Question #37
“When will I feel like my real, grown-up life has begun?”
Dear HD,
If you’re older than about 16 or so, in many ways your adult life has already begun. This is the age that you’ll start to make decisions that will affect the rest of your life. But I get not feeling like an adult, or that your adult life hasn’t started, especially if you don’t have the markers of marriage, parenthood, or full-time employment to act as indicators. But even with those things, there’s no one moment where you feel like your real life has begun. It’s more likely that you look up one day and you discover that you’re already in it. (Maybe today is that day lol.)
Here are a few things that can help you feel more adulty though:
Starting your own traditions. It doesn’t have to be as big as hosting Thanksgiving or Christmas, but maybe you establish your own rituals around birthdays, or Friday night dinners, or New Year’s Eve. Small things that you’ve decided, “This is what we do.”
Seeing your parents/elders as people who are just older than you. You realize that they have their own anxieties and bad habits, but also things you like about them, or find quirky or annoying. They’re just regular people, who happen to have been born before you, and you see them in that light. They are just as human as you are.
Talking over big decisions with others to get their advice, not their permission. You’re trying to decide about an apartment or car or new job, so you talk it over with an older sibling or parent, etc because you value their opinion, but you also make your own decision, even if it’s different from what they would have chosen for you or for themselves.
