My age says I’m an adult but sometimes I think other people know more about being an adult than me.
Well I mean, we’re all just mostly LARPing this whole adult thing, right?
Lightning bolt, lightning bolt!
I’m in my 50s and actually still LARPing, and playing TTRPGs, and MMORPGs. No need to grow up for anyone else’s sake as long as you’re not harming others.
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Pretty sure I was born LARPing being a kid too. I never made the very common presumption, when most(?) people are young, that adults (or my parents for that matter, religious indoctrination immunity) knew what they were doing. Perhaps I came across older than I was, and now the opposite is happening the more grey hair I get!
No. I’m not.
but i like and enjoy my life. i don’t regard it as a burden to escape from.
Neither am I, I just think I shouldn’t be allowed to but a house or rent a car or use a chainsaw or raise a child unsupervised. That’s something grown-ups do, not me (40yo).
that sounds like a massive lack of self-confidence.
none of those things are difficult. most people do them on auto pilot. you are thinking way too much.
you also falsely assume there is a ‘correct’ way to do these things and you will do it ‘wrong’. there isn’t.
i used to teach. biggest thing most people have to get over is their pre conception of a ‘right’ way to do things. there is only really what works for you, it only doesn’t work if you aren’t able to attain your goals.
like i meet people who think the only ‘correct’ way to have a child to make sure that child gets into Harvard… otherwise their child will be a failure at life. those people are idiots. the kid will be perfectly fine going to a state school, and maybe even not going to college at all…
“When do I start feeling like an adult?”
That’s the neat part! You don’t!
what does adult mean anyway?
like the traditional markers of adulthood as in home ownership, family, etc. ?
or just a self of responsibility?
If we strip the externally-imposed milestones and accomplishment domarisons, we’re left with basic stuff like the skills required to cope in a society with other individuals, make decisions and be responsible for those decisions, and manage (not achieve, but manage) basic needs.
It’s bullshit, but that’s close, right?
when I ask myself whether others - or me too - are achieving these intrinsic requirements, I’m not often impressed. But that’s a target to work toward, anyway.
No it’s not bullshit. I just don’t see those skills as adult. i had them at like six years old.
but i will admit most people probably didn’t have the level of self-determination i had from a very young age. and i meet people regularly in my 30s/40s now who still lack a lot of basic life-skills like understanding the consequences of their actions, and who seem to be eternally seeking some sort of parental figure to do their executive functioning for them. Whether it be a partner as a parent, or a self-help guru who has the ‘answers’.
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why don’t you have those things?
i’ve had those things since i was 18.
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sure. any city that would be friendly do you would be ultra expensive. i have a two bed condo that would get me mansion in some other cities. but i would never give up the walkability and public transit.
not sure what your grandfather has to do with it, but OK. COL will only continue to skyrocket the next couple of decades.
ladies and gentlemen… “The problem”
I feel like I came at this from another direction. In my twenties I cut my foot pretty bad on a rusty screw so I went to the hospital and got stitches. The doctor didn’t prescribe me an antibiotic and I foolishly thought “oh they’re a doctor, I must not need one!” I of course got a pretty bad infection within a few days that required me to be on IV antibiotics for several days. I’m lucky I didn’t need any debridement or worse. I learned through that experience that nobody knows what the fuck is going on and you cannot count on “adults” because we generally know fuck-all.
people make mistakes. doctors are imperfect.
Nobody knows how to be an adult. Everyone is posing.
i strongly believe we have deluded ourselves as a society to associate natural human feelings with youth when they are simply how humans perceive and feel regardless of age. every single older person i ask if they feel their age says no. they all tell me they feel like they’re in their 20s at the oldest, some still teenagers. your body ages, you get wiser due to life experiences, but you don’t “become an adult” ever, because what we consider adulthood is a Western lie built upon capitalist standards and strict American individualism (if you’re in the US).
i don’t feel 36. i don’t know what that would even entail. i feel “younger,” but i don’t see it that way. i feel like a human being connected to his actual existence and acknowledging it rather than allowing it to be repressed because i’m too old for x y z. we are all young-minded permanently. that’s just how humans are. it isn’t reserved for the physically young.
