Unlocking Adulthood
My husband recently mentioned to me how good it felt to notice the empty space in his pocket while traveling: no keys. I imagine that does feel pretty good. For only a few ounces of metal, a key can be a pretty heavy load.
Keys come with our most prized possessions, our most expensive and burdensome property. Buy a house, sign the papers, and in an act of symbolic finality, they hand over the keys. We have keys for our homes, cars, boats, bikes, mailboxes, suitcases, briefcases, safety deposit boxes, filing cabinets, bike locks, storage sheds, even diaries. My children have giant plastic keys that unlock brightly-colored plastic garages.
Lovers give us the keys to their homes and hotel rooms as an expression of commitment or at least of fleeting intimacy. We are thrilled to receive them or we overtly reject them. There's not much middle ground when it comes to sharing keys.
Now the latest technology says we need keyless entry, keyless locks; we’re happy to have keypads on our car doors and front doors and garages. We don’t want to be weighed down by all that heavy metal. Seems silly. But I certainly get it.
Ten days or more in another country or even just another city and you don’t need your keys. You don’t need them because you don’t have the burden of those places to go or those doors to open. More so, you don’t have the responsibility or the obligation of tending to the objects that require those keys. What freedom. You’re just where you are, keyless, light, ready to see what comes next.
When I was eighteen years old, something happened that disheartened me. Someone made me feel disrespected and even though I had legally come of age, I asked my dad: "When would I REALLY feel like an adult?" He said that when there was at least one key on my keychain for which I had no memory of what it opened, I would officially be an adult. I laughed.
And now my keychain includes such keys, although I’m sure with a little research I could figure it out, but that’s not the point. The point is, I have reached adulthood.
It’s not so liberating as I imagined…
Keys come with our most prized possessions, our most expensive and burdensome property. Buy a house, sign the papers, and in an act of symbolic finality, they hand over the keys. We have keys for our homes, cars, boats, bikes, mailboxes, suitcases, briefcases, safety deposit boxes, filing cabinets, bike locks, storage sheds, even diaries. My children have giant plastic keys that unlock brightly-colored plastic garages.
Lovers give us the keys to their homes and hotel rooms as an expression of commitment or at least of fleeting intimacy. We are thrilled to receive them or we overtly reject them. There's not much middle ground when it comes to sharing keys.
Now the latest technology says we need keyless entry, keyless locks; we’re happy to have keypads on our car doors and front doors and garages. We don’t want to be weighed down by all that heavy metal. Seems silly. But I certainly get it.
Ten days or more in another country or even just another city and you don’t need your keys. You don’t need them because you don’t have the burden of those places to go or those doors to open. More so, you don’t have the responsibility or the obligation of tending to the objects that require those keys. What freedom. You’re just where you are, keyless, light, ready to see what comes next.
When I was eighteen years old, something happened that disheartened me. Someone made me feel disrespected and even though I had legally come of age, I asked my dad: "When would I REALLY feel like an adult?" He said that when there was at least one key on my keychain for which I had no memory of what it opened, I would officially be an adult. I laughed.
And now my keychain includes such keys, although I’m sure with a little research I could figure it out, but that’s not the point. The point is, I have reached adulthood.
It’s not so liberating as I imagined…
Comments
Here's an interesting tidbit: I insist on keeping keys to my parents' house, even though they live states away and I'm unlikely to need them. Somehow, it's my plan B, and I know I can always go there if I need to. I can always go home to their arms.
I think 3 is probably too small a number given the realities of modern life...but it is interesting to contemplate what he might have said about having more keys than someone could remember the use for.
Whoever it was (and it sounds more like something Montaigne might have written than Voltaire to me),I had no luck tracking the quotation down in a quick web search.