You truly become an adult when you've dealt with your trauma

 Had a phonecall with SA[Phd] last night. I was a bit...anxious, the sensitive flower that I am, and couldn't sleep well. Since she's a timezone or two away in the west figured she'd be on. And she was. We talked for a good few hours. Went to bed at quarter to four. Awful for my sleep cycle, great for sanity.

We talked about, among other things, what an adult makes. About our traumas and how nobody should be considered a truly 'cooked' adult until they've dealt with the trauma that's made them. Unravel the surroundings that forced the personality they have, identify the various factors, and make a conscious choice if they're accepting of it or deep inside have a desire to be a different self, a more 'real' self that they want to, the kind they didn't blindly unknowingly walk into.

Why are we talking about this, it's strange, such heady topic, she said. Yeah but this is what adulting is no, I said, talking about heady topics and dealing with heady things, because the alternative is escapism, running away from any serious evaluation of our selves and how we came to be. A rejection of personal growth. Arrested development. Oh yeah I finished the series again yesterday alas, because I didn't feel like doing anything else. In my defence it was a craptastic day.

Like Jamila Jameel says in her interview with Conan on the podcast, the choices have to be yours. You have to give other people the option to grow. The owner of a firm who's not had the chance to make any active decisions about the firm's structure and management cannot be blamed for any minor or major failures of it. Only when they have had the time to actively play around and rejig the configurations can they be given the full responsibility of the firm's outcomes. Not that the individual has zero agency of their actions before they're matured. Instead it means that the personalities and the self of individual they present to the outside world should be considered temporary, a shell, from which they may or may not emerge, with or without proper evaluation. We can remain the people we have always been, but only with constant awareness and conscious choice.

To my friends reaching mid- and late- twenties, here's the message for you. Be prepared to evaluate the trauma you have, the repressed memories and wrongs and rights that have taken you this far. What conversations are out of bounds, and why is that the case? If you could have had things different, what is it about the conditions you would change. Not just for yourself, but for other individuals surrounding your life. What were the things that happened wrongly, and how could they have happened in a more preferred manner. Could you have played an active role had you been more aware of it? How do you stop similar non-ideal things from happening, what is your contribution towards making the lives of those that interact with you from here onwards better? How will you construct this building with social capital and trust? Are you ready?

Or is this bullshit, nonsense ramblings of somebody who must have had something bad happened and just doesn't know what they're talking about? You've surely had an incredibly amazing childhood, friends, family and extended wellwishers, there was not a moment of doubt of self-hate or disgust at yourself and others you could change? You must have been perfect, otherwise how else could things have gone on so well. Or perhaps there's nothing anything could ever do for things that happened, such is fate, unchangeable and we're destined to live the lives that's written in the books, any attempt to improve yours or others' is futile because if it was meant to be, it would, and if it isn't, there's no point in doing anything. The world is just an illusion, your actions wasted and pointless why do you struggle when you could give in to the sweet sweet music of existence?

Is it really so? Surely things can change, your actions can have impact upon yourself and others in the future, in a positive or negative way. Surely you're not fundamentally evil, you don't intend to destroy innocent lives by design. Even if you're the victim, surely you must want to not perpetuate the awful cycle. If you have any agency in this world, you must want to use that agency for doing good things, making people feel good, versus the other way round, no?

Why the resistance then. Find your mentor, your guide, your teacher, the counselor or the therapist, and get on it. Your future selves will thank you a million times.