Questioning Maturity
2025-11-21
I don't want to write today. I really don't. There's such little payoff to doing this, but I've put myself in this box where this is all I'm letting myself do. In my mind, there's a sense of delayed gratification, that all of this writing will eventually pay off somehow. But what if it doesn't? What if this is actually for nothing and I'm just distracting myself from other hardships I feel too afraid to confront? Am I that afraid of an overwhelming job? Am I that afraid of the rampant rejection from the job search process? Am I that doubtful of my skills?
It's tough because when it comes to the supposed "right paths" I see friends my age pursue—the quaint six-figure office job—and they lament about how they are living paycheck to paycheck and despite the fact that many of them even work from home, their lives seem eerily vacuous and miserable, just like mine. It makes me think that maybe I am not as far off as I might think. Even friends who are not in dire financial straits have certain things that make them miss the mark of the Platonic ideal of a young and independent 20-something. Many of them still live with their parents. I mean, imagine being a middle manager at some big tech company or whatever and still live in your childhood home. That's something none of my generation thought we'd experience as adults when we were growing up.
It makes me question our collective maturity. It makes me question maturity at all. I don't feel mature. I was one of those people who got told they were an "old soul" which is just a euphemistic way of saying I was a sad child, but despite these perceptions of intellectual and perhaps even social maturity, I don't think I possess any actual maturity. I think I remember reading that Jung posited that true adult maturity comes in one's forties. As I approach my late twenties, I am feeling this eerie suspicion that he had it right on the money.
But it's funny because just as we begin to feel mature then, we immediately begin to lose our ability to act on that maturity. Something I think about often: this idea of "growing old" being almost a fact of life is something that is extremely recent. The fact that almost everyone thinks that they're going to be an old person one day is strange. For most of human history, people were set on dying much younger and the thought of growing old was seen as immense feat of skill doused in privilege. But it seems now that we feel entitled to old age. Unfortunately, none of us have considered the ramifications of that.
My parents are older. My dad is 78 and my mom is 68. They both deal with incontinence and mobility issues. They're fortunately still rather independent, but their twilight years seem to be more of a gradual fade into obscurity than a blissful share of spoils. There are things I have to do to take care of them, but it feels that this exchange isn't right. It feels like a waste of resources. The idea that all life has an inherent and unchanging value is a new thing as well, but it feels as if the ramifications of that idea have made us all handicapped in some way.
I hope that I don't have to be a very old man, at least one who needs significant help in most daily activities. I wouldn't want to burden anyone like that, especially my children if I had them. If I get some kind of terminal disease, I'll do what those in antiquity did: understand my lack of control and face my fate.
Fuck trying to play God.