It’s a funny thing, becoming an adult. We spend our childhoods and teenage years learning the piano, going to dance classes, drawing, singing, playing sports — often at vast expense to our parents. And then we get to an age at which these things feel too silly, too indulgent, too juvenile, so we often give them up entirely in favour of more grown-up leisure pursuits: fancy meals, farmers’ markets, saunas, yoga classes, and, if we’re really evolved, personal development.
But then at a certain point some of us get a different feeling. All of sudden we wonder: why am I not doing any of those fun, frivolous, joyful things that I used to do? Why do I only have hobbies that involve either consuming something someone else has created for me or some form of navel-gazing? When did I give up playing around?
Don’t get me wrong — I am all for “doing the work”, as they call it. I use the term “navel-gazing” somewhat facetiously: I believe we should all be consciously trying to make ourselves into better, kinder, happier human beings, and I think that is a life-long effort. No undertaking in this vein is too “out there” for me; I have a quarterly column in HTSI called “Adventures in Woo Woo”, and adventure I do. But I also wonder whether we spend so much time looking into either ourselves or our phone screens that it leaves us with little time for looking out.