The Gilmore Book Club

  The Importance of Growing Up Slowly

Peter Pan as the boy who never grew up- what a terrible adult he’d make! He had plenty of grown-up responsibilities in Neverland but skipped all the foundation steps, and that’s where his troubles began. There are plenty of Peter Pans out there in our world, carrying around all this childhood baggage in the body of an adult.

But not growing up is just one side of the growing up equation that causes trouble. What happens if you grow up too quickly? Does an early coming-of-age make you better or is it equally as traumatizing?

To Kill A Mockingbird’s pages contain several depictions of the struggles of growing up. Many citizens of Maycomb, like the Ewells, could fall into the Peter Pan category, taking their childhood issues with them into adulthood and letting them run wild. Scout and Jem Finch, however, fall into the latter category. It may be easy to classify in a book, but the tricky thing is, reality is characterized by people who have had all kinds of growing up experiences and it’s much more difficult to spot those than it is to find someone missing their shadow.

The more I learn about psychology, the more I become aware that growing up is like walking through a minefield of events that could affect your entire life. Growing up too quickly or not at all are just two ways life can mess with your childhood, and many of those events, like illness or natural disasters, are out of your control. But other occurrences like separation from a parent or not experiencing love in your own love language can shift your subconscious into distorting certain realities or developing an inherent belief that could be carried with you for the rest of your life.  (Check out this book if you want to know more.)

But I’m not going to psychoanalyze all the characters in To Kill A Mockingbird, I’ll leave that to the pros. Instead, I’ll go back to a more generic view of growing up.

To me, learning about other people is a vital aspect of growing up, and based on this novel, I think Harper Lee would agree. As children, we only know our own thoughts, feelings, and bodies, but as we grow, our worlds grow, and we encounter two categories: things like me and things not like me. On a simplified scale, this could mean I don’t like peas, but mommy does like peas. But as we all know, our minds categorize things way more complicated and way more polarizing than food preferences. And we learn that things, places, and people are different. Somewhere along the line, we learn that same is good and different is bad. Same means there’s no friction, no debate, no opposition, it’s easier. Different means there’s another way to consider, other thoughts to account for, and sometimes, it can tell us things that we don’t want to hear. Different is not easy. And the difficulties with feeling different or being treated differently will stay with us from early childhood to the end of our days.

The children of To Kill A Mockingbird are adept at identifying the categories into which Maycomb’s citizens fall. There are particular traits attributed to those who are Cunningham’s and those who are Ewells.  And for those with colored skin, there’s a lot more going on than geographical difference. And Boo Radley, who never comes out of his house, causing all kinds of inventive rumors about his life, is in a category all his own. Those citizens that learned these categories, what each of them meant, and never learned to question the reasons or morality behind it, carry on dividing up the town and treating everyone according to this skewed system. And they never pondered about how someone else might think or feel. And they perpetuated this system to their children and then to their grandchildren. All going through life as Peter Pans, unless something or someone comes along to challenge their beliefs.

Jem and Scout were raised differently than other children in Maycomb, and a large portion of that is due to the beliefs, nature, and vocation of their father, Atticus. Jem and Scout are generally good children, but the lessons from Atticus aren’t always enough to enlighten them to the complexities of the world. Sometimes it’s the small things, like a ball of string hidden in the trunk of a tree, that come together to make something bigger, just like every string of rope is woven together to make a hammock. 

When Atticus Finch is assigned to represent Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, Jem and Scout begin to see the ramifications of classifying people into ‘other’ categories. The Maycomb children and even some of the other adults, harass the Finch family for their connection to the trial, and there are a few times where things almost escalate past threats into violence.  However, despite Atticus's excellent efforts and clear-cut explanation to the court that there was no way Tom could have raped Mayella Ewell, the expected and inevitable verdict for Alabama in 1939 is reached: Tom is found guilty. But all of Maycomb knows he’s innocent.

Spoilers ahead-It is not until Halloween, when Scout has the special role of ‘the ham’ in the school’s play that events take a turn for the worse. On their way home, Jem and Scout have the eerie feeling that someone is watching them and just as they get closer to home, they're attacked. Scout does her best to fight back but is stuck insider her ham costume. Jem honorably defends his and his sister's lives but is injured in the fray. It is then that an unknown and yet familiar savior steps in and saves the Finch children: Boo Radley. The same man who had left twine and gum in the hole of an old tree for the children to find. The same friend who had wrapped Scout in a blanket as she and Jem stood outside in the cold watching the fire engulf their neighbor’s house. The same neighbor they had concocted wild stories about and made fun of. Boo Radley, whom they had feared and ridiculed, had been a friend to them all along.

This makes me think that perhaps Lorelai Gilmore only read the beginning of To Kill A Mockingbird. I don’t blame her for abandoning Swann’s Way, I had a nasty time reading it myself, but To Kill A Mockingbird is a short and easy-to-read novel. To be fair, Rune  (whom she’s referencing in the above quote) is rude and surly to just about everyone and is always complaining; as a character, he is pretty universally disliked. And I agree with Lorelai, I wouldn’t want Rune moving into the place I had once called home, but that does not make him a Boo Radley.

If Lorelai had finished reading this book, she would have seen that Boo Radleys are people that have the potential to be our friends, we just don’t know or understand them yet. Sometimes we need to change our perspective.

We get small glimpses of the lives of the Radleys in To Kill A Mockingbird, but we aren’t partial to the whole backstory. However, I think there’s enough evidence of both growing up categories in Boo’s life and his parents’ lives, and more than enough evidence that any issues that arose from these growing up deficiencies were never addressed or allowed to heal, just swept under the carpet and allowed to build up over the years.

