On Dealing with the Adult World

Life is really odd.  I guess along with my first career and first tastes of being a young single person outside of college, I have really learned a lot about life.  Last week was a very interesting experience for me.  I found myself very frustrated with the little lesson God through my way.

In a situation that seemed black and white in morality for me, it was the grey that was approved.  I know I am an idealist and a christian, but it seems to me as though virtually everyone is brought up being taught right from wrong.  All people teach their children to "be nice" and "obey the rules."  If the parents don't teach that, I know for fact society and the schools do.  So you can imagine how I was thrown for a loop when someone who "was not nice" and "did not obey the rules" ended up on top.

I think this was morally frustrating for me more than anything.  I just couldn't understand why we would chose to reward someone who had acted so ugly and disrespectful.  It was as if we were rewarding evil because we were scared that they would reap more evil.

Looking at the whole picture of things, I understand why it was the best option.  It made the organization look better as a whole and saved us a lot of bad publicity.  Yet in my black and white world, it seems like right and wrong would be a bigger issue than image.  I mean, don't our teachers spend the first 12 years of our life plastering us with phrases like "Why fit in, when you were born to stand out?" and "Sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me." and "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."  All of these mantras go directly against everything I am learning about the "adult world."  In fact, the adult world seems to run by a completely different set of rules.

Something else I was taught growing up was that any job worth doing was worth doing right.  One of my first irritations with my new career was that everything was out of order and mismatching.  It bothered me that nothing was done right and so every small task took me an eternity to complete because I wanted things to be nice and perfect.  It was at lunch one day when I came home and explained to my mother why a simple banner design had me on the verge of tears.  She had to explain to me that things didn't have to be perfect all the time, they just had to get done.  So I felt awful for designing a tacky banner not to the fullest of my ability, just because it had to be cheap and quick.

Maybe it's just the Christian standard that has gone out the window.  Perhaps that is why adult world seems backwards.  Even my social life has been hard to figure out.  I mean we are raised with black and white expectations.  Go to college, get married, then have kids.  But all the grey is left out.  What about all these friends who accidentally got pregnant but didn't love the person they were with and is now single and trying to make ends meet.  How are we to respond to people who don't fit in the mold?  What about the fact that people my age who are married are not happy and seem completely nuts, yet the single ones are having a blast?  And how do I answer my friends when they point out that there is no need for women to get married anymore because they can support themselves now and be perfectly happy for a long time?

Social Media is an issue.  In college they taught us to keep strict tabs on our social media image.  We were to NEVER post tasteless pictures, especially those of drinking.  Yet in the adult world, if you walk in a room with your image being the main concern you will most likely be overlooked or kicked out instantly.  People want to know you, the real you, the sloppy, messy, drinking you that you are.  They don't want to hire a robot.  They want to hire someone who will enjoy a night of celebration after a big office victory.  It's like grown ups do whatever they want to do, regardless of what they teach the children.  So why then, do we teach the children these things?  To keep them naive and innocent as long as possible?  Okay, but isn't that fake?  Are we asking our children to be fake?  Are we raising kids to have an ideal mindset and prepare them for an imaginary world?

I have a few friends who raise their kids with realism.  I see them hide nothing from them.  They are very up front and honest with their kids, even at a very young age.  There is no babying, yet there is compassion and caring.  I am not yet old enough to see how these kids turn out, but my eye is upon them with fascination.  I am so curious as to how this method differs from everything I have ever been taught.

Life is an interesting train.  Each railcar brings a whole new box of either goodies or coal and it's up to you to sift through it all and hop onto the next car as it comes.

Dwell.

Psalm 37:3 says this, "Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture."

Dwell means to remain for a time, or to live as a resident.  Pulpit Commentary puts it this way: "Remain where thou art, and be satisfied with the thought of God's faithfulness. Feed on this."

That is a very powerful message if you think about it.  Remain where thou art and be satisfied with the thought of God's faithfulness...

It makes me think about a lot of things, a lot of things that our society does are backwards compared to how they did them in Jesus' day.  Even though they are backwards it is hard to say if they are wrong or not.  Most explain, "That's just the way things are now." Which is a simple excuse, but you have to wonder what the heart of God wants.

