I see it over and over. Some cases are more extreme then others but they are all the same idea. The clock has stuck some time and now it is time to be an adult. When you look at those words it doesn’t make much sense to me, I mean it just feels so arbitrary. How does one know now is the time? Who decided what is “adult” approved behaviors?
I understand as we age we can not just act the same from eighteen to ninety. I am not talking about how now brown liquor gives you indigestion, or that you can’t drink till puke, sleep for two hours and be ready for work in your fifties. Our bodies change and grow as we grow older. This is all just part of the natural process. Our bodies change with age and we need to adapt to what our bodies need or can no longer handle. This all makes sense to me, and feels part of the natural progression.
Time to adult is more of the notion that I now will settle down and get married and become an adult. But what does that mean? An adult. There is this notion of “what people do”. But as we grow and change with technology and new ways of thinking as a society, people hold to this antiquated ideas of “what should be”. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. How can a person be a computer programmer and yet force them selves into this mold of what an adult does, based on some 1950’s idea. Your entire field did not exist in the time you are molding your life around.
Let me be less abstract. I knew this guy, lets call him Jim. Soon after he got married he changed his number and only told the “married life” friends the new number. I can understand as you enter a new faze of life you may loose common ground with a friend. If you need to change diapers and they want to party there may not be much for you two to talk about any longer. However, neither is any more or less valid. You both enjoyed these things together and as one of you has new responsibilities and values you might not enjoy the same things. This does not mean that you can no longer speak does it? If two people like to eat vanilla ice cream together and one starts to like chocolate, does that mean they can no longer have ice cream together?
Like wise, I knew another guy. When he got married there was no more drinking on week days… ever. Now again, I understand ‘I have a big day at work tomorrow’ or ‘I need to do this when I get home’. We all have responsibilities, we all need to take care of our business. However, in taking care of our business, is there no room for a special day? Can this hard and fast rule of no drinking on a week day not be broken for anything? After marriage you can’t have A beer on your birthday, unless it is on a weekend?
More importantly then could these rules not have any flexibility, is who made these rules that “must be followed”? As far as I know we are still in America, which means you are free to be as dumb as you like. There are rules about where you drink and driving under the influence. Even rules on when and where you can buy alcohol. However, there is no laws on drinking while married.
You have made these ideas of what you think a adult is or does and now you have to live that way. Why?
In the end, if any of these people I see making these kinds of decisions were happy I wouldn’t even think about it. However, they (or all that I have met) are repressed and angry about it. Of course they don’t say, or think it is these rules that is making them miserable. Or even if they do, it is just part of the adult experience. It is insane to think that no adult is allowed to have fun, or enjoy their lives. How did adult and fun become mutually exclusive?
Somehow these ideas also prove that I have not “grown up”, or “don’t understand what married with kids is like”. But not every person I have ever met is like these “adults”, so I don’t believe this is THE adult experience. Also, I do not believe that I have not grown up. I am not married. I do not have kids. But, I am an adult. Just because I allow myself the time to enjoy myself, and therefore have not settled in to being miserable makes me not an adult.
I think the broadest definition of being an adult is understanding what your responsibilities are and caring for them to the best of your ability. Period. When anything is depending on me, I do my absolute best to make sure it is handled. What more is there in being an adult? Why can an adult not do anything that they want as long as they responsibilities are handled? Really, this explains all of adulting. If you do something in excess or illegal, and you are punished, something you were supposed to do will not get done and therefore adult fail. However, if you can get black out drunk and still have all of your life in good working order, isn’t your drinking a health issue and not a your not an adult?
The idea of “knowing” what is or should be has always felt like a falsehood, but as we have these new careers this notion becomes even more ridicules. How can one say this is what should be when the occupation you have didn’t even exist when the ideas your are basing your day to day around were invented. There has been computer science since the fifties, but in the early years these jobs were extreme science or exploration. Today there are thousands of data entry style jobs that fall somewhere between repudiative factory worker and desk jockey. It wouldn’t make sense for the data entry person to expect the home life a steel factory worker.
I am sure there have always been these types of people; who one day say it is time for the next chapter of life and therefore I need to act differently. As our technology and knowledge base grows it seems less and less reasonable for people to apply these antiquated ideas on their modern lives.
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