Painful rituals arm us against the panic of real, coming-of-age crisis situations.
“Quarter-life crisis” is a convenient term for glossing over a more subtle problem. I’m 27, about to move to Chicago from a city of some 50,000 people. I’ve got an MA and good deal of teaching and non-profit experience under my belt—and not a clue what I’ll be doing when my wife and I get to Chicago. I’m married too, I should mention—and happily, I can honestly say. My point is, I’ve got all these markers of adulthood about me—education, a “real” job, the legally binding state of matrimony (I think entering into contracts is a pretty grown-up thing, right?). Despite all of these good things, I would definitely say what I’m experiencing is my quarter-life crisis.
Crisis is normally used to mean the decisive point in a situation. Usually a negative situation. Like feeling aimless and anxious and worried about how in the hell you’re going to land on your feet and why you aren’t way more successful than you actually are. For a lot of guys, perhaps what’s missing, what causes these crises, is not being sure we’re doing anything that men do correctly. This is that more urgent problem I see. We’ve taken the ritual out of growing up.
Rituals are fascinating things. They can be the most completely superficial things, and still they carry a weight of significance that impresses something deep and subconscious in us. By superficial, I mean that the motions can be simple, and time-worn, and repetitive—like actually walking across a stage to receive your diploma. We wear funny clothes, and worse hats (which have their own special part to play), we listen to some version of the same speech, and whoa Black Betty! You’re one step closer to being an adult. The problem is that we’ve taken out the important parts of our rituals, or we’ve stopped viewing the ritual as important in itself. Most schools don’t actually give you your diploma at commencement—it’ s an empty leather folder or a rolled up piece of paper with a ribbon.
These things are about coming of age. They’re supposed to clue you into what is expected of you, what you’re supposed to be doing. More importantly, rituals like these assure us that we’re done with one stage of life, and on to the next. I mean simple stuff, too. Tying your shoes by yourself. Learning how to shave. Your first date. Your first part-time job and that first pitiful paycheck that’s all yours. Without the substance of rites of passage, and without the assurance of elders who’ve been there, we end up stuck as children playing at being adults, and we end up simply trying to recreate the feeling of grown-up-ness these sort of events had the first time around. You get to participate simply by virtue of the passage of time, and not because you’ve proven that you’re ready.
A lot of the writing on this site is about capturing or re-capturing a powerful sense of manhood. As young men we do a lot of the things we think we’re supposed to—work, get married, shape wood and metal, procreate, or what have you—without being able to really internalize why. This is why we get into a lot of the problems we do with gender roles. This is why it’s often so easy to categorize guys by behavior; frat boy, jock, hippie, upwardly-mobile no-bullshit indie business guy. All of these guys think they’ve figured out what a man is supposed to do and to be like.
I’m saying, I have no friggin’ idea what I’m supposed to be like. I’m in the process of shifting my entire career focus. I’m wrestling with the fact that I’ve committed myself to a career which promises to make me barely a living wage for most of my life. Thankfully, my wife recently had a panic moment and decided she isn’t ready for kids, so that’s one off my plate. But what does she think of me, of my choices, of my commitment to making our life together better? Men provide, right? They protect and bring security and take care of their families? By what possible stretch of the imagination is a man working adjunct for less than minimum wage at two colleges any woman’s ideal relationship? Boys in the Satere-Mawe tribe in Brazil wear gloves stuffed with gigantic neuro-toxic bullet ants and dance around for ten minutes without passing out in order to become a warrior. They do this up to twenty times over a period months before it’s official. Where is my torrid glove of agony and manliness to show that I’m ready to take my place as a man in society?
Somewhere between a semi-traumatic undergraduate graduation and now, about five years later, I can’t help but feel like I’m still just playing around. Things haven’t been serious, I haven’t been serious enough for this really be adulthood. I also haven’t failed. That’s a rite of passage, too. As a society we suck at coping with failure and coming out on the other side, and we’ve done everything we can to make sure our kids never experience failure. My crisis now is, what if I’m doing this all wrong? What if I fail and can’t move on?
Still image from video by geckochasin/YouTube
About Trevor Sprague
The problem is that a lot of the things that Trevor Sprague is pining for here are completely arbitrary. We assigned 18 years as the point one becomes an adult, but that’s clearly long after the human body makes that transition. Why he mentioned recently getting an MA, current trends that one finishes education long after the 18 year mark, so if education is a childish or adolescent thing, the 18 year mark fails again.
