I don’t think I felt like a grownup until I hit my late 50s.
I’ve spent much of my adult life exuberant, incautious, playful. Despite the Ph.D. I was the one who laughed when I heard something funny or delightful in a meeting, who walked barefoot in rainstorms, who gravitated toward the carousel. It wasn’t that I was immature; it’s just that I didn’t reject childish ways.
This has only changed in the past few years. I don’t seem to have as much curiosity, as much glee in just living. I’m cautious, almost fearful, as if I can see all the ways in which things could go awry. I seem to have become staid. I am disturbed by this. I feel like I’m missing an important part of me.
Maybe (probably?) I have been a grownup all along, but I’m now missing this aspect of myself that tempered all the work it took me to get a Ph.D. and tenure. I want my childlike character back; it could help me through the aches and pains of old age.
Words Like Me 