Adult™

Artwork by @na_son

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It’s very uncomfortable to arrive at the age where you are objectively considered an adult and feel underdressed for the occasion. ‘25 & Under’ concessions have fallen away and we can no longer blame our parents, or anyone, for why we are the way that we are. It’s even more awkward, because at 16 I had clear expectations of how my life would be at this point: expectations, not goals. As I understood things then, we were all promised, simply if we wanted them: happiness, homeownership, a car, a fulfilling career, a marriage and a first-born. Now I say to myself, what does a 16-year-old know about life anyway? And maybe this comeback would comfort me if those expectations were figments of my 16-year-old imagination, but they were never my ideas, they are society’s checkpoints.

I only manage to shake them off momentarily; later, a friend will reassure me that I still have time to find someone. Tomorrow, I will be asked to justify why I still live with my parents. Next week at a dinner party, the stranger beside me will lean in and ask me what I do and whether I love it. I find myself overwhelmed by the expectations of adulthood – more specifically, by the distance between where I am and where I should be, or where I want to be (I’m not yet clear on the difference).

I was mildly devastated by the relief I felt when I discovered the new Forbes 50 over 50 list. I immediately thought – good, I have more time – and it’s not because I’m necessarily nostalgic about my youth, or afraid of getting older, I am fearful of having nothing to show for it. Of having over 20 useless years behind me and nothing in front. What I am clinging to, is the possibility embedded in youth. If the youth are the future, and I am no longer youthful, then my once promising future must now be the present. So, I can’t help but worry – is this it? Rather than cherish the opportunity of my life, I spin out into this panic sedated temporarily by overpriced dinners and scrolling through mindless media.

The issue is, I have conflated adulthood with success and achievement. I have felt that until I attain a home, a husband, a fulfilling career, etc. I am banished to a condition of perpetual childishness. But this is not true. Adulthood is not asset-based. Nor does it occur on the stroke of midnight of your X, Y or Z birthday. It is a constant responsibility undertaken, struggled for and nurtured… or avoided. The requirements that qualify someone to be an adult can be seen in people younger than the widely accepted age of 18 and lacking in 50-year-olds.

In my anxiety for eminence, my life in between has become a waiting room where I read coffee table magazines about “late bloomers” and convince myself that my life in the sun is ahead of me, rather than right now. I never established a framework for seeing people, both at my age and in my position, as matured. Most people around me are following a more traditional trajectory and I’ve often felt infantilised by the comparison. Sometimes when my niece calls me aunty I feel like we’re cosplaying. But I’m here now: an aunty and an alleged adult.

I want to be clear about, and live up to, my own expectations of what these mean. I still want certain outcomes for myself, but I don’t want whether I obtain them or not to be tied to my self-esteem. I want to devise a way of living as an established person that is completed at the end of each day, rather than measured at arbitrary milestones. If I can be successful at that, I think every day of my life can be fulfilling whatever those days add up to in the end.

I’ve written a list of what I believe are the minimum requirements for adulthood. They’re distilled from conversations with and literature on the adults I admire most. It’s not about being a good or even great adult, just an adult (basic membership level). It’s a starting point that I hope is useful for living a fulfilling life that is not contingent on external success (mainly for me, but happy to help).

There’s nothing here that you won’t have heard before. And full disclosure, I don’t know whether I would have written this if I had been one of the people who made Forbes’ 30 under 30, or if I’d been able to conform with the traditional markers of adulthood in time. But I hope in that alternate reality I did somehow arrive at this conclusion, because understanding adulthood as I do now, has allowed me to humanise myself and others. We look down on people who haven’t reached a certain level of status in adulthood even if their contribution to society is extremely valuable (i.e. cleaners, delivery people, caregivers). The current default doesn’t encourage us to regard ourselves and each other with appropriate dignity or to withhold it from those who have status but no character or calibre.

1. Be self-aware

“Just do it” and “if you really wanted to, you would”, are not sustainable sources of motivation for me anymore. They don’t capture the fact that my willpower towards something will always depend on my capacity. Self-awareness is the starting point because it’s how I determine what I want; what is realistically within my means at this moment; and what capacities I’ll need to build to get to where I want to go. A completely unexamined mind leads to a kind of passivity or reactivity – by that I mean until I made the effort to understand myself, I found I was always forced into change by others or circumstance or necessity. I become more the subject of my life rather than its architect.

For me, self-awareness is an ongoing practice that I’ve had to intentionally and regularly engage with. It’s knowing who you are: morals, boundaries, characteristics, how you best operate, what your triggers are, what things you are willing to accept about yourself and what things you want to change. What’s really helped me with this is keeping a diary because it allows me to reason with myself and track patterns. Also being in a relationship with someone who was very diligent about tracking his habits with apps like Strides.

There’s an entry in my diary where I reflect on the quote ‘how we spend our days is how we spend our lives’. I honestly wrote out how I spent my days and I realised that this list was not at all consistent with what I professed my priorities were and I thought it was hilarious but also daunting. Apps like Strides are useful because I’m very hard on myself and how I remember things is often warped by my perfectionism. I might complain that I’ve been really rubbish at keeping up my running practice, but then I’ll look on the tracker and see I ran 65% of the month. I’ll also be reminded by my friend that I was sick that month so that would have also affected my performance.

Self-awareness is about dealing in actualities so you can properly prioritise and then ‘Just Do It’. It’s not something you should fully allow someone outside of yourself to dictate, because no one can entirely understand your life experience and give context to your behaviour.

