They Just Did Not Know!

We carry scars.  We carry wounds.  We falter without knowing why. Perhaps, these perceptions arise because as children and youth, we think adults know everything! So we carry the detritus of their lack of knowledge, a dictionary definition of ignorance. Lack of knowledge.  Perhaps, that is why we attach such value and power to adulthood.  As kids, we limped, stumbled, or groped our way toward that magic, official age when a person was considered "grown."  At either 18 or 21, we attained the right to vote, drive cars, and enter contracts that even included the potential to buy a home.

Little did we know that our parents, most teachers, preachers,  next door neighbors, Sunday School teachers, or other authority figures, to name a few, did not know that much about adulthood, either.  Truth often was based more on truisms than actual truth.  Coming of age meant different things to different people.  How much was centered around fairy tales? How much on make believe? I grew up thinking that questions that perplexed me,  problems that seemed insurmountable, and legal, philosophical, or social conundrums would be solved with ease---once I grew up. After all, what did I know? Only what adults promoted as "Truth." Plus, they sounded so convincing.

Grownups asked often, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Our answers changed, sometimes based on whim or wishful thinking,  but often founded on rock-bottom reality. An astronaut, a famous Indy 500 winning, race car driver.  A Barbie. Just plain rich.  Or Superman (able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Look! up in the sky; it's a bird; it's a plane, it's Superman!)  While those aspirations may have seemed ludicrous or unrealistic, reaching the "freedom" age of 18 or 21 was not.  Let's back up a minute now, and also remember "Sweet Sixteen," another treasured milestone.

By the time the red-letter day came, we thought we had it made! We had entered the hallowed halls of adulthood.  We were grown.  Nobody could tell us what to do.  Now, it was our turn.  As if wisdom had mysteriously, reflexively been poured into a mold, and come forth as the key to infinite knowledge while we slept.  Now, we'd know as much as our parents and other adults.  Except most of us did not know what wisdom was.  How many of us had either read the Book of Proverbs or been introduced to them in Sunday School or Vacation Bible School? Or at home? Oops! Another bag of squirmy worms!

Maybe that happened to some people whom I'd love to meet so we could trade "war stories."  However, it never happened quite that way with me.  I was as clueless as a clock without hands.  At 21, the "adult" stuff I knew could have been eye-dropped into a thimble.  With room to spare.  I didn't know that much more at 31 or 41, either.  Hmm.  Somewhere within that decade, though, the fog of ignorance began to lift as I slowly realized that the adults we tried to emulate did not know.  They did not know, because most of us do not know what we do not know.

But they played a good game of it! They spoke with such authority, such assurance.  My Mother had me believing that not only could she see around corners, she could just as easily read minds! Really.  It wasn't until I told a bald-faced lie and she accepted it as truth that the seeds of "Does she really know everything?" began to germinate, then grow.  Well, if Mother didn't know everything, who did? Who does? It probably would have helped many of us if our parents, especially, hadn't give the impression that they knew everything. If only they had admitted to having feet of clay, and just relaxed into who they were, or were becoming. I guess life is filled with "if only's."

Of a certainty, we don't stop growing when we reach a chronological birthday, or at any age for that matter.  One of my sisters fondly says, "As long as I wake up on top of the grass, everything's copasetic."  Just let it go at that! And stop promoting these myths in our own lives and relationships, as well.