Chris Dalton's Personal Development Blog

Task six, of eight, in this sequence of reflections is to identify “an important adolescent memory”. I mused yesterday on the division between child and adolescent. In the society I grew up, both terms were quite familiar ones and I would not have had any trouble saying what was which, but it is interesting to find that our current understanding of both is actually quite recent (from the 1880s onwards). Children existed, of course, but were not objects of much separate study or understanding, and there was no intermediate phase or stage before adult.

Erikson has this stage from age 13 to 20, which still feels about right for me in social terms, and has the crisis that of identity (who am I?) versus role confusion (what does society expect me to be?). The word adolescent has its root in the Latin for “grow up”, though I think the growing up is only in relation to childhood, not adulthood. In hindsight it makes sense as a transition phase within childhood, though you’d never have convinced the teenager me of that.

I first was made aware of the role of the word adolescent in the song lyrics of a punk band called X-Ray Spex, whose music was already a year or so old by the time I made the transition from ‘child’ (though we always remain someone’s child) to adolescent. It’s interesting the role in identity that music played, so to speak, in my adolescence, which for me (and, for Erikson) is where I became fully aware of “others” and the sense of myself as being “other” from my family. Funny, but Erikson coined the term “Identity Crisis” (or perhaps it was coined for him by the context of his ideas) and X-Ray Spex had another song with the lyrics ‘Identity is the crisis, can’t you see?” The personal selection of which music and lyrics, which bands, which style, which television and radio programmes and which helps create some kind of stability as one declares war on the old certainties of family and stands fascinated, uselessly denying the oncoming but still not here tasks of adult life.

I had thought this would be an easy section to write, but it is not. There is no shortage of moments illustrative of the times, but not easily identifiable as key turning points. Perhaps is because some of them were simply reactions to the status quo of home, tome town and schooling? Others frame my cumbersome and clumsy attempts to explore romantic relationships. Some consistent threads run through this time – a lasting, close and non-romantic friendship with a girl called Meg is one (friendships for me have always been few, but very, very firm). Further experimentation with literacy and creativity would be another important theme because I was always looking for an outlet for expression, and an audience). But the adolescent memory that comes to mind as being a key moment is the day I walked out of the grammar school on my last day as a fifth former, having decided myself not to return. Staying on would have been the default option, and I’ve noticed at several points in my life that I have often chosen to not to give something up but to give up doing it in one place and look for continuation of it somewhere else. It was such a sweet feeling to think that I no longer belonged to that place, and its rule-book and its overwhelming tradition…  But I also knew, I suppose, that it wasn’t the smart move. The smart thing (in the long run) would have been to stay there, buckle down and ride the results in order to have a wider choice of what to do next. I think my early exercises of the adult right to make the dumb decision paid off in the short run, but permitted me to alter course too easily in the remainder of my adolescence and early adult life.  It certainly made getting anywhere later on much harder work.

****************************

Reflection:

Narratives are met by the reader, who is given the chance by the fact of the meeting to form comparison with their own, and this in turn allows for the drawing of the boundary between the two. And the boundary delineates their own world and makes it clearer (after reflection on it) for them. So narratives need to be shared. This is necessary for the writer of the original, as without comparison to others, how can they reveal what they take for granted?