I would say there it’s a fine line between child and adult, except it’s not, it’s a gradual transition. One side is white, and other black, but the middle 99% is gray, each movement makes things an imperceptible shade darker. There is nothing there to say “You are now a proper adult!” If we created such a ritual we would realize it only exists to comfort us. Education and various life experiences can help you prepare you for independent living, careers, and responsibility but those things are only part of being an adult because of how society has chosen to define “adult”. There is nothing adultish about careers, but there is something careerish about being an adult. A child or adolescent could potentially have a career, it’s unlikely but a 13 year old with a company and six figure income living on their own would be thought of as having a career, but without a career you don’t make make a very good adult. But that’s just how we’ve defined “adult”
The Satere-Mawi tribe gets no respect from me. If you watch the show “Jackass” you’ll see a bunch of young men intentionally doing creative but painful things, dancing around, and laughing about it. You watch the Satere-Mawi you see a bunch of young men doing specific painful things, dancing around, and then finishing with a somber ritual. Young men feel a need to prove themselves, and the most straightforward method involves blinding pain. I’m not sure if the reason is a social, cultural, or biological.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1885#comic
Thanks for your comment. I think we’re in more agreement than you seem to think. One of my main concerns is that there is a degree of arbitrariness to growing up right now. But it’s not in what we rituals we choose to invest value in, rather, I’d suggest that it’s in the 18-year age, which you cite. If I’m reading you correctly, you think we just have a slow accumulation of experience–i.e. being alive–and when we hit 18, we’re ready to roll.
My point is exactly that: simply turning 18 doesn’t cut it, there are things we learn to do as we grow older that teach us what a adult is and does. 18 fails for a variety of reasons–such as the fact that the brain isn’t really finished developing until around age 25–but it’s not because the steps along the way are arbitrary. Rather, it is because we’ve taken away any substance from the small rituals which holds any cultural or psychological significance. Really, as a society we’ve kept delaying and delaying the growing up process–not the aging process–so that childhood seems to end later and later.
Compare what most people were doing at age 18 in our grandparents’ generation with what most people are doing now. I would argue that they were more fully invested in adulthood at that point, because they had experienced a clear passage, and had clear expectations about what it meant to be an adult. Now, some could argue that our current level of technological/social/cultural development has made a longer “childhood” possible, and that it’s a good thing, but I don’t necessarily think so.
The type of rituals I’d like to see restored can be arbitrary, because what matters isn’t the action itself, but rather the importance placed upon the activity. To your middle point: society does define what it means to be an adult. Societies have always been defining what it means to be an adult for their particular cultural context. That’s why the Satere-Mawe do what they do. That’s why Jewish boys are Bar Mitzvahed at 13. It’s why many Hispanic girls are celebrated with a Quinceañera. The reasons are always cultural, but they are rooted so deeply in history that it’s not hard to see how they could represent different manifestations of ingrained biological imperatives for survival. Surviving in the world used to be really hard—it still is in many places. The places where it is still hardest tend to be the ones that still have strong rites of passage. Pain is a part of many rituals because, in many cultures, men will face pain—as warriors or hunters—and for the survival of the group they must not balk from it.
My real concern is that we’ve taken away a lot of the meaning from the small things that help us to build a sense of what adults do in our society. When we put something like an arbitrary age out there, with no “training” or guidance about what it means, we end up with people who are “lost” after graduating high school. People who need to take some time to “find themselves.” I’d argue that they’d already have themselves if we, as a society, hadn’t pushed out anything that seemed like an outdated or old-fashioned sort of ritual.
In “Feminism is For Everybody” Bell Hooks actually defines “feminism” as the fight against sexism, then surprisingly she actually defines two substantially different forms of sexism. The First is the kind one would typically think of when they hear the word “sexism” this idea that women are inferior. You can see this is how our grandmother’s had fewer options than our grandfathers, and were a lot less likely to ever be the most powerful person in a mixed gender group. Being the “man of the house” meant something. Bell Hooks called this “Traditional Sexism” and second wave feminism focused on this, and greatly improved things along these lines. Though it’s pretty much a contradiction to say men suffer under this sexism.
The second type of sexism is what Bell Hooks defined and described with “Oppositional Sexism” which is named for the notion of “opposite” sexes. This is where each gender has predefined and mutually exclusive roles in life and society. I personally consider this the more important one, 1. because it can hurt men but limiting their socially accepted options, 2. because you need to establish that the two sexes are different before you establish that women are inferior 3. Even if a society considers the two sexes/genders to be equal, oppositional sexism can still cause a lot of gendered issues 4. I think this affects the current USA culture more than traditional sexism.
Back on topic, I think that we actually need to avoid restrictive gender roles, or more generally we need to allow people ever more latitude when they determine who they are. If I’m reading YOU right you have run into the inevitable existential crisis that comes from making people decide for themselves. Yes, “inevitable existential crisis” since while a medieval peasant knew exactly what his purpose in life was, we are not afforded such luxuries, and it is painful. At least you have a job and girlfriend, I’m a failure by virtually every metric modern USA society has to offer (being Autistic doesn’t help).
However, you know what, I fear the alternative. I fear your rituals. I desperately cling to the liberty afforded to my soul no matter how much it burns. I want the ability to define who I am at all costs. I don’t want you, my father, the village elders, chieftain, wall street, the pope, ancestors, or anyone else “to clue you into what is expected of you, what you’re supposed to be doing.” I will provide my own clues…eventually.
