In Response to Adulting from 2016
A few years back in a 14m2 room in Rouen, I was pensive about adulting -- what it meant, when I should and if I should be one; what it entails and what it does not. Four years later, I want to touch that same subject because after faltering and getting back up constantly, several book chapters on self-help, the body and the mind, culture and society, hours of discussions over coffee, constant meditation, regular yoga sessions, a number of foreign trips, numerous purging attempts… the list goes on… Now, I know better.
What is adulting? I’ve always thought it was being self-made, being independent, or confident. I got this concept from one of the books I’ve recently read, which joins every bit of idea I have of it: Adulting means self control. The ultimate mastery of being an adult is calmness - the state of being calm.
If we think about it, as helpless infants, we do not know better than react instantly to the world around us. Our basic instinct - to fight or flight - for survival makes us reactive and not reflective. Self control entails experience of the world. Experience is only acquired through environment, exposure, culture, opportunities and time, among many things. The perception of time is different for everyone, shaped and influenced by various factors. Things may happen at a certain time for someone’s life and not for another’s. Our experiences are what makes us unique. We may have shared experiences over time but no one ever experiences time the same way.
Therefore, to answer the question: when do we have to start acting like an adult?, there’s no one answer. Life happens. Adulting happens. People have to let it happen. Not to force it, but to encourage it, hone it, make someone aware of it. Just as anything in life, as meditation and yoga taught me, you just let it.
Adulting can be many things to many people, at any stage of one’s life, in different manifestations. What is universal about this concept is that it has to be a complete awareness and mindfulness of the Self from which we get [to] control. Control means not having to react for the sake of but acting in productive and practical response to something - a mindful action. We don’t just do just because. We do because we are. And if we don’t, then we still are.
Does that make sense? Maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe adulting is just simply… being.
Knowing this now, I’d like to tell my 2016 - even my 2011 - self this: it’s okay not to adult during those times. It’s okay not knowing what a SALN is and what to declare then. Because you had to at that time, you learn and now you know better. It takes more than completing and complying to a bureaucratic procedure to be an adult. And I’m glad to say that your 2020 self is almost and most of the time… adulting.
