Community-based Rites of Passage pt. 2
a-DULT (or A-dult), noun
one that has arrived at full development or maturity especially in size, strength, or intellectual capacity
a human male or female after a specific age (as 18 or 21)
In our last article, I briefly sketched out the idea that youth thrive when local adults, not distant experts, take collective responsibility for helping prepare them for adulthood (aka life).
In this article, I aim to sketch out how we propose do that.
Before I can do that, bear with me while I lay out the map of human development we reference here at Firestarters Initiative.
In Bill Plotkin’s classic book on human development “Nature and the Human Soul,” there are 2 stages of adolescence that follow childhood and precede what he calls true adulthood - not 1. These stages (early adolescence or stage 3, and late adolescence, or stage 4) follow stages 1 and 2, which are the stages of early and middle childhood .
When the child moves from stage 2 (middle childhood) to stage 3 (early adolescence), a couple things happen. Most importantly, the child’s center of identity moves from their family to their peer group.
The rite of passage between stage 2 and 3 is known as Puberty. That is, something both physical and social-emotional happens at that time, and we all collectively recognize something big is happening. Not only is the child “maturing” in physical terms, there is a budding intellectual, social and creative capacity that is also emerging.
It is at this point that many people would say the “adult” is beginning to emerge. Many early stabs at modern “rites of passage” had titles like “boys to men,” with the implication that the child simply - poof - becomes an adult.
This implication would seem to skip over - or outrightly deny - the stage of adolescence. That is, the stage between childhood and adulthood.
And, as I said, in his book, Plotkin suggests there are 2 adolescent stages, not one.
So now we’ve gone from “boys to men” to “boys to early-adolescents to late-adolescents and then to men?” Is that correct?
As Plotkin and others have asserted, and which I have found to be true in my own life (and with my clients as an executive coach), the goal of early-adolescence is to fashion a social identity that is both authentic and socially-acceptable.
That is, once we become aware of our peers as THE new important frame of reference and identity, we become fairly absorbed with the job of fitting in while also being ourselves.
This can help explain why teenagers can seem a bit crazy to the rest of us.
It may also not come as a shock to you that most people never make it out of this stage.
That bears repeating: most people never - ever - feel that they are accepted as they feel themselves to authentically occur. Said differently, most people never feel the human joy of being loved for who they love to be.
What a sad thing to think about.
Here are some clues as to why.
We all observe:
The world is full of highly socially-acceptable people that quietly suffer the desperation of feeling not fully authentic.
On the other extreme, there are examples, though fewer, of highly authentic people that almost nobody wants to be around. You can probably think of a few.
In both cases, the “tasks” of early adolescence - learning to (1) fit in while simultaneously (2) being authentic - were not fulfilled. What’s worse, the felt sense that this task needs completed doesn’t go away. It’s incompletion nags and haunts the subject for decades, denying them what all humans long for: genuine belonging.
Either person (the authentic but alone or the accepted but fake) may have become an “adult” - in size, strength and intellectual capacity (Webster’s above definition of an adult).
Yet, in spite of having “matured,” they are (in many ways seen and unseen) still “immature,” still fighting the ghost of their younger days, still stuck in high school.
One might argue this is the cause of 99% of depression and failed marriages— even some physical illnesses.
How many of us would be willing to raise our hand and admit we still dwell a little too much in our high school age of life? We still compare ourselves to others? We still check how we look in the mirror (ouch on that one)? Still relive old moments? Still scheme how to “make it big” or “express ourselves” — late into our 50s or beyond — when we’re supposed to be mentoring the ones coming up behind us?
Still long to quit the job, start the business, marry the right person… etc.
It’s a depressing topic…
Yet, perhaps also enlivening.
At Firestarters, our mission is to support youth to complete the tasks of early adolescence so they can be prepared for what life will throw at them. This is often called adulthood, but since - as we noted - very few modern adults have completed the tasks required of early adolescence, what would we call the stage that follows it?
Don’t we have a bunch of non-adult adults?
What would we call what comes after crafting a socially acceptable, completely authentic personality? What’s left to live for once we aren’t defined by what we do, how we look, what people think of us, what we think the world wants from us, etc. etc. etc.
Freedom? Fulfillment? Life?
Is that what it means to be an adult?
Before a caterpillar larva turns into a butterfly, it molts several times until finally dissolving its form as a resting pupa - cocoon or chrysalis. The adult form - the butterfly - in no way resembles either the pupa or the larva of the same individual.
We prepare youth for the natural unfolding of life by supporting them to craft a socially viable and deeply authentic personality.
At Firestarters Initiative, we track a 3-braided weave of “tracks” within which these adolescent tasks can happen. They are, in no order psychological development (social-emotional learning + maturity), deep nature connection (skills, passions + core routines), sense of genuine (authentic) belonging (to self, peer group and wider community).
When we support our youth to know themselves and each other emotionally, feel at home and empowered in their bodies and the natural world, and express themselves wildly, authentically and truthfully, what are we preparing them for?
And how do we do it?
Maybe we’re preparing them for flight by helping them caterpillar it up. Maybe we help them caterpillar it up by supporting them in the very difficult, rarely accomplished task of being seen being themselves.
Maybe that’s a big deal.
Maybe that’s all we can do as parents, educators and neighbors.
Maybe that’s all they want from us.
Maybe that’s all we owe them.