A Nation Of Mental Progeria

I firmly believe that people in this country, as a whole, need to grow the fuck up. When I was a child I thought as a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child. But when I became a man I put away childish things. -Corinthians I 13:11 The only bible verse I have ever bothered to memorize. I see middle aged men struggling to pay for their kids' college educations, yet they drive flashy convertibles in a vain attempt to recapture their youth. I see beautiful women in their forties wearing short shorts and halter tops and looking completely ridiculous, all because they want to be 21 again. These people need to grow the hell up. They don't have to wear appliqued sweatshirts with tissues shoved up the sleeves or play golf in a knee-brace, but they can give up the dream of reliving puberty.

That being said, I believe that some things exist solely to give joy, with no mature or responsible purpose at all. Games are one of them. Faith is another.

I have spent a good majority of my life living within a block of some grade school or another and I can tell you, when kids play they do it all the way. They scream. On the way down a slide, in the bounce at the top of the swing's arc, and while running away from whoever is "It", they scream. But when adults play, they don't scream anymore. They are too worried about looking stupid should they throw back their head and laugh with an open mouth. And they have so many rules. Organized sports are terrible things. Sports should never be organized, ever. They should be games played for fun in a park or an open field somewhere by people who agree in the beginning that referees are just bossy people who don't belong. Sports should be played by kids, no matter the age, not by professional businessmen more concerned with contract settlements and draft picks than with having fun.

I was raised by two parents with very little in common, except that they were both raised by parents who pushed upon them the importance of the church. As a direct result of this, my family never went to church. After years of reading about exotic belief systems and familiar doctrines, I have come to the conclusion that faith should be personal. Whatever it is that makes you feel connected to the universe is what's right for you. But when one man's method of connection gets written down, edited, footnoted, and bellowed into a loudspeaker in a building built just to house the loudspeaker, it somehow stops being personal. It starts being pushy, and condescending, and less about the joy. When religions have been organized, historically, they have gone from focusing on a connection with fellow man to focusing on the superiority over fellow man, and how to haul the fellow man kicking and screaming up onto a pedestal he may have no urge to mount. I believe that the only way to truly worship anything is to do it yourself, in your own words. How am I the one praying if I recite the words someone else thought up to describe how they felt? Does every single Catholic really feel an emotional connection to the Hail Mary?

I think the toys and the flings and the trends that adults cling to in an attempt to avoid being grown ups are about as ridiculous as if the same people were out riding bigwheels on the sidewalk. A little whimsy is nice, but when "Age is just a number" means you act thirteen rather than thirty, there's a problem. Some things are supposed to be innocent, and we corrupt them with rules and laws and grounds for disqualification. But the things that should be responsible and mature and adult, we seem to ignore. We are becoming, if we aren't already, a nation of tiny children in old creaking bodies.