Smearer

What if I made a manifesto?

I, Adaia Shumsky, hereby vow to not eat junk food ever again.

It sounds more like a pledge.

A manifesto is somehow grander. More philosophical.

Of all the choices in life, of all the possible edibles that are out there, ranging from close to poison, to pure and beneficial concoctions, shouldn't my diet fall far closer to the latter?

I don't like pledges. That could be one of my problems with dieting. They seem to be hard to incorporate into the rest of life.

I will (I pledge to) find my path towards adulthood. Meaning that I will cease with childhood whims and emotionality and tantrums and binges. Those are cute and endearing if you're under 19. I was supposed to leave those by the wayside long ago. Interesting that my elementary school was called Wayside. I still exist on the wayside, in some ways. I have figured out some sort of way to finagle it, to interconnect it into my persona. Tricky, ain't I.

I guess a manifesto is a statement. A statement of purpose. It's a longer version of a pledge.

A child lacks self control. That is what makes a child beautiful. It's hard to conceive of how fantastical the adult/child relationship is, how far-flung. It is rife with challenge. How can each see the others' point of view? Is the adult supposed to remember their child-selves, to reach back into their past that way? But does that defeat the purpose of attaining adulthood?

I guess I'm hoping that I and my loved ones can bridge that chasm (to paraphrase Sting). That we can in fact be in two places at once, straddling childhood and adulthood. Maybe it's unrealistic to expect that of a child, though. But if the child can't even strive to find some common, cooperative ground with their adult mentors, how will they make it to the next phase of life? How will they graduate out of their childhoods? Common ground. You need common ground. I need common ground.

Writing is somehow common ground. It is a blank slate we can converge on.