2. Have perspective

We make choices for children because they have no reference for the implications of their actions. When they refuse food, they don’t appreciate that they’re risking malnutrition. In the moments that they want to give up when something gets hard, we force them to persevere, because they don’t understand how this can build self-esteem. We encourage this authority over young children because adults should have perspective. And we have this expectation because the older you are, the more evidence you have of yourself, of others and of life. You should be more aware of your limitations. We are equipped to align our expectations with reality so that we are not floored by common disappointments or difficulties. Or caught off guard by unforeseen circumstances.

I really can’t feel sorry for myself when I miss a deadline I didn’t give myself enough time to meet based on the catalogue of my behaviour; or have back pain because I haven’t moved further than the distance between my bed and my desk for a week. In the same vein, I’m no longer taken aback when someone I’m not very close to shares a secret I told them with another, nor do I interpret someone not liking me as necessarily an issue. I’ve learnt who I can trust and what is unrealistic to expect from even this group. I’ve learnt the colours that look best on me; and I’ve learnt that no one really responds well to criticism, just well enough. I’ve learnt I can do way more than I think I can. It would be draining to live without some perspective; to be constantly spiked by the commonplace. It’s a relief to be better at picking my battles.

3. Make your own decisions

I think this is the most characteristic element of adulthood: the thing we looked forward to most about getting older was the freedom to do what we wanted – to say, “who gon check me boo?”. And yet, when it is given to us, often we don’t know how to exercise it or don’t want to have the final say, particularly over decisions where we cannot predict the outcome with certainty. Being able to utilise a sense of discernment to process information, emotions and make effective judgement calls is a skill and our responsibility as adults. It’s required both to maintain the life you have and reach the life you want.

It would be tragic to find at the end of my days, that all important decisions were decided by the approval of my parents, friends, or strangers (whom I would inevitably nurture a steeping resentment of). Or to find that I’d been so deeply compromised by a reverence of comparison-based achievement (forgoing rest, enjoyment – sometimes self-respect) for gigs and assets that aren’t necessary or meaningful for me.

I used to find it very difficult to do things my mum disagreed with. I had this feeling that she was always right and even when I’d presented a bullet-proof case, that final, “hmm, it’s your life, do what you want” in the tone of a shrug, really got to me. I’d become superstitious that all her worries would come to pass and either chicken out or engage with my plans in a half-hearted way. I had to decide: (1) to live with the discomfort of taking risks for myself; (2) understand that she’s coming from a place of a protective parent; (3) remember that she has taken risks that my grandparents disproved of that panned out well; (4) she’s right, it is my life; and (5) sometimes her concerns are definitely legitimate – cycling across London is dangerous.

4. Take responsibility

Based on the three elements above, as an Adult™, I have enough experience of life to inform my decision making and an understanding of who I am as a person. I understand that actions have consequences. As a result, for the most part, I am responsible for my actions. If I regularly respond defensively to criticism, I risk never receiving constructive guidance. As an aspiring writer, I accept I need to sacrifice time with friends and family to produce my work. When I am consistently late, I must reckon with the fact I may not be included in or trusted with moments that are time sensitive.

I am also responsible for my wellbeing (physical, mental and spiritual); of course, I have family, friends, colleagues, that support me in my endeavours and provide their own skills and wisdom to help navigate these things, but, ultimately, the buck begins and ends with me. Even when others have shattered me, I have had to pick up the pieces. We can hold others accountable for their actions: parents who dropped the ball or ex-lovers who put us down. But we can no longer, as James Baldwin insists, maintain innocence long after that innocence is dead. And it dies the moment we begin to have agency in the matter and that can be as soon as we have the capacity or resources to reach out for help.

I’m always ready to accept responsibility, but taking it up, or acting it out, is tricky. I have a tendency to procrastinate, miscalculate my priorities and overestimate what I can get done in a day or a week (applause for the self-awareness). At the heart of my struggle, I think, is a failure to take myself seriously and appreciate the urgency required. I also give too much time to people pleasing. I can’t please the world and myself, and trying to have my cake and eat it slows me down.

5. Have courage

One of my favourite quotes by Dr. Maya Angelou is “life loves the liver of it”. An adult has to live: dare to fail and succeed. Dare to love and lose. Dare to both disappoint and inspire people. Try to be as active and assertive as possible in dictating the course of your life. Don’t feel that anything is too late (unless it categorically is) – move like the best is always ahead. Courage is the foundation for everything listed above; Maya Angelou adds, it is “the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently”.

In adulthood, I don’t think we’re able to abandon our fears and doubts unless we make a habit of facing them. Unchecked, they only grow more intrusive. It’s why a hallmark of traditional adulthood is cynicism. As we get older, it becomes more challenging to pursue our dreams: responsibilities increase, stakes become higher, the body is not as energetic. Depending on your circumstances, absorbing the consequences of risk-taking can be difficult to recover from. But these are things to be navigated, not submitted to. You have to be brave enough to adapt: I’m not going to quit my job so I can write everyday and be exactly the writer I want to be. But I can write every weekend. It may take me longer than I’d hoped, but at least I’d be going somewhere rather than beating myself up for not starting sooner or not being where I want to be.

Courage is also necessary to regulate our perspective. Whilst we can be informed by how things have worked or how we understand them, I think it’s important to hope for more than is currently on offer, otherwise we risk making our lives small to avoid disappointment.