It’s a dangerous place to be when you stop believing in yourself. When you stop hoping and dreaming and just look forward to the end of the day. Even simple desires are pipe dreams. You never thought you’d be that way, the hollow-eyed zombies you used to call adults that rise each morning to work just so they can eat so they can keep on existing. When did you get to that place of just existing?
When I was a kid, I looked at adults with a mix of envy and disdain. Envy for the freedoms they seemed to enjoy, freedom to stay up late, not have someone tell them what to do. Freedom to buy the things they wanted and no one telling them no. When you’re young you look at the adults in your lives and question how they could squander that freedom. You wonder why there’s always a ‘no’ on their lips, why they’re always tired, and why they never seem to have enough time. They waste the gift of freedom, you think, waste it by assuming the burden of rules and responsibilities they love to complain about. You’ll be different though.
I’m 32 now, a “’real” adult. I think. I don’t feel like one. And it’s a common feeling apparently amongst “Millennials” such as myself (also known as the most hated generation — ruining the napkin industry, the housing market, diamond sales, etc. etc. We’re just out here murdering poor innocent markets because we’re entitled brats trying to keep our money to pay off crippling student debt and survive skyrocketing living costs).
I digress though.
Adulting, the umbrella term covering all those chores and responsibilities that make adults so unhappy. Paying bills, buying groceries, sorting through mail, writing that thank you card, making meals, cleaning the house, scheduling doctor’s appointments, paying taxes, getting your car a tune up, clearing out the closet. The list is neverending and it stresses me out. It’s all those things and more adults like to guilt kids with ‘it must be nice not paying bills, school is easy compared to working, just wait til you get to the real world!’
Adults try to recapture the freedom of their childhood. Romanticizing the music of their youth; all the songs from their younger days are “timeless” and “no one makes good music like this anymore.” We escape the reminders of reality in endless television, and scrolling, scrolling through our phones for….something. We search but don’t know what we’re searching for.
Adulting is what we do to survive. But when surviving is all you have time for, what do you live for then? In those moments between paying bills, running errands, sorting mail, cleaning up, we choose to spend disconnecting from the here and escaping, then when do we get to live for the things that light us up?
It’s so much easier to play game, watch a movie, or check the phone in those stolen moments between all the adulting. But reach instead for something that fills your cups. Just spend 5 minutes — with something that gives you life and reminds you that you’re alive and here for a purpose. I struggle every day to make that small decision to spend just 5 minutes on something that fills me. But I’m trying every day. That’s all you can ask for.