Maybe I’m reading you wrong, and you agree with me that being told by someone who isn’t also you yourself what it is you’re supposed to be doing is actually a bad thing. That seems more likely considering where I’m reading this article. The Good Men Project is more about questioning masculine roles and norms than celebrating them. But if I am reading you right, and you’re saying that first dates, as varied as the possible combinations of people in the world, should be ritualized affairs, with sentimental significance placed on the fact that it is performed the same way every time, then we couldn’t disagree more.
Maybe I haven’t done enough to clarify that I absolutely don’t want restriction–on anybody. I’m certainly not suggesting that every first date need be done in the same way, for every person, every time.
I would say that The Good Men Project is about affirming what masculinity means for the individual. And we all do take on roles in our lives, but it need not be a bad thing. A ritual, in my understanding , can be almost anything in a person’s life. That some cultures have very strictly defined rituals doesn’t at all affect my ability to invest personal meaning in an experience. Some of these experiences we are sort of preconditioned for–by our parents, teachers,etc. Whether or not high school graduation is important to you may reflect this. Most other things we figure out as we go, and they become important–ritualized, if you will–over time, as we’re figuring ourselves out.
I also think you’re right about oppositional sexism, and how it can cause problems. Again, though, I don’t think that does much to damage my position, though. The rituals which can help develop a strong, complete sense of masculinity need not limit or damage an equally strong and complete sense of femininity.
I probably came off as too hostile during my self-righteous rant above. But I think I need to re-iterate my points. 1. Existential crisis is an inevitable part of a life with minimal restrictions on a person. You give people choices, and they’re going to have to stop and think and DECIDE. Unfortunately that process is not going to always be easy, and even if you do make a decision, you might be haunted by the possibilities you abandoned, or even just the possibility you chose wrong. Which seems to be what you are talking about at the beginning.
2. As per my understanding of the term ritual, there is little room for individual interpretation. I mean we can always rationalize different interpretations, different people will inevitably see the same thing differently, but the point of a ritual is that it is done in a specific way, and the the elements of that ritual are symbols for specific things.
When they hand you a diploma at a graduation they represents the previous years where the faculty gave you so much knowledge via formal teaching. Maybe it represents coming of age also, but only because of the assumption you’re going to need that knowledge as an adult. Maybe we just have a different view of the term “ritual”. I would suggest a different word for what you call ‘ritual’. If you have a memorable first date, but it’s unique and lacks symbols, you can’t call it a ritual. It’s an important mile-stone in the progression of your life, just like the ant ritual word be for a tribesman, but only one of those is a “ritual” per my understanding of the word.
My worry is that a life full of rituals would cause some very specific norms to be transmitted. Any ritual is crafted with certain ideas and narratives in mind, and it functions to transmit them, to implant them in the brain of anyone performing them. Rituals are seen as important because those ideas and narratives are seen as important. Another example: When women were seen as property, it was firmly established that a father would bring her daughter to her husband to be and clergyman, the two of whom had already been standing there for several minutes. This is a tear jerker for anybody who sees women as being subordinate in first her father’s house, then her husbands, but most of it practice it because of tradition. Oh, and rituals usually imply strong tradition.
Of course you can establish your own rituals and traditions, but at that point they’re only meaningful to you. Perhaps this is the main idea of your writing above, but it wasn’t clear to me. Perhaps because it doesn’t seem like a ritual if only one person does it. Perhaps just because I perfer to think of those moments as “metaphorical mile-stones in the journey of life”.
Those are helpful clarifications–and no, I didn’t think you were hostile, but thank you all the same. I hope I’m not sounding that way either. I find this to be such an interesting topic, and I so rarely get to discuss it with anyone.
I think maybe we can agree that the word “ritual” is too loaded with (what I think are negative) connotations to be entirely fair in what I’m trying to describe. I’ll think about what might be a better way to describe my ideas.
Thinking about your first point, on existential crises. You’re likely correct about the inevitability–at least for most people. I would suggest that many rituals–which also tend to be closely tied to growing up and education–are supposed to help you cope with such a crisis. Education is preparation for coping with the world, right? What, then, is the graduation ceremony, if not the ritual which shows that you’ve proven you’re ready? I don’t think you can so easily separate some of your “milestones” from their ritual aspects.
What I see as a problem is the way the lack or loss of ritual can undermine some of the stability of society. Perhaps that issue comes down to whether you see society itself as a positive, supportive construct, or a negative, constraining construct. To me, the sort of absolute freedom you spoke about at first sounds a bit like anarchy, which state we obviously don’t exist in right now. I think society serves many important functions–some of which, yes, we submit to–so I’m uncomfortable with that sense of uncontrolled energy. I’m curious about the current state of our society, though.
In earlier generations, rituals existed with some degree of continuity because a person could reasonably expect to see a world that was fundamentally similar to what their parents or grandparents had known. With the speed of technological change, that sort of fundamental conservatism may be out of place–or it may simply be impossible to maintain. Whatever the case, it’s an interesting position from which to critique society.