On Adulthood, Monotony, and Passion

15 Mar, 2025

I have been trying to get closer to writing the next part of the Attack Surfaces posts, but I have been sick the last few days so the thought of pushing through made even sicker. Instead, I wanted to write about something I have been noticing as I am getting older. Adulthood can prove to be very difficult experience for the passionate. There seems to a kind of expectation that adulthood ought to temper a teenage spirit. This thought does make me irritated. While I think adulthood can definitely make you wiser, I don’t believe that wisdom is synonymous with being mild-mannered or tempered.

I won’t disclose any personal details of my own life, but I have a tendency to come off as intense in conversational settings. I have many different interests and I like to divulge in stuff I find interesting (hence the blog), and that can be read as a little intense. Passion is the fire in life. It is what keeps the engine going for me. I often feel as if I am being driven by a motor and when this motor has direction and enough fuel I can become very preoccupied with my interests. This intensity can be a little uncomfortable for those who aren’t used to it and while they think I don’t notice that they pull back, I very much do. I often feel as if this intensity – while something I enjoy – is burdensome for others as they have to maneuver around it.

Passion is important! Having something to do is important in and of itself! While you don’t need to be “productive” (whatever that is supposed to mean) all the time, having interests and being something in the world is important. Not because it makes you more attractive or more interesting, but because passion is often joyful! And the image of adulthood is so often the picture of the bleak, monotonous, routines you do until you have made enough money to stop working. And while yes, some will find joy in their work; most people will find in their work a thing to do to not starve. What the pandemic genuinely made me realize is that the world is so much more than the office and the monotony of coming home after being there. I went on many wonderful walks listening to birdsong or wonderful music. I started reading about stuff I wanted to read about for some time. It was that we were expected to stay home, to dispose of our time as we wanted that really gives you space for passion. So work might hinder your passions just by the mere fact that you are not able to spend your time on the things that really matter to you.

Now this idea of adulthood – that it is routine after routine until you die – is a false image. But one which many people unwittingly recreate when they go through the motions. I won’t knock motions. They can be comfortable and give direction in themselves. People are different and some might love to have that comfort for the rest of their life. But it couldn’t be me. How am I going to go through life without my poetry?! Sailor Moon!? Music?! Like these are the things that make life fun. It is what makes me feel like I am not a brick wall.

But unfortunately I have few to share my love of Söderland with and those that endure are close friends whom are very patient with me. Usually these are not things that I really talk about with people since I know that it can be jarring to have someone talk intently about something they like, which might be only mildly interesting. However, passion is an amazing thing to see in the eyes of someone. We use the phrase “they light up” to denote that someone is passionate. What to do we mean by “lighting up”? Light is opposed to gray or dark; passion with monotony; joy with anhedonia. And extended from that, you can see someone more truly when the light exposes parts of them you wouldn’t have seen in the dark.

Adulthood is one big performance in front of very different audiences ¹. In this sense you give many different performances depending on what the audience is. Most audiences will be totally neutral. You will not feel enlivened by them, but they won’t bother you either. Some audiences will tell you that they don’t like what you are giving them. But overall it is important to understand that not everyone will get the same performance and that you will perform differently to different people. And everybody performs, even those who say they don’t.

While still others are where you want to spend your life. This is where you get to feel humanity in your body. To me this is the experience of improvising a little bit from your core. It is an honest performance. If they like it, you get to experience what it means to not feel alienated or lonesome in your own skull. It’s the feeling of someone enjoying what you are giving them. It feels as if you are two bubbles which temporarily connect and you can see right into them and them into you. Many would call this feeling love, I call passion. It is an absolutely wonderful feeling.

The performances I have been making lately have been making me feel lifeless. It has been imprisoning rather than expanding. I feel trapped by the experience of adulthood which I seem to have unwittingly followed. I let my life go on autopilot and I feel like many of the decisions I should’ve made, just haven’t been. I don’t like performing the way I have been lately and I am coming to the conclusion that I will have to make a decision about what adulthood will mean for me going forward. Will I continue on the straight and narrow or will I follow my individuality and intensity?

Intensity in your life will give it some flavor. It’s like your licorice. Realizing that some people doesn’t like (yuck!) licorice is what makes you realize that you will not be for everyone. It is fine to not be for everybody. It is what makes you unique! In a time where you have the opportunity to be as heterogeneous as you want, you won’t find many people who will take that opportunity. Being a potato is more valuable, it is safer, and more palatable. But don’t be a potato!

Sticking with potato is the option of least adventure. Adventure is not a good in and of itself, but adventure will expose your fright of risk. Yes, you might like to have a wife, two kids and a white picket fence, but this is leaving the creation of your life idly by. You are always creating something of your life, whether you choose the path of least resistance or not. Life is not an artwork, but life is molded by the decisions we take – big and small. What we choose to do as adults is what will define what our lives will be.

Many will eschew adventure even if they desire it because they are scared. I get that. Because I have been scared too. But I don’t want to let my anxious thoughts drive my life. I want to have fun! I want to do good! And I want to find those chosen few who gets me!

If you are one who often worry about choices then you might need to read the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken”:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The popular interpretation of this poem is that when you are presented with a choice, you should take the one less traveled. It is an interpretation of this poem ². But it ignores the first line of the last verse.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

This shows a kind of apprehension. That although it has “made all the difference” to take the road less traveled, it isn’t without the contemplation of choosing differently. Choosing anything comes inevitably with the ruminations of choosing differently. The last verse isn’t about one choice joyfully leading to individuality, but that choosing – whatever you might choose – is what will make all the difference. Even if the choice to go the trail more traveled is good as well, the choice you decide on will make the difference. So if the decision is so fundamental to what we are, what do we decide to do? I decide that I will do what brings me together with others; to do what brings me joy even if it makes me into licorice. I say that you should choose a little passion, and youth, and intensity. It will make a difference.

.dash

I use the word performance here not as a way to denote insincerity, but to show that we “act” in scenarios as they are presented to us. We cannot but perform when people look at us.↩
There is a great poetry guide of this poem which gives context about what was in mind when Robert Frost wrote it and how our interpretation of it is often a little unsatisfactory according to the intention of Frost himself. (tab:https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/89511/robert-frost-the-road-not-taken)↩

#misc-essays