Peter Pan, Captain Hook, Wendy Darling…
Pixie Dust, Tinker Bell, and Tick-Tock Croc…
Neverland is “home-sweet-home” to fairy tale characters bred from imaginative minds.
When bored, they play in the woods, run in the sands, or sail the bays searching for treasure.
When in danger, they narrowly escape the pirate's grasp with a comedic twirl and daring move of bravery.
When they grow up, they … well, some of them never grow up, do they?
Yes, Neverland is “home-sweet-home” to Lost Boys, who never learned what it meant to mature, lead, and love the process of doing it.
Lost Boys who play in the woods, run in the sands and sail the bays looking for fulfillment where they'll never find it.
Lost Boys who are being led by other Lost Boys.
Peter Pan lost the love of his life, his Darling, because he could not understand the difference between savoring the complexities of adulthood and its nuances while viewing the world through the lens of “child-like innocence" and growing up to be a pessimistically unequipped and self-centered body.
There comes a time in our lives when we need to realize we must “Leave Neverland Behind.”
If not, we might lose everything we ever wanted; our Darling moment might slip away.
In a world where we pander to others' opinions, are hooked on our vices, and have lost a sense of value and time due to our Tik-Tok additions and habitual crocodile tears, now more than ever, we must realize the value in growing up—the value in Leaving Neverland.
Dr. Dan Kiley, a Chicago Psychologist, coined the term Peter Pan Syndrome in the early 1980s in his book The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up. In it, he discusses the dawning realization that “boys who refused to accept responsibility grew up to become men who refused to accept responsibility” (New York Times).
Simply put, lost kids might not seem like a problem, but they will grow up to become lost adults.
Sure, “adulting” isn't easy, but it's also not impossible. There are inumerous beauties and delicacies that can only be found in stepping beyond childhood.
We must understand that taking responsibility for our actions, developing accountability, and exercising our integrity are not punishments from this world but rather rights of passage.
Now, don't get the message wrong; leaving Neverland has never meant losing your childlike innocence. No, we all must strive to preserve that and never misplace it. If we have, it should be on the top of our priority list to attain it again. But read those words again, and do so carefully; it's child “like” innocence, not a “child’s innocence.” There is a difference between it being modeled after the ingenuity and untainted minds of a young one and living your life as an incompetent adult who has trouble cooking or doing the laundry for themselves. Or even worse, difficulty showing up to work on time or being emotionally unintelligent in their relationships.
Perhaps Saint Paul says it best when he writes in his brilliant, challenging, and constructive letter to the Corinthians, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”
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I remember the period in my life when this realization came to be:
“Nothing is going to change,” she told me with a smile.
“It's just another year, a change in the number; you will always be my baby…”
My mother comforted me the days before my eighteenth birthday when it seemed the world was about to spin backward.
You have to understand; up to this point, I was just about to get my driver's license, the college deadlines were fast approaching, all my other “friends” were dealing with the same kinds of things, and oh, I hadn't voted in an election yet.
Monumental moments that were all just waiting to happen! All on the precipice of turning eighteen. Of finally becoming an “adult”. A word with nuances and complications beyond this article.
But then again, “Nothing is going to change,” she said with a smile.
Turns out she was “mostly” right. Nothing dramatically changed that year. I did happen to get my license, choose a college, and develop new friendships, but in principle, I was still me. I still felt like a “kid,” while everyone told me I was an “adult.”
Over the following year, I discovered more and more of the intricacies that came with “adulting,” and while I cannot provide a clear-cut or Oxford-style definition, I can tell you this:
We all must grow up, Leave Neverland Behind, and take responsibility for our lives.
No one is coming to scale the castles of our commonplace caricatured chaos.
No Deus Ex Machina* awaits our next page turn.
Instead, we have today. That’s all.
Each day is afresh with new mercies and opportunities- its responsibilities.
At 18, it made a little more sense, and looking back today, I can say with confidence that the responsibility of driving a car, getting a degree, crafting new relationships, and voting in the next presidential election can seem challenging. It’s not the act itself but rather the fact that now those things are mine and mine alone. They are branded with name, image, and likeness—both the successes and the failures.
The thing is, we all want the triumphs that come with this freedom, then quickly run away from its responsibilities when facing the two-sided coin that is every decision we make.
Now, im still working a lot of this out and by no means claim to be close to an epiphany but what I have come to realize and aim to communicate here is that we must, and allow me to emphasize that, must, take responsibility for our lives.
It’s all we can do. It takes sacrifice and courage. But wouldn’t you prefer to “pick your sacrifice” or “choose your hard” instead of having it happen to you?
That could be the difficulty we are experiencing as a society at a macro level. We need help understanding that this sacrifice will happen regardless of whether we want it to.
It's why you feel shame for thirty-year-olds living in their parent's basement or unmarried in their forties who stay up playing video games with their high school friends into the twilight hours.
We intrinsically know we must take responsibility at some point, yet we struggle with accepting it and moving on.
As the wise, respected, and talented philosopher and modern-day poet Timothy Chalamet has shared: “You can be the master of your fate, and you can be the captain of your soul, but you have to realize that life is coming from you and not at you. And that takes time.”
All of this said we must realize that Leaving Neverland behind does not mean burning the fairytale mindset.
While life is no fairytale, it carries a striking number of parallels. It's why we find ourselves in our preferred stories, our best in the valiant heroes, and, at times, the darkest of our souls within the most capturing of villains.
Dr. Jordan Peterson, an author, psychologist, and renowned public figure, drives home this point when he says, “The heavier the responsibility, the greater the adventure!”
That's what fairy tales are—adventures!
He goes on to explain that from the narrative perspective, it's always the biggest of dragons that guard the greatest of treasures, and similarly, in our lives, it's the most significant challenges that reap the most monumental rewards.
Dragons always guard the gold. Quite simple.
If this is the case and life is the grandest of dragons, then we must accept that responsibility and ruthlessly persist until it is conquered. That’s where the treasure is found.
Live The beautiful Fairytale That Is Life While Slaying The Dragons Guarding The Gold You Desire.
Accept Responsibility.
Leave Neverland Behind.
Making The Most Of Being Curious
-Daniel Cuesta
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P.S. Who would have known that the sooner we become responsible for ourselves and our lives (mature), the sooner our perspectives change and rainy days become reasons to smile because we know the grass will be greener tomorrow for it?
Resources:
*Deux Ex Machina: “a person or thing that appears or is introduced into a situation suddenly and unexpectedly and provides an artificial or contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty.” - Britannica
Doctor Jordan B. Peterson On Peter Pan:JORDAN PETERSON | The "Peterpan" Analogy (Lecture)
Doctor Jordan B. Peterson On Dragons, Life And Gold:
Timothee Chlamet: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tOwtEmSNvL0
New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/27/us/dan-kiley-54-dies-wrote-peter-pan-syndrome.html
Peter Pan Syndrome: Other characteristics of this phenomenon include passivity and a general lack of direction or purpose as well as a lack of boundaries, a victim consciousness, passive aggressiveness, and so much more: https://arkabrotherhood.com/blog/peter-pan-a-portrait-of-boy-psychology/
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