Can't pass up the chance to comment on the Democratic Convention. To date, I have been supporting John Kerry because anything is better than what we've got right now but after his speech last night I feel inspired. I feel that I am now working for something, not just against something.
What struck me most is that he presents himself as an adult. I sometimes forget how much I hunger to be surrounded by adults who are behaving like adults rather than little children or disempowered adolescents. When I look at George Bush, I almost always see a little kid who is clueless and overwhelmed. (The only exception to that was his speech immediately after 9/11.) His usual response to that overwhelm is to bluster and posture and beat up the other kids on the playground. In some ways he is a classic bully, compensating for his low self esteem by throwing his weight around just because he can and he doesn't quite believe it so he has to prove it.
The idea of this little kid in a grown man's body responding to the ideological threats of this era, is more terrifying to me than the terrorists. I watched John Kerry last night and realized that this man has been initiated into mature masculinity and that is precisely what we need to keep us from falling into the abyss that threatens us.
Mature men and women know where their limits are. To me that is one of the hallmarks of maturity--we know where our limits are because we have pushed those limits as adolescents and young adults, we have experimented with the great experiments of youth and found them somewhat lacking, we have tried different things and experimented with how to be in the world. Through all of that testing we have found the arenas in which we can function with the greatest effectiveness and accomplishment. In maturity there is no longer a need to prove oneself or define oneself with bluster and image. There isn't even a need to save the world or push an agenda. Instead of acting out of a need based self image, mature adults assume responsibility for themselves. And when they see something that needs to be done, they step up to do whatever is within their capacity to do. And when it is beyond their capacity they ask for help or yield to someone better qualified.
Now none of this means we cannot grow and expand the limits. I think the difference often shows itself in the need to push limits. That comes from immaturity whereas evolving beyond one's previous limits is sign of maturity. The possiblity of seeing things differently and changing one's mind is always there when living fully as an adult but it doesn't have to do with proving anything to ourselves or others, it is just the natural evolution of an adult.
Developmentally all of this maturity is supposed to happen during adolescence or the extended adolescence of our 20's but it can happen at any age. So many women are coming into it as they move into their 50's--women coming into their own. I know for myself my 40th birthday felt like I was being born and my 50th felt like I was coming of age.
It may be simplistic to say that getting stuck in childhood or adolescence without ever arriving in adulthood is at the root of many of our cultural problems but I think it is in many ways. And the truth of the matter is that we need mature role models to reach maturity and those role models are few and far between. I think it is safe to say that my work as a psychotherapist had everything to do with raising children from where they got stuck, into adulthood. As a coach, I do not reparent but there are times we have to go back to those stuck places from childhood to dislodge limiting core beliefs which are the primary reasons lead lives smaller than those of which they are capable.
That is the flip side of this maturity question. While one way of responding to immaturity is to bully, bluster and posture, the other way is to play very small, never pushing the limits and thus never fully entering into a mature, empowered adult life. Sometimes this even means living as victims. While immaturity does not mean one is necessarily a victim, it is safe to say that all victims are stuck in immaturity. I should clarify this--when I refer to victims in this sense I am not referring to those who have bad things happen to them. I am referring to those who see themselves as always being victims or act like it.
There is another facit to this issue. It is the very limits and the lack of that immature grandiosity that make great accomplishment possible. It's like the constraints of marriage which provide a container for going deeply into one's self, one's partner and the relationship has a paradoxical outcome--freedom! So living within the known limits of maturity allows for real evolution and genuine accomplishment. There is something there about the parameters forcing us to go deeply into our own being from which action, creativity and connection really come. And that is probably the point, that as mature adults we can accomplish great things and to tie it make to the beginning of this post, that includes creating a great country.
