What does it mean to be an adult?

What does it mean to be an adult? I can tell you at 32, I have no idea. In my mind, I am still an awkward teenager, with some good stories under my belt, but still clueless about what it all means. Hell, this blog is the perfect example of that. I have no idea what I'm doing, but here I am memes and all. No one prepared me for what adulthood meant or showed me a manual with rules and definitions of how to play the game, what the purpose of it was, and what it means to win.

Art by @cuddlesandrage

We look at those older than us, stitch together our fragile values with poor choices, and try to resemble a life similar to theirs. Others have less autonomy, and family or generational social constructs bestow upon them a rigid blueprint with no other expectation but to follow it, completely ignoring their own needs.

But the outcome is the same - we all anxiously wait to become an adult only to arrive at adulthood and look back at our younger years with yearning and nostalgia.

We learn that gaming the system means taking safe bets, never leaving the safety blanket of what "we're supposed to do".

Knowing what I know now, I wish someone had told me adulthood was a process instead of a destination. I wish I’d known there was power in designing your own life and wished adults encouraged teenagers to follow their gut. Instead, I lived a large portion of my 20's following a social blueprint focused on playing it safe, occasionally taking calculated risk, and never brave enough to follow my own instincts.

And there is nothing wrong with playing it safe. Safe is nice. It’s cushy. The key is being at peace with that outcome. The problem is most of us aren’t. We dream of a life compiled of the decisions we didn't make, a life we put off for later, while we fill the space between us and later with busyness that takes us nowhere.

So now, as an "adult", I try to remember we only get one chance at life, and allow myself to take risks and make mistakes, feel uncomfortable, and trust the process, for these are the ways in which we create our values, our rules, and our own blueprint.

I think Seneca said it best:

You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.

We’re all going to die - and sooner than we think. A human life is short and in many ways, insignificant. But because of this fact, everything we do matters. So, what do you want to reflect on when you’re lying in your deathbed? At the end of your life, what do you want your story to be?

For me, when I reflect on these questions, I won’t remember the career or the expertly curated social media feed I worked so hard for. I won’t care about the mistakes I made as much as my direct actions as a result of making them. I'll regret the amount of mental energy I spent pleasing people who never cared about me, and will regret not spending enough time with those who did.

I will probably regret the adventures I traded for early mornings in the office, and the times I wasn't brave enough to initiate sex.

But pondering on these questions has also given me the confidence to change some of my habits. Now, I speak my mind for no other purpose than I think it’s right. I try to build a community of women at every workplace I’m in. I think twice before speaking ill of people and try to remember we’re all just doing the best we can. I learned to set boundaries for myself and let others know when they’ve crossed them.

I don’t go on dates and pretend to be the person I think they want, but go as my unapologetically vulnerable self. I make the time for personal projects, for no other reason than I feel good about working towards a set goal. And perhaps most importantly, I forgive myself when I am not my best self, and I treat my body with compassion, love, and respect.

I recently read No Time to Spare by Ursula K. Le Guin, who says:

Nature offers us endless reminders of the eternal, and we are most open to them in our childhood. Though we lose that openness in adult life, when “custom” lies upon us “with a weight/heavy as frost and deep almost as life,” ... In this sense, the innocence, the unjudging, unqualified openness to experience of the young child, can be seen as a spiritual quality attainable or reattainable by the adult. And I think that this is what the idea of the inner child originally, or optimally, is all about.

Perhaps, in trying to "grow up" we also close ourselves off. We lose contact with our authenticity, too busy rushing to be like everybody else. A friend of mine recently told me she tries to leave space for magic in her life. I thought what a wonderful goal and a great way to be an adult. Maybe the best decision we can make as adults is to leave room for the unknown. To be ok with not knowing, and trust it will all fit together in the end. Because we know our fleeting, waking life will end, and all we'll have to show is our own blueprint of how we chose to feel alive.