Boredom and Adolescence, or, trying to figure out adulthood - part 1

(tv.com)

As I am going through my Human Development class on Adolescence, I am constantly reminded of how much it seems like I am still an adolescent. Here are some characteristics of adolescence:
- Identity vs. role confusion
- emotional highs and lows
- imaginary audience (feeling on stage, like everyone is looking at you)
- personal fable (sense of uniqueness)
- beginning use of hypothetical, abstract thinking

I am also (thanks to Mary McCampbell for reminding me that Henri Nouwen books rock) reading Intimacy by Henri Nouwen, because, well, 'tis the season for figuring it out. According to Erikson's stages of psychosocial development (here) I am in Young Adulthood (19-34) where I am dealing with Intimacy vs. Isolation.

(Small detour before I get to my point) In the first section of Nouwen's book, he has stages as well, by which he tracks human progress from "magic to faith" in relation to God. In the beginning we look at God as magic, as adults we have faith.

In Nouwen's 'Young Adult' stage, he talks about college and developing the ability to question.

"Only he who feels safe in this world can take risks, only he who has a basic trust in the value of life is free to ask many questions without feeling threatened. Trust creates the possibility of a religion of search, which makes a commitment possible without certainty. By the basic trust in the meaning of life we are able to live with a hypothesis, without the need of absolute certainty...In college we can often discover, with pain and frustration that a mature religious man is very close to the agnostic."

If I took anything from my semester at L'Abri, it was something like that. The idea that I owe it to myself as a human being to be a 'searching believer,' as Nouwen puts it. I need to be searching for the truth, and be able to let go of ideas that are proven wrong.

(back to the main point, now) Boredom. In the 'Young Adult' stage, Nouwen talks about choice and questioning, but in 'The adult man' stage he primarily talks about boredom. What? Is boredom really the characterizing quality of adult life? Nouwen's answer to this boredom is transcendence through a "mature, religious sentiment [that] fulfills a creative function. Because it has a unifying power, it brings together the many isolated realities of life and casts them into one meaningful whole." Aha.

Now I can't remember why I was comparing adolescence and boredom, maybe I'll come back later and remember and revise this thing. In the mean time, I think they're pretty interesting ideas to think about.