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courage. It’s certainly a good way to split off from society. But reintegration is more elusive. For some soldiers who have been through the horrors of combat, there is no true coming home. Friends and family don’t understand what they’ve been through. It’s easy for these combat-traumatized 19-and 20-year-olds to end up stalled in a liminal state, exiled from their past and yet unable to step into the future.
    No wonder growing up lacks appeal, for civilians and soldiers alike, given the dismal associations adulthood has acquired. It needs to be rebranded so we don’t see it as the rather boring part that comes between youth and death. We don’t see dying as something inevitable at the far end of a natural continuum; instead it’s kept apart like a snake in a box, under lock and key.
    Our fear of aging and death doesn’t register directly on the young, of course. Twenty-year-old boys don’t go around saying, “Dying scares me therefore I am going to skateboard forever.” But adulthood seems to involve certain penalties: marriage as a loss of masculine freedom; “settling down” as giving up on your dreams; growing up as a diminishment of spirit and energy. Adulthood arrives with a shadow of compromise and capitulation instead of a sense of expansion, adventure, or growth in wisdom and stature.
    In the past, aboriginal cultures haven’t shared this way of thinking. They revered their elders and respected their experience. Of course, around the world these cultures are losing the traditional ways, and the role of their elders has become as endangered as their languages. In western culture, the old are seen as largely powerless, burdensome, and silly. Look at Homer Simpson’s addled dad (look at Homer, for that matter). Why should a boy grow up, if that’s what’s in store?
    So the threshold period in a young man’s life drags on longer and longer. Rite-of-passage behaviour consumes years, even decades, and revolves around social rituals that involve plenty of risk but little renewal, such as binge-drinking, now entrenched among the young, not to mention much of the adult world.
    But consider all the pressures on twentysomethings to “become” something—to get the degree, settle on a “career path,” score an entry-level job, find the right mate. That’s a long to-do list. There is pressure, in other words, to be anything but what you are, at 22 or 23,which is very often alone and in flux, if not in chaos. No wonder getting wrecked is so popular. Community on the Internet is also liminality defined, a constant state of in-between-ness and flux. Twitter as sweat lodge. It’s all good, from the neck up. But the integration of mind, body, and spirit is hard to come by in cyberspace.
    Apart from encountering a good philosophy prof, there’s little that encourages or rewards a young man for actively questioning the world he is expected to join. If our sons are feeling lost, their searching and their doubts alarm us. Nobody says to them,“Don’t worry. Confusion isn’t failure or weakness. This is part of it. Just sit with yourself for a while and learn.”We confuse liminal with limbo.
    But before careers and family responsibilities come into the picture, there are a few undefined years of vulnerability that offer a chance to come to grips with who you are. Tough work at 23 or 53.
    And with questing boys, things can also end badly. When I saw the movie Into the Wild , I was a wreck before the opening credits had even ended, for two reasons: Emile Hirsch bears a spooky resemblance to Casey in his high-haired period; and having read Jon Krakauer’s book, I knew the outcome of this particular rite of passage. The main character’s desire to cut loose from school and family, to experience the land, was so close to my son’s impulse to roam the American deserts. The hero’s attempt to shed the