On Getting Older
Let’s make one thing clear, above and before all else: I am not old. I am, however, and I think fairly, becoming of late more and more aware of the passage of time. I will be 29 in about 2 months, and it is a strange thing to look up and realize that amongst the majority of my new contemporaries, rather than being around an evenly spread (Philadelphian?) mix of those above, those below and those just about the same, I am of late most often in the (Chicagoan?) company of folks on whom I have a few years. It manifests itself in interesting ways. Trying to balance the undertstanding of the importance of humility and the arrogance I sometimes allow myself just a bit of indulgence in, I have noticed on a few small, perhaps perceptible only to me, occasions that I am in the position of being asked. What I mean by this is that in these handful of cases, I notice that I am somehow being appealed to as if not an authority, as someone who would probably know. Know about what, I’m not sure. This probably sounds cocky, but I am not claiming it as a point of pride, or something that happens all the time. But rather a point of aging, of somehow making it known that I have both traveled a lot and had a lot of jobs and spent the lengths of other people’s longest relationships thinking hard and writing more about relationships. There are of course some folks who, as we say where I come from, “won’t give you anything,” who immediately try to call you out when you present something with assurance, as if your experience and insight is somehow threatening to them. I can’t figure these people out, because I tend to make it clear to myself at least that I see and act on a very specific attitude toward the relationship that exists between myself and someone I consider an experiential authority. Some people have a hard time with this; I think it’s a cultural thing, maybe an American thing, maybe even a leftist thing.
I think my comfort with it stems from my lifelong interest in what Hadot calls “spiritual exercises.” When you read about this sort of thing, first in popular and then later in scholarly sources, something that always gets stressed, especially in ancient or non-western sources, is the importance of the student-teacher relationship, the very special and specific relationship around mentorship. I also try my best to make it a point to recall my gratitude toward those mentors and teachers that I have had in my life, because I want to by mindful of the gifts those people have given me. This goes all the way from my grandparents, to my father to my old boss to various professors, and I tend to expect that relationship. When I came to Chicago my first goal was to present myself to the person who I am excited to have as my advisor, because I have an intuitive (and conscious) sense of the importance for me of having a mentor, a guide, someone with whom I can safely and comfortably bounce ideas and ask even dumb questions, but not simply in a professional way, but also as facilitating an intellectual camaraderie. I am not sure who else thinks this way or assumes these things, but generally I get the sense that a lot of people I meet, again even leftists, have internalized this “go it alone” narrative, this weird American thing where somehow things get done by individuals, and they must to be worth anything. I’m not claiming that anyone I even know actually believes this, or believes in it, but at the same time I think it’s in there, and it evinces itself in a certain standoffishness I see in folks. There are a few ways it comes out: the fear of being to overtly kind to others, of not verbally complimenting or acknowledging others’ strengths, of not feeling comfortable either being a mentor or seeking one out. And so on.
I may of course be completely off the mark here. Maybe I’m just misreading people, and they are more comfortable with this stuff than I think they are, who knows. I do know from a lifetime of experience however, that I personally (and my sisters), because of the background I have and the culture I grew up in, assume and act on a lot of things that are absent for others. The relationship I have to loyalty and fidelity is different than many of my friends and colleagues, and I think that if what I am describing above is the case, I think there may be a relationship between the two. What’s interesting to me is that “my people” tend to also be far less likely to back down from a confrontation. Perhaps we put more stock in relationships or something, and are more effusive about them in both the positive and negative sense. A lot of Americans, despite our cultural claims to bravado and swagger, are more prone to passive aggression, which is again the flip side of not wanting to get too involved in a positive sense with someone else, of lacking trust and so on. There is genuine distance there, and that distance, when I see it, makes me sad.
The more I move away from it in time, the closer I feel to my childhood. Maybe this is typical, but it is important because I tend to feel my own sense of myself as different in behavior and attitude from others more and more keenly. What the genuinely American part of me wants to say at this point is some kind of disclaimer: “who knows, I could be wrong.” The Italian side says, “fuck it, this is how I read this situation. If you disagree then let’s have at it, but I am not just going to fall all over your disagreement and acquiesce.” This has been a constant tension throughout my life, and it hasn’t at all abated.