Perhaps its because we assume a proportional relationship between ignorance and youth. But because its impossible to know everything we are doomed to feel ignorant frequently and therefore perpetually stuck in a state before the imaginary line between young and old
IME ignorance is just a function of your inability or unwillingness to learn. Mostly because you are afraid of being ‘wrong’ or making mistakes.
i feel younger as i get older because i have less stress. in my teens are 20s i was constantly under stress. i remember high school, and college, and most of my 20s full of constant agonizing and worrying. mostly because i was poor and any life mistake felt like i’d lose everything and become homeless.
but apparently many other people had an opposite life experience where their youthful life was not stressful and their adulthood is. probably because they grew up with money and had parents who helicoptered over them and now they find basic responsibilities to be a burden. like it shocks me how many people think having to work and pay bills is ‘unfair’ but i guess maybe that’s because they grew up not having to work and pay bills.
It’s right around the time that you realize your parents were just doing the best they could and didn’t know how to “adult” either that you start to understand that you’re destined to do the same thing. We’re all just making it up as we go and hoping to do better than the previous generation. Generation after generation built upon the knowledge of iteration.
So yeah, mentally, I don’t feel significantly different than I have at any other time in the past twenty years, aside from knowledge and experience, but I also realize that I’m viewed significantly different by others, so you kind of have to act the part and fake it till you make it.
the difference between my parents and my siblings and I is that we learn from our mistakes. we try different things, we defer to experts to gain more knowledge and guidance.
my parents didn’t. a lot of people actively don’t and refuse to do so and live with the assumption their their assumptions and instincts are ‘correct’ and others are not.
You’re fine, some days I barely feel human let alone adult. I imagine the overwhelming majority are faking it till they make it. It’s one of those clichés that’s cliché for a reason.
When I turned 18 and my grandmother was in her 80s, she told me, “I still feel exactly like I did when I was your age.”
I asked if that meant she was frustrated by how slowly she moved (she used a rollator by that point), and she confirmed it did.
You’ll never really feel like an adult, but your body will keep on aging anyway. And you’ll never really get used to that, either.
I’m 42, and I feel like I’m cosplaying and LARPing as an adult. I’m able to convince everyone but myself.
Mortage, kids, and a pretty nice career is my equivalent of a fursuit - something to hide behind in an effort to find acceptance from likeminded.
that sounds miserable.
You don’t have an insight into other people’s minds so you attribute their behavior and decisions to some knowledge you don’t have but they do.
This is a fake feeling caused by lack of information. Everyone is improvising life.Some reading as introduction to the cause of the phenomenon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_biasyep. it’s like when people think my IT/coding skills are ‘magic’.
they aren’t… they are a product of learning and failing and learning… effort.
i also notice people think like some 12 year old who is really good at something is magically gifted… 99.9% of the time it’s because they are already been doing it for a decade. all my professionally level musician friends started learning music at like 2 or 3. most kids don’t learn until like 12, so those ‘gifted’ kids have a decade of experience already.
just like when i took calc 3 at 30 and my class had a bunch of 15 year olds in it. those 15 year olds in it they weren’t geniuses. they just had more experience and knowledge than me and parents who pushed them. many of them probably would go on to graduate college in 2-3 years instead of the traditional 4.
I only really feel like an adult when I spend time with kids and young people. Even though the students I teach are at university, and thus technically adults… I’m always struck by how often they seem ‘immature’.
And to be clear, I don’t even really mean that as a criticism. Sure, at times they don’t pay attention and forget to do things and seem akward/nervous. But "adults’ do all those things too. The difference is the adults have generally accepted these flaws and come up with coping strategies (both good and bad) like avoiding those situations, or blaming other people.
So, what makes me feel like an adult is not that I’m on top of things, or that I’m no longer a mess. It’s that I know I’m a mess, and I no longer hope that one day I’ll get everything sorted, and tbh, that’s fine.
the ability to delay gratification and think through the long term consequences of an action is a skill most human beings don’t have until they are in their mid to late 20s. biologically speaking.
but i totally get it when my 13 year old nephew thinks his parents are ruining his life by not letting him buy more fortnite money. because in his brain all that matters is there pressing urges of the here and now. to him the future is no more than a week away, he doesn’t think in terms of months or years and he won’t until he’s apply to college probably.
I don’t know about feeling like an adult, but I don’t feel like a kid, that’s for sure.
Sounds like we’re all in the same boat here.
Adulting is an illusion.
As someone pushing 40, this thread is full of people who sound like fun.
