One of the frustrating aspects of my sociology classes is this never-ending truth that I live in a society that has a really, really dark history, coupled with the fact that things are still pretty dark, if I take an honest look around me. While that’s not particularly new, as I grow older I can’t escape the fact that I am, at the core, a product of this society and many of my values are pretty American, no matter how much I might vie for moral and intellectual independence.
I wish, for example, that we gave more weight to the importance of family, geographically speaking. I’ve always thought it would be better to live in a society where leaving home at eighteen wasn’t the expectation, yet I find myself in a situation in which the only practical solution is for me to do just that. As much as I believe in the virtue of self-control and humility, in the art and form of love, all of that seems to break down with each passing day living at home. A part of me wants to stay home just that I might prove society wrong and show that one can be a fully-developed person while still living with one’s parents, and I stubbornly cling to this ideal in the face of the reality that it’s just not going to work. Having consumed the essence of Americana for nearly twenty years, I am fate-bound; I cannot value the things that I do and be the way that I am, and yet peacably live at home.
That’s not to victimize myself, but merely to say that I am thoroughly American, and my parents equally so. It’s not just my values at play, here, but theirs as well. The style of American parenting is often highly control-based, a methodology that does not mesh well with the existence of independent children within the household. I would have to submit to that control – minor though it may be at this point – a thought which repulses my American sensibilities, those qualities of self-reliance and self-actualization. Modern Americans are to find their identities outside the home, a process which does not lend itself to living at home.
One of the most distressing by-products of this is the diminished status of those whom do not find themselves independent. We relegate adult dependents back to a child-like status, into institutions and nursing homes, and we pay the people that run those places poorly, that we independents might live and breathe without restriction. It is only with the advent of new technology and medicine that we begin to see the disabled as viable members of society. The irony of this is that America regards its actual children with a strange paranoia. We fear their arrival with intense trepidation and declare their presence as among the most life-damning possibilities (though for some, that really is true), and yet we bend over backwards to protect them beyond all logical necessity, and we obsess over some of the most statistically improbable catastrophes.
Yet, here I am, giddy with the thought of embarking on this journey of self-determination, my head full of the limitless possibilities and the myriad details that will be my responsibility, and mine alone. Not that it’s happening really soon or anything; still have to apply for student loans and all.