Learning how to grow up and be more mature begins with learning what you truly value. Being an adult signifies sticking to your values, even when it's not important or doesn't benefit you.
When I was four years old, despite my mother telling me not to, I put my finger on a hot stove. The stove was red and sharp and shiny and I knew yummy food came from it, so the attraction was irresistible.
That day I learned a valuable lesson: really hot things suck. They burn you. And you want to stop touching them again.
Around the same time, I made another valuable discovery. The ice cream that my parents would treat me on the event was packed in the freezer, on a shelf that could be effortlessly accessed if I took on my tippy toes.
One day, while my mother was in the other hall, I grabbed the ice cream, stood on the floor, and continued to engorge myself with my bare hands.
It was the nearest I would come to an orgasm for another ten years. If there was a paradise in my little four-year-old mind, I had just found it. Fucking perfection. My little pail of Elysium was loaded with congealed divinity.
As the ice cream started up to melt, I smeared an extra helping across my face, letting it spill all over my shirt, practically soaking in that sweet, sweet goodness. Oh yes, glorious sugary-milk, share with me your secrets, for today I will know the importance.
…then my mom walked in. And all hell halted loose — containing but not limited to a much-needed bath. I realized a lesson that day too. Stealing ice cream and then tossing out it all over yourself and the kitchen floor makes your mother very angry. And furious mothers suck. They are not attractive to be around. They scold you and correct you. And that day, much like the day with the stove, I knew what not to do.
But there was a third, meta-lesson going on here as well. It was a straightforward lesson — a lesson so apparent that we don’t even notice when it occurs. But this lesson was far more crucial than the other lessons: eating ice cream is better than being burned.
That might not hit you as profound. But it is. That’s because it’s a significant decision. Ice cream is better than hot stoves. I choose sugary sweetness in my mouth to a bit of fire on my hand. It’s a finding of preference and, therefore, prioritization. It’s the understanding that one thing in the world is eligible to the other and, therefore, all future manners will assume that fact.
And this is the duty of drooly little four-year-olds. To explore ceaselessly. To learn the world around them — to distinguish what feels good and what feels bad — and then develop value hierarchies out of this understanding. Ice cream is better than being burned. Playing with the dog is better fun than playing with a rock. Sunny days are nicer than rainy days. Coloring is also fun for me than singing. These feelings of joy and pain become the bedrock of all our appreciations and knowledge going forward in life and lay the basis for what will become our personality later.
