Adulthood!

       It's not easy being fully adult. There is that in us that would like to shift responsibility to another. In the field of family systems one form of that escape from responsibility is to fuse with another. In this fusion the ultimate responsibility for one's actions gets handed to another. Being an adult is lonely becasue an individual alone must take responsibility for his/her decisions. One must stand alone. 

     Rudyard Kipling's poem is familiar to me from my childhood. Written before sensitivity about gender issues he writes "man" in a place I'd substitute "adult" and "son" I'd say "child.". With that caveat I think his poem does convey significant wisdom.

   

IF
by Rudyard Kipling

"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."

    I'd re-write the last sentence "And—which is more—you’ll be an adult my child."  Here's too our adulthood!

Takk for alt,

Al

             Lined up in Chiang Rai waiting for the princess to pass.