I could go into the few instances we see in the book; however, I’m going to tell you a little about my growing up experience because in this case, I actually know the whole backstory.

When I was 13, I started to experience lingering pains. What originally started as a random pain in my leg and shoulder, almost as if I had slept on it wrong or something, turned into excruciating pain all over my body; not even my eyelids were exempt from the agony. I’ve detailed this experience in other posts, so I’m going to keep this short and only put in the relevant details. My life was school and bed. Social events were pretty much out of the question. My attendance anywhere usually took all the energy I could muster, so I just sat there, a shell of a person.  Basically, I was a total Boo Radley, who rarely did anything or spoke to anyone. As a young teenager, I was dealing with a chronic illness and all the financial, mental, emotional, physical, and social ramifications of all of it. I was a mature kid, but even this was too much for me to handle.

Here are just a few things I have to relearn as an adult: making friends, dating, relationships, and even though it makes me cringe a bit when I write this, how to play and have fun. Dealing with adult problems as a kid gave me so many strengths, but it also forced me to skip over some fundamental building blocks of growing up. I have a laser-sharp focus on achieving my goals and dreams, and I have enormous dreams, but it also pushed me into a time-deprived mindset, thinking there is not enough time and energy to do all the things I need to do plus the things I want to do, so I’m constantly working on something to compensate for the inactive times.  I often only take a break or a nap when I’m so tired I might fall over. And this leads to burnout. I now have to force myself to stop working all the time to not only take a break but also have some time for some fun stuff. This does help with the burnout but also helps me retain the ability to harness my imagination, a critical tool for an artist like myself. If I were to lose that ability, I'd also lose a vital part of my talent and a part of my soul. In a way, I have to be a kid again to help my life as an adult. I have to play, learn, try, practice, and grow.

I’m sure you’ve heard a line similar to this, but usually, it involves walking in someone else’s shoes. While the right intention is there, I believe walking in someone’s shoes bears no equivalent to walking in their skin. If I picture my closet and the shoes inside, I see the walks in the park I take every morning, the beautiful and fun moments I’ve shared at friends’ weddings, and strolls through idyllic streets in Europe. But all of that is only a small sliver of my life. In today’s language, that would be the Instagram version, the nice little description of my fashion sense, my hobbies, and my social life. What you don’t see is the reality. My ballet flats can’t tell you all the times I’ve cried when someone’s words or actions have hurt me.  My sneakers can’t tell you all the times I’ve hobbled around on exhausted legs, barely able to walk down the street or the few steps to my bathroom. My flip-flops can’t tell you of all the times I’ve questioned my path, my purpose, and my future. As much as I love my shoes, they don’t show all of me, and I’m willing to bet, your shoes don’t show all of you. Because just as a chronic illness is often an invisible illness, where you can’t detect any signs of pain or suffering from the outside, so all of our traumas and personal histories are invisible too. From the outside, you won’t be able to tell if someone grew up too fast or never grew up at all; you have to look inside for that. You’ll have to get under their skin.

As something you’ve always worn, your skin has seen every single moment of your life. So in this case, getting under someone’s skin means you not only see everything, but you feel everything: the bad, the good, the heartbreak, the joy, the loneliness, the love, the despair, and the hope. Even knowing just one or two of those moments can do a lot to help you understand a person’s life, and to really explore all of it, to imagine how each of those moments felt, can do wonders for you and your relationships.

Every time we climb into someone else’s skin, we learn. Every time we open our minds to new ways of thinking and new experiences, we grow. And life is going to give you endless opportunities to continue growing up.

The major traumas, the baggage, the distortions can only be helped by time, hard work, therapists or doctors, emotionally intelligent friends and family, and a whole lot of self-assessment and self-growth. But there’s one more tool that can help you with all of this, and there’s a good chance it’s already sitting in your home: books. That’s right, books allow us endless access to opportunities of growth, endless experiences of growth. Whether you’re dealing with the effects of growing up too fast or the realization that you may not have grown up as much as you had previously thought, books will be there to help you on your journey.

Of course, I realize that many of you may not spend the weeks or months, even years, pondering over the particular message each book is sending, but that’s ok. Books are working away in your brain nonetheless. Each word, character, and event gets added to the vast filing cabinets of your mind. If several similar book themes are filed away, your brain sends you the message that maybe there's more there for you to think about. Or maybe a few sentences that you just couldn’t figure out is relegated to the dusty, jinky cabinet way, way in the back where other bits of information like how to dissect a frog is hidden because you’ll never need it again, but one day, maybe even years from now, something will happen and that paragraph will make sense, and you’ll realize your mind has been silently mulling it over for years. And that’s where growth happens.

Growing doesn’t happen overnight, it’s a small series of small, sometimes imperceptible shifts, linking together to form a few steps. But one day, you’ll turn around and see just how far you’ve come.

Having one of those coming-of-age moments is a part of what makes us human, but being able to learn from those moments and try to understand what others must be going through is a part of what makes humans wonderful. We may not be superheroes or gods, but our ability to transform on the inside is truly remarkable.

I’m getting better at thinking more about other people’s backstories- it’s an ongoing process, but the more I practice, the more it helps me in my day-to-day interactions. What makes them act a certain way or say the things they do? It’s all in the backstory, I just have to open my mind. And I hope that other people are out there trying to walk around in my skin too because that’s what helps us all understand each other. Because when everyone does this, it makes a difference, and that’s how the world becomes a better place, because, at the end of the day, we’re all just a bunch of Boo Radleys, trying to make our way in the world.

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