Am I grown up? I have been asking myself this question for 40 years, since I was 17. At that very young age the question was mostly rhetorical — of course I was grown up: I had graduated from high school and was headed to a big university; I had a driver’s license and could navigate Los Angeles freeways; I wore makeup and high heels with regularity and reasonable sophistication; I had finally ditched the wash-and-set hairstyle preferred by my mother and let my hair curl at will. I was doing me by degrees, and every degree was thrilling, all I imagined grown up would be.

Even as inevitable disappointments and unwelcome lessons of adulthood piled up, the initial teenage thrill of striking out on my own never left. Even when I got roadblocked by depression, the vision of a path leading up to my own cosmos hovered in the background of my life, beckoning, reminding me why I was here at all. It helped that the soundtrack to this vision was always the glittery disco beats of my adolescence — “Dancing Queen,” “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” “Ring My Bell,” “Sky High.”

Not everybody thought this worldview made sense. Older black people, those who had powered through segregation and the move from the South to Los Angeles, were almost puzzled by this Me Generation view of life as an occasion to fulfill yourself. When I was in my 20s, a great-uncle asked what I was doing these days. I sprang into detail about some writing projects I had in mind, courses of study I wanted to pursue and why. He nodded and said that was all nice, but in the meantime maybe I should apply for a government job. “Benefits,” he said, in the same solemn tone that Mr. McGuire said the word “plastics” to Benjamin Braddock, the college graduate in the movie “The Graduate” who was trying desperately to figure out his future.

Sentiments like his were making me wonder (usually when depressed) whether striving toward maximum selfhood was immature, a way to deflect adulthood rather than accept and embrace its dictates. The fact was, I could afford to deflect it more easily than most because up until the age of 38 I hadn’t acquired the usual markers of responsible adulthood, chiefly a husband and kids. (I did marry at 38, but we never had children.)