Time To Grow Up: Addendum #1

Having had some time to meditate on my post of Sunday, I realize I may have left the impression that the life-altering events that shaped my transition to 'growing up' were all of a negative or traumatic nature.  While it is true that a lot of powerful and heart-breaking things did happen, it is also true that good, great things happened.  First and foremost among those was the birth of my darling Wee Lass.  There may be some close seconds, but that she came into this world is the first on the list of Great Things What Happened To Gumbo.

I bring this up because events of great joy, like those of great trauma, also take a certain level of maturity to fully process and enjoy.  It is certainly easier if it is something happy, because those happy things don't hurt.  But to fully internalize the joy, to really appreciate it, takes a certain amount experience because experience gives us a way to compare and contrast what we we feel in the present with what we have felt in the past.  It helps one to truly understand what matters.

When I was younger, nice things could happen and I could be happy along with them, but perhaps I was too casual about joy.  Because our parents worked to protect us from petty slights and from the worst the universe could serve up, sometimes it was difficult to understand that joy, like pain, is transient.  Enjoyed or endured, they pass.

Once I had the "benefit" of experience*, though, I wrapped my head around the bittersweet.  I learned to temper my joy with a memory of the pain, and vice versa.  It sounds weird; after all, who really wants to be reminded of hurt and trauma?  I was afraid of that at first.  However, as I have practiced it, I find that the joys have gotten better, and the pains easier to endure.  Things balance themselves.

Understanding that, I think, is a key component of growing up.

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*I once told myself, in the midst of some of the worst pain I ever experienced upon the deaths of my first two children in 2003, that if knowing pain is in some guise what it means to be wise, I'd much prefer to remain a fool.  While I would never deliberately go back to a situation like for the sake of learning something, I do have a greater appreciation for what I learned.