#224: Aging out of precociousness
There are a few newsletter writers—mostly women, mostly 10 or 15 years younger than I am—who write essays in the same vein as I do, and whose work is sometimes discussed in conversation with mine. I read their work in awe, marveling at their thoughtful analysis and language I wouldn’t have dreamed of using at their age. While reading them I think about what I was doing at 22 (watching Damages, going to corporate raves) and experiencing intellectually (the mildest feminist awakening, constant career spirals). But I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that I feel no bitterness or jealousy towards them, this crop of young writers doing what I do with more youthful aplomb—only admiration and tenderness for their position. It can be a burden to be “wise beyond your years.” It took me aging out of the moniker to finally see that.
This occurred to me only recently: that my age has more or less caught up with my wisdom. Nobody’s precocious at 35. Instead of finding this tragic, or feeling like a living memorial to my prior potential, it actually feels more like I’ve escaped a trap—mercifully released to be as smart or stupid as my nature and circumstances allow, age immaterial. No longer a young upstart with something to prove, just another somebody crowded under the nondescript umbrella of “adult.” I’m sure plenty of people still see me as young (thank you), but no one’s surprised I can string a sentence together anymore.
The trouble with being wise beyond your years, a designation I clung to (justifiably or not) for most of my teens and twenties, is that it’s a conditional quality that doesn’t concern your ideas specifically as much as the speed at which you’ve arrived at them. Sounding or behaving like someone who’s lived longer is impressive, definitely, but it’s not necessarily a skill that scales. At a certain inevitable point, it will no longer be relevant. (That 42-year-old sounds 53!)
The compliment I most often received from older people growing up was that I was “mature for my age.” This had less to do with me sounding cultured or learned (although I’d have loved that), and more to do with being a relatively regulated young person capable of making regulated decisions, which is a lot less fun than other kinds of precociousness (college at 13, child in a lab coat, etc). Still, it made me feel special, and I wanted more of it. How could I be more mature? How could I become the most mature person in the world? Had I known that, for years, the main export of all that maturity was going to be neuroticism, I might have reoriented.
In hindsight, the obvious barrier I was up against was my lack of experience. Experts have referred to this as the difference between fluid and crystallized intelligence: fluid intelligence being more innate and spontaneous, crystallized intelligence being earned over time through experience. Both tend to be revered in our culture for different reasons, but high fluid intelligence gets special attention because it’s not available to everyone, whereas experience is. Unfortunately, we can’t navigate through life on fluid intelligence alone. I spent years frustrated that what I intuited or vacuumed up from older and wiser people was difficult to take on in practice, or “crystallize.” I felt like I knew a lot of things technically, or intellectually, but not viscerally. In the end, trying to behave like someone older than I was—avoiding all the mistakes they warned me about—wasn’t the right goal. What I needed was time for life to teach me instead.
This is what I think about now when I come across young people who seem genuinely wise beyond their years. I consider all the drags they might place on themselves: pressure to behave in ways they aren’t ready for, expectations out of step with their age, so much emphasis on their youth and their speed. Our culture may shower accolades on people who achieve “success” before they’re 30 (or whatever age), but there are few spiritual rewards for that kind of efficiency. There’s not much use to getting somewhere faster if, once you get there, you just have to keep going.
One of the things I’ve loved about having a baby is that it mostly requires and cultivates crystallized intelligence. You may arrive as a parent with some instincts, but for the most part you’re starting at the beginning with everyone else and there’s no jumping ahead through precociousness or careful study. You can’t really edge ahead of your peers, and there’s a specific joy in stumbling through with everyone else who has a baby around the same time, exchanging tips and sympathies and solidarity. This is not so different from getting older in general, and recognizing that it’s actually a lot less fun to feel “better” than other people than you might think.
I like being on the other side of precocious now, in awe of those who hold the title rather than scrambling to feel worthy of it. I’m rooting for the prolific young writers exploring modern life with so much rigor and curiosity. I learn things from them all the time! But I’m thankful to have aged out of all that pressure and potential. It’s a relief to feel less governed by time and milestones, to allow myself (and be allowed) to learn and grow in less linear and more cyclical ways. The most important lessons in life can’t be rushed, and they’re rarely learned once anyway.
Last week commenced my summer schedule, where I’ll be taking one (free) Sunday newsletter off per month (which means I’ve got two left, in July and August). All paid newsletters will continue as normal!
My favorite article I read last week was “Creature of the Late Afternoon,” a lovely, sprawling essay by E. Tammy Kim for N+1 about navigating middle-age as a childless writer who’s close with her parents. Last Friday’s 15 things also included my favorite new toddler clothes for Sunny, a fun estate sale, a kitchen ingredient paradigm shift, and more. The rec of the week was best menstrual products and you guys blew my mind!!!
Hope you have a nice Sunday,
Haley
my dad died suddenly when I was 19, and a person close to me said his death (and the accompanying legal mess of his will and estate, left to me alone to deal with) would age me 10 years. in some ways it was true, and I spent a lot of my 20s feeling alone in having gone through something so “adult” as early as I did and entirely by myself.
at 33, I finally feel like I’m among peers. I feel more knowable because more people my age have experienced a comparable loss and the weird stuff that comes along with it. it feels dark but also funny, like I’ve just been waiting for my friends to lose their parents so I could welcome them to this shitty room where I’d been sitting by myself for years. (I of course do not actually wish the loss of loved ones on anyone.)
it’s such a relief to just be in my 30s now, not wise beyond my years, not more experienced than your average adult. I don’t know many people my age whose lives haven’t been marked by profound loss and grief, even if it looks different than mine, and I feel so much more average and a part of the world now.
“Unfortunately, we can’t navigate through life on fluid intelligence alone. I spent years frustrated that what I intuited or vacuumed up from older and wiser people was difficult to take on in practice, or “crystallize.” I felt like I knew a lot of things technically, or intellectually, but not viscerally. In the end, trying to behave like someone older than I was—avoiding all the mistakes they warned me about—wasn’t the right goal. What I needed was time for life to teach me instead.”
Loved this part especially! We like to think we can intellectualize our way out of making mistakes or taking winding roads, but that’s the point of life! To know things viscerally, you have to live through them. Breakups feel like especially fertile ground for this kind of learning (you think you’ve learned your lesson, but love is perhaps our most convincing illusion). I’ve started thinking of it as embracing the thrill of experience itself vs the illusion of control. It makes me approach life more through the lens of living it rather than trying to meticulously calculate every decision in pursuit of some neat, linear outcome which just lacks vibrancy. This alternative has felt way more liberating, and of course, it makes for a better story. I want to learn by living my life. I want to see how the story unfolds, twists and turns and all, without always trying to outsmart the necessity of experience.