The (sad, sad) implication is that adulthood is some sort of prison, with all of those boundaries previously tested re-established in an incredibly confining manner. And while society desires conformity, it’s the adult who has the brain plasticity, the support, and the means to actually traverse those boundaries in a sane and balanced way. He or she just chooses not to, and calls this an impossibility. Adam Phillips writes in his essay, “Truancy Now”: “A part of this testing, this experimentation, that begins in adolescence and, if things go wrong, is given up on in adolescence. But the adolescents who give up on this fundamental project in adolescence may turn into adults who secretly envy adolescents; who believe that adolescents are having the best kinds of life available.”
It’s not just teenagers who should be watching the “It Gets Better” videos. They are wonderful reminders of the need to keep testing boundaries, of where life can go once you’ve bottomed out. I suffer from teenage brain’s object permanence issues sometimes. But the videos remind me of a quotation from the greater writer and boundary-violator Katherine Mansfield, who wrote in her journals:
It’s not just teenagers who should be watching the “It Gets Better” videos. They are wonderful reminders of the need to keep testing boundaries, of where life can go once you’ve bottomed out. I suffer from teenage brain’s object permanence issues sometimes. But the videos remind me of a quotation from the greater writer and boundary-violator Katherine Mansfield, who wrote in her journals:
I had the feeling that the same thing happened to nearly everybody whom I knew and whom I did not know. No sooner was their youth, with the little force and impetus characteristic of youth, done, than they stopped growing. At the very moment that one felt that now was the time to gather oneself together, to use one's whole strength, to take control, to be an adult, in fact, they seemed content to swap the darling wish of their hearts for innumerable little wishes…. They deceived themselves, of course.
