It’s Not Just a Phase, Mom!!

Why are we trying to shorten our own journey?

I’ve been thinking about a phenomenon that seems to appear in different layers of our lives and whenever I catch a glimpse of it I feel immediately irritated, though it’s hard to put a finger on why. So let’s try. 

It started from reading the claim how many young trans people are ‘merely going through a phase’ and therefore do not really need access to gender affirming care. In fact many young queer people in general are told ‘it’s just a phase, you’ll grow out of it’. Many young people with any sorts of beliefs, ideas, or interests are told ‘it’s just a phase’. And, you know what? It could be a phase. I remember knowing many things about myself intuitively from an extremely young age, but I also remember many things that felt true once and then no longer did. Young people change so much, they’re growing every day. Maybe they’re discovering who they are. Maybe it’s a phase. 

My question is this - so what if it’s a phase?

Why is the sentence ‘it’s a phase’ used to dismiss or invalidate? Why is the follow up to ‘it’s just a phase’ always ‘so snap out of it! Grow up already!’ Why are we trying to force people to skip the process of growth and arrive at a pre-determined destination before they have had a chance to actually get there?

It strikes me as deeply bizarre. 

If you have raised a kid, or watched a kid grow up, you know kids grow through many phases. At one point they’re struggling even to sit up. Then they crawl around because they don’t know how to stand. Then they toddle around while you break your back bending over to support them, or you finally capitulate to the Gods of Lumbago and tie a scarf around them so you can guide them from above like a chubby, stumbly, unruly marionette. 

Have you ever at any point, though, considered telling that small child ‘Oh my god!!! Stop crawling around, it’s clearly just a phase you’re going through! Just grow up and walk normally already!!’ 

No, you haven’t. Because that would be silly.

The baby is doing its damned best. It will get there when it gets there. Rushing it is like rushing a tree to grow. 

She picked a challenging location but she is making it work.

This is not, of course, to imply that young people are ‘babies’ who will grow out of all the elements of their personality. Thinking you know someone better than they know themselves will always be a bizarre sort of hubris. But I feel we need to question our recurring need to treat transient things as if they have no value.

I am an enthusiastic ADHD enjoyer. This means that I have gone through hundreds of extremely deep-diving, far-reaching, soul-consuming interests and hobbies that have often after some time ended up abandoned by the wayside. 

I have been the butt of all the family jokes for this fact since as long as I can remember. ‘Oh what’s Lidija into this week? Is she practicing archery or upholstering chairs? Is she researching snake husbandry or trying to make stained glass windows? Ahahahahah she never sticks with anything does she.’

I used to feel they had a point. I mean, it’s true. I do move from thing to thing. I do leave most of them behind. (Though not all). I do ‘waste’ a lot of money on classes or materials for hobbies I don’t end up sticking with. Why am I like this? Do I lack grit? Do I give up too easily? Am I too airheaded? Scatterbrained? Easily bored?

It was presented as a character flaw so I took it onboard as such. 

But then I started thinking. Hold on a minute. Why is it better to not do something at all than to do it for a short time? Why is it better to do one thing forever than to do many things for short stints? What weird sort of morality are we attaching to personal interests? 

I understand the virtue in doing something dedicatedly for a long time. You found something you enjoy, and you keep doing it for years and years. You deepen your knowledge of it, you keep delving deeper, you gather all the materials, you gain skill and experience, you grind through the learning curve, you connect with a community, and you emerge victorious. I get that.

But I also understand the virtue in doing something for a short while. Something interests you and you dive in to see what it’s about, to figure out if it’s right for you. Sometimes it turns out it wasn’t. Maybe once you started it felt like it would take more energy than you had to give. Maybe you pursued it until your curiosity was sated and then you moved on. Maybe you ran into financial or time constraints. Maybe you found a new interest and veered off to follow that. 

We all know that old saying, ‘Jack of all trades and master of none…..’ but few people seem to know how it ends - ‘….but oftentimes better than a master of one.’ This honestly makes sense to me. Who wants to be specialized for one single thing and never dabble in anything else? Who wants to look at the world with its thousands of weird and wonderful things and only ever explore just one? Even worse, who wants to never take up an actual hobby or learn an actual skill, spending all their time instead just scrolling Insta, tv channels, or new Netflix offerings, while calling people out for having curiosity about lots of different things? 