Think about this, "Remain where you are."  People used to stake their claim and live on the same plot of land, in the same house, all the years of their life.  My grandparents grew up 8 miles apart, and they now reside in the house my grandfather grew up in.  They have lived there all but maybe 3-4 years of their married life together.

My parents also have lived in the same house for 23-24 years.  That is unheard of in today's society.  The only reason my family has been so permanent in location is because we are "tied to the land."  My daddy is a farmer and he can't exactly relocate his profession.

I remember one day in one of my college classes.  My teacher was speaking about this very thing.  She was explaining that we are now a mobile society.  Everyone moves quite a bit now.  The Internet, automobiles and airplanes have made all this moving extremely easy to do.  To prove her point, she asked our class of 40 to raise their hands if we had lived in the same town our whole life.  There were about 10 hands that went up.  She told us to keep them up if we had lived in the same house our whole life.  This left three hands up.  She explained this was rare and the numbers were only this high because we lived in the Bible belt and the Bible belt is always the last to adopt new ideas.  Furthering her point, she asked us to raise our hands if our parents were from the town we grew up in.  My hand stayed up.  Her frustration rose.

"Well your grandparents certainly aren't from the same town are they?"  she half asking, half assumingly stated to me.

I grinned from ear to ear and said, "Actually, both of my grandparents on both sides spent most of their lives within 40 miles of where I grew up."  

I don't have to explain to you that college professors don't like to be wrong.  This one in particular happened to be a  real know-it-all.  She studied my face for a minute, ignoring the giggles around the room, and quickly decided to change the topic and move forward in her lecture.

"Remain where you are..."

So is it bad to move off and around and up and down and back?  I don't see why it would be, but back in the day they never did.  I understand my situation is unique, because the majority of people today are movers.  Perhaps I am taking this passage out of the Bible way to literal.  Maybe he is only suggesting we enjoy where we are while we are there.  Contentness.

One other thing I'd like to mention though.  I noticed many of my friends got an anxious kick in them around our junior year of college, including myself.  It was odd, it was as though a fairy had came around and hit all of us with the same pixie dust.  We seemed to wake up one morning and sickly desire a home.  Not mommy and daddy's home, but a home of our own.  We each so desperately wanted a permanent place to call ours.  We wanted a place we could stay and not have to move out each summer.  We wanted a dwelling we could decorate and cook in.  We wanted a space to care for and enjoy.

I remember many coffee-talks about this subject with a plethora of different girlfriends.  How strange it was that we independent, go-getter, dream-makers all suddenly wanted a place to be permanent with--and at the ripe old age of 20, maybe 21.

I think this goes back to the way we are programed.  I believe that God designed us to marry young.  They did it for centuries!  I mean look at the psyche of high school kids.  At about age 18 they start thinking marriage, but why?  Who puts this thought in their heads?  I don't believe it's put there, I believe it happens, and yes some country kids may act on this idea, but most of today's kids are ashamed of this desire.  They are ashamed because society tells them they are better than marriage.  They have to get a degree and a good job and prove themselves in the world.  Then and only then can they start thinking of marriage.

Perhaps this is a good thing because we have more time to find ourselves and grow up, but then again maybe it is wrong because it makes purity an impossible pedestal.

It's interesting really.  We teach our Christians to remain soft and pure and holy until they are safely married.  Unfortunately, they are to remain this way during the most active times of their lives when their bodies are most ready to reproduce and latch on to something permanent beyond mom and pop.

I'm not blaming anybody or saying our teachings are wrong, I'm just saying, it looks to me like today's society has it backwards.  Our bodies aren't meant to reproduce in their 30s and 40s like people in my generation are doing.  Yet with school and work becoming a priority we have to.

I guess as a 20-something I am saying that I would love to dwell on the land permanently.  I like the security of having one house in one location long-term.

On the other hand I get restless with the thought of settling down already.  There is so much of the world I still need to see.  I want to travel and live in at least one other state before I settle down for good.  Plus, I'm single--there's nothing holding me back.  Now is the time for me to go live a gypsy life before I really have to stay in one location for a family and husband.

Either way, the point of this lesson is to remain in the land for a time.  Right now my dwelling is here, so I will make it a point to dwell in this land and enjoy God's faithfulness.