“we’ve got a lost kid on aisle 7” - deconstructing adulthood

We have the profoundly startling insight (thanks to Bill Plotkin) that there are very few adults in our sad, sick industrial culture.

​

To make matters worse, I’m here to declare that, even for the so-called adults, adulthood is not a stable phenomenon.  Even the adults are often not adults! I speak from personal experience.

​

We like to believe in our culture that there are two static categories of humans: adults and children.

​

My perception is that many actual adults still often act like children, especially when they get upset.

​

Certainly in my case, when I feel threatened or attacked, I tend to regress into a child.

​

I’ll go further and say that, it seems, for me, one of my major challenges is to get "an adult"to show up inside of me when I’m feeling stressed, tired, triggered or threatened.  And I consider myself to be an actual adult!  (although this is a matter of some debate).  Ok, let's say: "adult-in-training".

​

No, really, I see this tendency everywhere in our consumerist culture.  When adults get threatened, they turn into two-year olds.

​

The tendency for adults to be taken over by their inner children in times of stress and crisis seems to be kind of a major evolutionary software bug.  Something went off-kilter here somewhere.

​

And it certainly seems that this culture actually encourages us to function like helpless dependent infants.  Entitled, spoiled brats actually.  We live in an infantile culture of privilege, entitlement, pettiness, selfishness, greed, arrogance, hubris…don’t get me started.

I’m just trying to clean up this mess inside myself.  

Somedays, it feels uphill both ways.

​

So caring for the relationship between my inner parent and my inner hurt child is a foundational realm for my learning and growing.  Yes, inner parenting is the work for me.