Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Ways I Am Not A Grown-Up, The Fourteenth In A Potentially Infinite Series

I am far too easily disillusioned for someone of my advanced age. In order to be so easily (and frequently) disillusioned, surely I must still be clinging to a great many illusions. Allegedly, with age comes wisdom; theoretically, with maturity comes a diminished capacity to be deeply disappointed in the state of the world. Shouldn't I at least have developed more reasonable expectations and a better sense of reality by this stage of the game?

Alas, I am still far too routinely stunned and appalled and just generally outraged by the behavior of my fellow human beings (and sometimes even myself) and I chalk that up to my stubbornly persistent immaturity.

In a twenty-four year old, a certain degree of naïveté can be sweet and charming. In a forty-four year old, it's mostly just pathetic.
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8 comments:

  1. Sleepy Joe11/8/12, 4:59 AM

    Keep the naïveté it sure beats being jaded, even if it means being disappointed!

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    1. Masked Mom11/8/12, 10:24 AM

      Regardless of how I feel about my naïveté, it seems as though I'm stuck with it. Mostly, I wouldn't have it any other way.

      By the way, thanks for motivating me to look up the html for the umlaut and accent marks so my naïveté at least looks more correct now. I thought about doing it last night but I was too rushed and, okay, lazy (yet another way in which I'm not a grown-up). I'm a little giddy that I now know the secret--I might spend part of my free time this morning going back over old posts and fixing all the accentless and umlautless words I've left behind. ;)

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  2. TangledLou11/8/12, 12:33 PM

    I was just considering this very phenomenon the other day. I was so brokenhearted about some disillusionment and my husband (ever more practical) said "What did you expect?!" And the answer is always, "I expected better."
    Like you, I think I'm pretty much stuck with it, but most days, I think it's kind of nice to see how the world could be, if only...

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    1. TangledLou11/8/12, 12:33 PM

      Ignore the minefield of bad punctuation above. I don't have time to sort out all those commas.

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  3. Larissa T.11/8/12, 1:37 PM

    This year the realization that at a certain age.. I won't have it all figured out.. has hit me. Quite disappointing, and disillusioning. Knowing myself, I probably won't ever learn to not expect things.. expectations ruin things.. I guess.

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  4. Deb Stevens11/8/12, 8:49 PM

    Come now, if thirty is the new twenty (which I'm told by multiple semi-reputable sources is the case), forty is not so far off from that. I would say forty-four is less pathetic and more...oh, I don't know. Certainly not pathetic, anyway. But perhaps I've missed the point?

    Or perhaps I'm magnifying the point?

    I think maybe maturity doesn't diminish your/our depth of disparity (if anything it makes it deeper), but rather gives us a greater capacity to deal with it in ways that won't feed back into the continuing cycle of outrageous behavior.

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  5. Julie DeMille11/9/12, 11:22 AM

    Yes, but acting/thinking like a 20-something is what keeps us young, right?

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  6. Margi11/9/12, 11:59 PM

    I don't think it's pathetic of you to hope for better. It's pathetic that other people don't meet societal expectations for at least civil behavior.

    #dontbeadick

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