I remember reading someone who was explaining why they do the things they do in life, and they said ‘I didn’t want my kids to look back and think ‘wow, my dad was really great at watching YouTube videos.’ That sentence was one of those that just stuck to me like glue, got embedded deep into my mental library. Not that I particularly care how I am remembered. But I want my kid to know that if you’re interested in something, you can go check it out. Even if it turns out you suck at it. Even if it turns out you don’t even like it. Just do things. It’s not that deep. 

We tend to have a similar view on many other things in life. Jobs, friendships, relationships. Marriages. If you tried working as an artist and found it doesn’t pay enough to keep you going, you’re a ‘failed artist’. If you spent 10 years with someone and then grew apart, you were in a ‘failed relationship’. But this is fundamentally a weird way to look at it. Would you rather never have made art? Never have loved that person? Would our lives really be improved if we pared them down only to those experiences that end up lasting forever?

My son is very serious about curating his collection of possessions. He saved for two years to get this megalodon tooth.

I have worked a bunch of jobs that sort of ended up going nowhere. I wouldn’t erase any of them from my work history, though. I knew a guy who kept refusing all possible job offers because he felt he was destined to be some sort of high level manager and he just wouldn’t settle for anything less. He was determined to start from his final destination. Needless to say it didn’t quite work out. 

Wanting to go straight to the ‘good’ part without actually traveling your journey is one of the weirdest tendencies we have. Because I think we all understand at some level that life doesn’t work like that. You have to build up to things. 

I think we may have been swayed by movie protagonist gaining all their skills in inspirational montages. Or Neo downloading his kung-fu and helicopter flying skills straight from the computer. But in real life the actual learning process is what makes you into the person who can finally do the thing. Say you’re an illustrator, say you’re just starting out. Now imagine you get your amazing opportunity - like, whoever would be your ultimate dream client. They call you today, the phone is ringing. Are you ready? Can you do it?

Lucky breaks are one thing, having the skill and experience you need to seize them and not make a dog’s dinner out of them is something else entirely. 

Amy Mrotek of Silly Magic Eight Ball wrote a fun text on our desire to purchase a ready-made personality online, instead of taking the time to grow one ourselves. It does make you wonder, why people think they can take shortcuts through actual self-actualization. Like, you can buy a set of tableware that has been carefully curated to look as if it was lovingly collected from different places over time, but you can’t buy the stories that would come with those items if you had actually lovingly collected them from different places over time. You can buy a collection of loosely coordinated art prints from IKEA but it won’t come with the personal relationships you will build with artists as you follow their work over the years and bide your time trying to figure out which of their prints you want to buy. You can buy 2,5 meters of assorted books to fill your pretty new living room shelves, but they won’t come with the little quotes and ideas that will stick in your head if you pick the books one by one and actually take the time to read them. 

A part of this desire to fast forward right to ‘the good part’ by speeding past the actual process is our desire to curate our appearance in the eyes of others. If someone offered you the choice - would you rather be well-read, full of different experiences, knowledgeable on many subjects, but never have anyone know, or would you rather not be any of these things but have the whole world convinced you are - which would you choose? I don’t think it’s an easy choice. Would you rather be sophisticated and have the whole world consider you a dunce, or would you rather be basic but have everyone convinced you’re peak sophistication? I don’t know. Curating your self-image is an attractive proposition. Being seen a certain way is alluring. And if there are ways to take shortcuts to being seen a certain way……. wouldn’t it be foolish not to take them? Are we not just being practical by skipping the boring personal growth part and fast-forwarding straight to the ‘being seen as awesome’ part? 

I don’t know. The older I get the less I care how I appear. This is, I suppose, one of the few privileges of age. At one point I would have worried about seeming clumsy or inept at something. About seeming overly eager to interact with someone. About seeming too enthusiastic about a subject for polite company. Now I find a lot of value in fumbling. I find a lot of joy in trying new things and doing them hilariously badly. I find happiness in loving my eclectic little trinkets that aren’t beautifully curated by Anthropologie.

‘But Lidija,’ I hear you say, ‘what if I have no personal interests or taste? Am I not allowed pretty things?’ Of course you are. My purpose is not to gatekeep anything. If you enjoy having your home look like an IKEA catalogue, you do you. If you aren’t the sort of person who enjoys the process of selecting and curating things, or experiences, just get something someone already took the time to curate.

But don’t rush yourself through the process of becoming.