previous experiences.

- Courage: Not the lack of fear (which is insane), but the ability to move past fear when need be.

- Confidence: Knowing your worth - not the things you take from others, but the things you earn within yourself.

- Vulnerability: The ability to touch, feel and share... and yet survive to prosper from it.

- Protectiveness: The defense of those who cannot presently defend themselves... because you're occasionally one of them, too.

- Restraint: Because dogs do NOT actually eat dogs unless something's seriously wrong with them.

- Compromise: Understanding that it's not All About You(TM) comma dammit.

- Flexibility: Because if the previous sentiment is not obvious already, Life will see to it that it becomes so.

- Generosity: Not indulgence (or self-indulgence) but a willingness to share, be shared with, and say "yes."

- Boundaries: Giving, getting and creating structure through the ability and willingness to say "no.(***)"

- Love: Affectionate reverence for the world that is, not a fantasy of what it must look like before you can affectionately revere it.

- Respect: Both given to others and earned through one's actions.

- Passion: Acting as though life is not a spectator sport. It is only when you choose to watch rather than to do.

- Resilience: Because, as the Tao Te Ching says, "neither heaven nor earth is humane."

- Compassion: Because it falls to us to be humane in its place.

It's not about being a man.  It's about being an adult.  One place--one place I had to change something before it could apply to women.  (It's italicized.)  I don't have anything against these as things for both men and women to strive for--I laud them, in fact.

But----I do have a problem with equating "adult" and "man."  For reasons I trust are obvious with a modicum of thought.

Yours, A Woman.

Comments

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Kipling's "IF" poem. The above points aren't labelled as neatly, but they're there.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I should check this out. Thanks.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Spot on, Cat!

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

We Jews have a word for it: mensh.

This is very good, and I'm mem-tagging it. Thanks.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Which literally means 'man' but is definitely not used for just any physically grown male, only for the ones who behave as described above, and these days is used nearly equally often for women who do the same. I was going to mention it; thanks for getting to it first. :)

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

I think it literally means 'person, human being'. I'll check my copy of Weinreich's Yiddish-English dict. when I get home.

[(Anonymous)]

From Rudyard Kipling

IF.....


IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm