19 May 2008
WHEN I GROW UP…
A few months before turning thirty, I asked my father when it is we start feeling like adults. Dad’s response was, “Well, I can speak only for myself. That moment was when I first realized I was responsible for someone else’s life other than my own.” I think that’s a reasonable response.
Still, I don’t feel quite grown up yet. Maybe there’s still a good chunk of me that relates more with adolescence than with adulthood. At least, maybe I like to think so.
It’s like I’ve got this image of “Adult Bill” lingering off into the future, who has responsibilities (I have them) and pays his bills on time (I do that) and never, ever procrastinates (heh.) Adult Bill has a career and has set aside his dreams and maybe has a wife or a family.
Or a mortgage.
I’ve got friends my age (and younger) getting married, some of them on their second marriages. They’re having children. Not just a kid, but children. Am I looking forward to that? Am I terrified of that?
I just don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if life in a metropolitan area prolongs our “young adult” lives. I hear stories that people in New York and Los Angeles marry at later ages, have children at later ages than their peers in rural areas or even small towns, and I don’t even want to begin comparing myself with my parents! What are the reasons? Is it cultural? Is it that our elders are staying active in the business world longer as our life expectancies grow? Am I supposed to still feel like one of “the kids” at work even though I’m thirty?
Perhaps we should all blame John Mayer for coining the term — and concept — Quarterlife Crisis Are we all afraid to grow up, to become men and women instead of boys and girls?
I don’t think I have any of the answers but I’m curious to know when that stage of my life begins. I think I’m ready.
When do I start feeling like an adult? When I start behaving like one? When I start dressing like one? When I decorate my house like one?
I agree with your dad! I know a couple of people who have huge responsibilities and hefty mortgages and such, and they still act like kids. But my friends who have children - THEY’RE adults! :)
Great post, BTW.
19 May 2008: 10:30 pm
To this end, I bought nice new bath towels. I can’t fathom the cost of actually furnishing a house in grown-up style. I wish I had better natural design skills, then I could make it work on the cheap.
One part of me became an adult as soon as they put me in charge of 165 pre-adolescents when I was 22 years old. I remember meeting an intern at a friend’s company. The guy was 20 or 21, barely younger than I, but seemed like such a kid (he was probably making as much in his summer internship as I did in a year in my job).
Another part of me feels like I am constantly circling back to identity issues that we tend to link to teenagers… but I wonder, if that’s truly the case, then maybe we should give teenagers more credit, since things like heartsickness, loneliness, the thin veneer of self-confidence… they don’t really go away, do they? Yet often we say we’re “like a 15-year-old” when we’re experiencing the worst of these emotions and being stirred up by them….
I dunno, I’ll stop rambling in your comments…
20 May 2008: 9:00 pm
Let me say that only a good parent can be called ‘adult’. There are plenty of selfish, shitty parents out there who still haven’t earned the title. At 58 and 57 my own two overgrown teenage parents fall into that category. Of course my dad (58) is lving with his 32 year-old- girlfriend so maybe he is finally ‘responsible for another person’. What do you say? Should we give him an upgrade?
25 May 2008: 8:49 am
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