thoughts on adulting

My friend Laura and I were chatting Voxing about our themes and thoughts for 2018 now that we’re a bit into the year. She said that she thinks her theme for the year is to “act like a grown-ass adult,” which made me laugh at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that being a grown-ass adult isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Adulting is hard.

I was listening to this episode of The Nuanced Life in which they discuss how our world until we’re twenty-two (at least) is so linear: you’re a baby, you learn to walk, you go to school, learn to read, you get good grades, then eventually you go to college, then you graduate and get a job, then maybe buy a house or get married, and maybe have some babies of your own and start the whole thing all over again. But somewhere in the midst of all of that direction-following, if you’re honest with yourself, you realize that you actually have no clue what you’re doing (listen here for a great conversation on that topic) or that there isn’t a road map for this phase of life – or perhaps not one that you want to follow blindlessly.

I was talking to a friend who had a particularly stressful holiday season with her in-laws, and she was frustrated that she hadn’t spoken up for herself and her children more. I told her that I think we need to let ourselves off the hook when we don’t say exactly the right thing in the moment because we’re all learning as we go here. She has only been a mother for a few short years in the scheme of things and only a daughter-in-law for a few years longer. No one else has been her husband’s wife, and no one else has been the mother to her children, so, while advice and others’ experience is certainly helpful, she is to some extent, flying blind when it comes to all of this grown-up stuff.

I realized after talking with her that, in many areas of our lives, this is true for us too. It has always been true; most of us just just listened to the map our parents/culture laid out for us when we were younger and leaned on that well-worn path instead of striking out on our own. That path is great for many of us (it was for me), but it leaves us feeling a bit bereft here in middle-age after we’ve checked all of the things off the list and are left with decades until the lure of retirement, the seemingly last check off the box of the middle-class American dream.

When I asked Laura what she meant with her theme for the year, she said that she wanted to do some things that she has been putting off when it comes to her career, as well as some other unsexy things about being an adult like finances and wills and things. But I told her later, after I had thought about it for awhile, that “being a grown-ass adult” isn’t as self-evident as we were led to believe. Kids are trickier than we were told, and no two are alike. Our bodies don’t operate like they once did. Friends and family members get sick. Marriage is fun and hard. Combining families is messy. Maybe the faith we were given as children has to evolve and become our own. Life is exhausting and exhilarating. Unlike what most of us were told growing up, there is no there there. There is no arrival. Once we accept that, it is easier to live in the present, to really “Be here now” as Ram Dass would say, and to be more grateful and open to the mystery and magic of it all.

I like to think of each new season as a fresh start (probably because I simultaneously love fresh starts and continue to need them), so I’m using this turn of the season to assess where I am and appreciate the labor and love that has gotten me here, knowing that there is still so much more to learn and so many more adventures ahead. But it all starts with some deep grateful breaths for what’s here in front of you right this minute…