Driving epiphany: I reject adulthood, this kind of adulthood, this stage of adulthood.
My parents raised me in a good German farmer fashion to believe the world was ordered by right and wrong. Those who did right would eventually be rewarded and those who did wrong would eventually be punished. I was a big fan of what was fair (what child isn’t) and was adamant about what was fair through my thirties. My early forties have sort of squashed the old idea of fair.
The idea of right and wrong prevails, however, and the promise of reward and punishment. How is that not clinging to “fair”? Bigger scale, let’s say. Fair might come down to size of a half of a candy bar (child’s scenario) or bitchy women having nice hair (adult scenario), but right and wrong is on a more cosmic scale.
I’ve been pissed off since the middle of December. Pissed off at God, fate, my father, other people with living fathers, everybody–depended on the day, the moment. In the last few weeks my pissed off-ness has mellowed from white hot to glowing embers and it no longer focused on individuals or deities, but is just a general aura I carry around, sort of the opposite of “newly pregnant” or “just had great sex” or “just accomplished something on my bucket list.”
Today I realized why I’ve been so pissed off. I’m having to let go of the correlation between right and wrong and reward and punishment–or to say that my tiny little existence brain just can’t understand it (there’s a bigger plan, kiddos). I wish every person to whom I had ever mouthed that bit of tripe had slapped me silly. Maybe there is a bigger plan, but since I can’t see it, it means for all practical purposes that there is no plan, no rhyme, no reason. No rules.
My father was a good person. He died at 62. A co-worker is a good person. She made the tough calls and did the right thing at work. She just lost her job.
My father escaped debilitating illness that may have loomed in the future. She escaped an emotionally debilitating work environment.
But he is dead, no longer here to enjoy his grandchildren or his fishing poles or his baseball and she is unemployed with two children and college tuition looming.
I call bullshit. And I vent to this blog.
Because in a few minutes, after I finish this adult beverage and this rant, I will greet my children home from the end of their long day and I will perpetuate the myths of fairness and the fairy tale of right and wrong, reward and punishment.
Time to put on my big girl pants.