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The problem of Susan
(file.garden)
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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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One of the reasons The Last Battle soured me on the series was the way in which they applied these increasingly unpleasant purity tests to the accumulated cast of characters.
One of the messages of "The Problem with Susan" was that pain is the source of maturity. You tend to see this in older people because they've experienced more of it.
Grown men who don't act particularly mature are ones who have led relatively charmed existences. But there are plenty who have a sobriety and seriousness about them. You'll inevitably find some kind of trauma behind each of these folks.
Also women can be juvenile as well. I know many who have kept their inner child intact.
They can, but the same rules tend to apply. Maturity is a consequence of adversity. People who live frictionless lives tend not to develop it.
Yes, I agree, just wanted it to be known it's jot a men only thing.
Parenthood also often does a lot to mature you. Not all parents by any means, but many of my friends with kids, and myself, found ourselves much harder to anger once we had kids and our empathic abilities increased substantially.
That all makes sense from an evolutionary perspective
Kids generate a lot of anxiety and no small amount of trauma (particularly for the person carrying the pregnancy to term). Even before the child arrives, there's also the real possibility of failed pregnancies. I have dozens of friends with kids, but I can count the number of women who have never experienced a miscarriage on one hand. Then there's the first six months of caring for a newborn, which is intense. There are childhood injuries and illnesses that you feel as fiercely as if they'd happened to you. And there's the general process of watching a child mature into an adult, and the emotional turbulence of that process.
There's also the experience of watching an elder loved one - a grandparent or parent or beloved aunt/uncle - grow infirm and die. It weighs on you, both directly as a caregiver and indirectly as a reminder of the mortality of younger loved ones.
Grief has a huge impact on personality.
Becoming a parent is not necessarily about trauma and anxiety - not everyone reacts this way, some people genuinely enjoy becoming parents, including women. What I think is kind of almost universal though, is the new responsibility. That can force you to mature too.
I fully agree on the losing loved ones part.
No. There's a great deal of joy in being a parent, too. But a big part of caring for a child - particularly a toddler or per-adolecent - is having one eye open to the child's safety, constantly. Kids be doing crazy shit. Its normal and healthy, from a development perspective. But terrifying for a caretaker, whenever the kid behaves recklessly (or in any way the caretaker perceives as reckless).
Its an inherent trade-off. Watching a kid walk for the first time or ride a bike for the first time inevitably means watching them fall or crash. The agony and the ecstasy.
I know very well what you're talking about and I feel pretty competent to say that not everyone reacts with anxiety or even trauma to a reckless child. Not everyone's feelings are on the same level in the same situation.
The only time in my life I ever enjoyed singing, was singing nonsense songs to my little ones
As my little ones graduated from toddlers to kids, I rediscovered my love for Lego
As my little ones graduated from kids to teens, I rediscovered my love for sports. I’ve never gotten so excited to watch a game as when my kid is playing
Damn right some of us really enjoy being parents. Damn right being parents can help some of us rediscover some of the joys of childhood. And it’s not just for women
We have 7 month old Twins. Intense is a good word, the last 7 months have been the hardest of my life so far, and I am hitting on 40. That said, it's far from trauma, as far as I understand the term.
Also, my father and by brother died 10 and 5 years ago, both before they were old aged. I am well aware of the concept of moratility, even of my wife's and children's mortality. It doesn't weigh on me personally, honestly. It's just a reality that one has to accept, as there is nothing that can be done about it.
Yeah, I was just thinking about all the young people who were in WW1 and WW2.
TRAUMA has a maturing effect, whether one desires it or not.
When I was young people used to tell me "You're wise beyond your years" Thanks! That'd be the trauma.
This really depends long-term. Not everyone that experiences trauma develops PTSD, but at least speaking for myself, I've had a few decades of hopelessness, helplessness, and a lot of general emotional immaturity for my age. Particularly since so much of it occurred when I was a kid and heard the line about being mature...I regress to that childish mindset often in my 30s still. It's taken a lot of effort to develop the social support I've needed in conjunction with therapy and education to even start the process of actively healing rather than just surviving.