My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol.3, #38, March 23, 1998

FIVE LETTER WORD

The other day, I got a piece of junk e-mail with the word "adult" in the header, and, lips curled in disgust, I trashed it immediately. I didn't need to look at it first. The word "adult" told me all I needed to know about it. Which is when I got to wondering when it was that "adult" came to be a synonym for sleazy and disgusting?

When you get right down to it, programs or web sites labeled "adult" rarely are. For most adults, sexuality is a normal part of life--an enjoyable, and even treasured part, but nonetheless, a part, not a central focus. The "adult" sites seem to play to unbalanced, obsessive interests in sex. The vision of sexuality is sniggeringly salacious, redolent with fantasies of male power and female submission. It reeks of exploitation, not pleasure shared between equal partners. Doesn't that seem a lot closer to the wet dream fantasies of adolescent boys than to adult sexuality?

I think it's time we reclaimed the word "adult," and used it to mean that array of adult virtues that make civilization possible. No, we don't all have all of these virtues, and even when we do, we can't manage to display them all the time. But they are virtues that ONLY adults are capable of.

For starters, we are on our own. Whatever choices we make now, we know we are stuck with, because nobody's coming to the rescue, and we will have to live with the consequences. If we screw up, we have to admit it, apologize, and try to make amends. We are responsible for supporting ourselves and our children. For most of us, this means that we will work, and give good value for money. It means we will abide by our employers' rules, learn what we need to know to do the job, and do the work as well as we can.

Adults are people who plan ahead. We have to be. We cannot buy a house on the spur of the moment, because we need to save for it. We can't hop on a plane and go on vacation at a moment's notice because other people are depending on us to be here. When 40 hours or more a week are spent at work, and we have to pay all our bills on those proceeds, we understand how precious and limited time and money are, and we choose carefully how we spend them. Most of us have come to understand that drifting--NOT choosing--IS a choice, and one that ends up limiting our future possibilities.

We have become people for whom death is thinkable. As teenagers, we were told that cigarettes could cause cancer, but we didn't really believe death applied to us--we were immortal, then. As adults, though, we follow doctors' orders and try to quit smoking. We buy medical insurance and life insurance, so that our families can financially survive our loss or extended illness. We start saving money for the time when we will no longer be young and strong and beautiful. And because death is thinkable, we become purposeful, because there are things we want to accomplish before we die.

The farther along we get in the cycle of life, the more aware we are of the continuity of it--we have been children and students, and now perhaps we have become parents ourselves. We have seen our own parents go from invincibly strong protectors to people who may need care themselves. That gives us a sense of obligation to our community. We have gone from consumers of tax dollars to providers of tax dollars. The town that provided roads and schools and medical care and clean water, when we were growing, now needs us to give back to it, with our taxes, and with our volunteer work, so that the community will work for our children. We have gone from protected to protector, assuming responsibility for those who are unable to fend for themselves.

Altruism is an adult concept. We are born into selfishness, screaming "Me, me, me" to the world. Only carefully taught children will respond to a new baby with delight and nurturing--most kids know instinctively that they'll now have to fight for their parents' time and attention. It is adults who teach children to share their toys. As adults we share our own toys by building playgrounds for children, preserving the community's art and history, creating symphonies and theatres and libraries, raising money to fight disease. We put our knowledge and stores of data on the internet so that other people can use it too.

Adulthood brings with it perspective. Babies who are hurting have nothing to gauge the pain by, and all pain gets the same howl of indignant protest. Adults understand that some pain is minor and short-term, and don't sweat the small stuff. We can think in the long-term as well as the short: telling lies and stealing might get us what we want in the short term, but in the long term they will affect whether people choose to trust and respect us. We adults are people who have learned the art of the trade-off. We have learned to choose our battles carefully, because not every issue is important enough to spend the psychic energy on.

There is a consistency of character to adults that is lacking in children and adolescents. They are shapechangers by definition, still practicing at being human, still trying out personas and poses that are contradictory and often surprising. But by the time we are adults, our bits and pieces--our actions and words and beliefs--work together as a whole. We are, in a broad sense, predictable. You who have been reading me for a while may not be able to predict the exact words I will use, or even what topic I will choose for next week, but you can say with some certainty what is likely to outrage or amuse me.

Do we lose something in becoming adult? Oh, yes. Unless we work at holding on to it, we lose the child's spontaneity and sense of wonder, the sense that anything is possible. Being reliable, doing what has to be done, means that sometimes we put big dreams on hold, and maybe forever. Security can become too important, can keep us from taking risks--as Bob Geldof says, "you get hooked so quick to anything, even your chain." There are way too many people going through the motions of living, just waiting for the pension to kick in. And the virtues of adulthood, real though they are, are boring virtues--think of the image in your mind when you are told that your blind date is "responsible" and "trustworthy." But despite that, what we have gained is independence, self-respect, some control over our own lives and the chance to influence others'.

It is time for "adult content" to be used to describe programs that are beyond children's understanding because they describe a broad range of human experience, emotion and tragedy. Shakespeare is "adult content," as is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and the PBS Ethics in America series. It's time to tell the people who deal in depravity that adult is a term of honor. We want our word back.