I don't yet have a college degree, real career, or even a 401k. If I had a savings account, it would currently be collecting dust. I'm not yet a proud father or loving husband. Perhaps it's because I'm not a homeowner and I have no lawn to mow or white picket fence to paint. Is it simply the fact that I haven't taken the first few, careful steps across these stones of life that create my sense of a prolonged childhood?
The experiences we can go through during our younger years don't seem to be enough. Sure, you've fallen in love. Maybe you're unexpectedly a young, single mother now. What if you've already lived in an apartment by yourself and furnished it with wages you earned at a job you got all by yourself? You can pay your own bills. You can drive a car at 16. You can get a credit card in your name at only 18-years-old. If you feel like it, you can legally go to the strip club, porn shop, adult websites, and any R or NC17 rated film you'd like. Cigarettes are only a handful of dollars and a trip to your local gas station away. Not to mention, you can be drafted by the military to defend the country or vote for the politicians that will run it. It's only three years later and you've got free reign over the wide world of alcoholic beverages and bars to top it all off.
All of this doesn't seem to be enough though. Is it caused by the sheltering effects of the suburbs I've spent my entire life in? I know I'm most definitely not alone in feeling like this, but I find it foolish to believe that at some point I'm hoping to make this sudden mental switch to some currently unattainable idea of what it's like to finally breach into adulthood.
I am starting to believe that I've set these milestones up in my mind as a sort of hopeful future point to reach someday. Will it be a slow realization, or will I watch my first child be born and all of a sudden I'm not a kid anymore? Will I sign the check for a down payment on my first home and experience an overwhelming sense of age and maturity? When I'm handed my diploma or first corporate paycheck am I going to just know that it's happened? Is this what it takes to make myself believe that I've finally become a real grown up?
Man, I am almost 25. I own a house, a car, a motorcycle, I've taken care of my jobless father for the past year now... and you know what I realize? I am still just a big kid. I still watch cartoons, I play video games (a lot), I still party and drink like I'm some kind of frat boy. Is it a maturity level that determines you've become an adult, or is it the things we do/own that determines it? Quite frankly, I consider myself "grown up" in some cases, and in lots of others, still a kid. If you base it off of "owning a house, having a kid, having a 401k" etc. I can name you plenty of 30 and 40 year old people that are, "still kids". Screw the idea that you have to have preset goals in life to reach that pedestal everyone calls adult-hood. My two cents. See you next week! Haha.
ReplyDelete-Jason H.
I have grown to understand that when you achieve the steps you have described, that you can be "recognized" or "acknowledged" as an adult, but that doesn't mean that you, yourself, feel like one. I am 43. I have a college degree, work 8 to 5, have moved around the country, and have been a home owner. I still feel like a big kid. I didn't realize until this past year, knowing many people who have lost their jobs, homes and/or retirement, that the "steps of life" are programmed. I was raised to believe you go through these steps and then you are not only recognized as an adult, but deemed "successful" in some eyes. It's all perception. I'm not a parent, so raising a child may be different, but a house is just a house and a job is just a paycheck. It only really matters if you are happy in the end and what that happiness is for you. As I have gotten older, the idea of wondering if I have earned the "adult" title has disappeared. It is more about, coming into my own. Learning who I am every day and finding out what makes me happy.
ReplyDelete~See ya, Cous. : ) mwah!