Growing up sucks. Being an adult sucks. That is the message of Jeff Who Lives at Home, While We're Young, and Laggies, three funny movies about young people who are in no rush to become mature and responsible men and women. These characters want to hide from what they see as the oppressive prisons of marriage and a job, or they decide to chuck their peer group friends and connect with a younger generation. The result usually turns out to be the infantilization of those who travel backwards.
Susan Neiman, the director of the Einstein Group, approaches this fertile subject matter from her perspective as a philosopher. She notes at the outset:
"Being grown-up is widely considered to be a matter of renouncing your hopes and dreams, accepting the limits of the reality you are given, and resigning yourself to a life that will be less adventurous, worthwhile, and significant than you supposed when you began it."
Neiman turns to a lively group of philosophers and philosophical writers such as Kant, Rousseau, Hume, Goodman, Erikson, Arendt, and others to provide gateways to maturity for those who would prefer to be, as singer/songwriter Bob Dylan put it, "eternally young."
After looking at travel as a vehicle for growing up and competition as a means of establishing one's identity, the author concludes:
"Growing up means realizing that no time of one's life is the best one, and resolving to savour every second of joy within reach. You know each will pass, and you no longer experience that as betrayal."
Maturity comes with the ability to see life as a whole.
