Seminar126G
Stage of life and two interviews
Jiwon Ryu
Age is the natural phenomenon that can’t be controlled. Every people get
old by provision of nature. However, it is interesting that people shows
similarities when they are growing up by developing every stage of their lives.
Gail Sheehy, an author of the “New passages”, and Robert Bly, the author of the
“A World of Half-Adult ”, provided ample idea about stages of human’s
development. Especially, Gail sheehy, American writer and journalist, devises
seven different stages of aging and redefine a life-cycle by emphasize people’s
inclinations in every stage and labeling with core words: “tryout twenties”,
“turbulent thirties” “flourishing forties” “flaming fifties” “serene sixties” “sage
seventies” and “uninhibited eighties”. Each the adjectives indicate how
individuals are shown in every stage, which is what Sheehy’s understanding and
her point of view.
According to Gail Sheehy, she describes that twenties are always trying to
pursue their dreams and putting themselves into challenges. Moreover, they are
eager to obtain any information and knowledge because they are so energetic.
Sheehy’s observation of twenties was pretty same in my first interviewee. Her
name is Xue Yu, an Asian girl, and she is twenty-two years old. While I was
interviewing her, I noticed that we have many same things; both, Xue and me, are
Asian girls (She is from Hong Kong and I’m from South Korea), we are in the
stage of “tryout twenties” and we are studying in different country with a
different mother tongue. Xue thinks herself as a unique person because she has a
special dreams; she wants to be an Artistic-photographer in Africa. She said, she
wants to take a picture of the landscape and show it to people in order to notice
the beauty of nature. Although her dream and my future are totally different, we
both desire about our future lives and trying to reach it. Plus, my dream is also
uncommon career, which makes me to feel same when I heard about her dream
(my dream is a fashion merchandiser). Not only she loves a beauty of nature, but
also she loves her family. Since she is the only child in her family, so she is
thinking about living with parent when they are old and need someone to care of
them. Even though she knows what she wants to pursue, sometimes, she isn’t
sure about her future; she doesn’t have a confidence about whether she is on the
right path, which is what I exactly thought about. Like her, I know what I like but
I don’t really know if I have a firm faith on the career. Thus, both are dedicating
our twenties for seeking real strength and careers also for managing our future
lives, which is pretty same as how Sheehy labeled the twenties as “tryout
twenties”.
Compare with Gail sheehy’s optimistic idea about development of
human’s stages, Robert Bly asserts that our future lives will be pretty despairing.
According to Bly, being a true adult is becoming so difficult and it is hard to find a
perfect model of true adult for adolescence. In Bly’s definition of a true adult is a
person who is well grown up in physically and mentally and also able to
independent for one’s self. In this point, Bly describes about the sibling society,
which means people perform bad actions to make themselves as same as other
people.
In fact, the busy-going society causes the situation more seriously.
Because people are so engaged with the tireless society, people will loose their
emotions and connection with other people. As the society is getting more
advanced and well developed, people don’t need to talk with other people so,
they prefer to stay in themselves rather than go out, which acts like an
obstruction to develop and obtain their social skills and new information for the
rapid developing society. Actually, now people who are in the stage of forties,
facing numerous difficulties such as unemployment, financial crisis and
precarious futures based on the unstable economics and society. Therefore,
people fall into the depression and can’t determine their conviction of
themselves in the middle age, which I called “a second adolescence or different
type of new adolescence”. This is totally different with Gail sheehy’s point of view
in forties that she describes as “flourishing forties”. According to the Sheehy, the
age of forties suppose to fill out with ample happiness and convictions.
My second interviewee is my mother, 53 years old, and her job is a middle
school teacher. Since her job is dealing with middle school students, who are so
sensitive about absorbing new information, she need to study and understand
what is the trend of the society today. In addition, she has to think in their views,
which was quite difficult to do that for my mother because her society when she
was that age was totally different than what is now. When she was twenties, she
thought her forties would be so happy and successful that doesn’t really have to
be worried about taking a test or getting a bad grade. But, her actual forty wasn’t
happy as what she had been thought about before; in fact, she had to deal with a
lot of economic problems and also she had to face unexpected obstacles in order
to do something what she want because of her status as mother of three children
and her job as a teacher etc. Fortunately, however, when she turns fifties, it
seems little different than her forties. Now, she has her own time to polish her
life by joining many activities such as swimming and golf. She said her life in age
of fifty is what she was thought about in her age of forty. Sheehy implies the
shifting of human development by mentioning, “Middle age has already been
pushed far into the fifties”.
Unlike how Bly describes an adult, my mother is a person young
generation can take her as their rule model. In Bly’s article, today’s adults don’t
really take their responsibilities rather they act or look like children. However,
my mother is talking her responsibility as a mother and also a teacher. She
always prepare for her class, at the same time, she perform all chores in my
house without any complaints. Some times, she gives me useful advices for my
future and she helps me to pursue and find what I really want to be. According to
Bly, a true adult is a person that is taking one’s responsibility and give advise for
others, which is perfectly matched with my mother.
In the article of “New passage”, Sheehy describes “our new-pattern of life”
as “people today are leaving childhood sooner but they are taking longer to grow
up and much longer to die”(4,11). Although Bly shows negative side of human
development and Sheehy takes totally opposite side on Bly’s view, both shows
that society is the matter that can change the development of human’s life cycle.
Also, circumstances and economic issues affect the stage of human life along with
the new technologies. Today, there is no such boundary in the life cycle anymore
and as the society is getting developed faster, the stages of life might be no more
exist in the future. Both, Sheehy and Bly imply in their articles that the stages of
human life is a something that fluctuating and unexpected.