Adulthood
As a freshman in college, one of the running questions in my mind was that of what it means to be an adult. I thought about it for a while, and considered vague notions of responsibility and maturity, but nothing very decisive. After a while, this issue gave way to other questions and I set it aside for a time.
I read recently about the putting off of adulthood longer and longer, with this delay comes an extension of adolescence. More and more, children move in with their parents after college, delay getting a serious job, delay starting a family, delay those things associated with adulthood. Even those who do get jobs and start families continue to be dependent upon their parents for decisions and support in ways that we didn't see in past generations. As I face the end of college here, I understand this in a new light. The freedom we have is so immense that it's utterly paralysing. No longer is there the restricting security of knowing that I'm going to marry the girl down the street and have 6 kids so we can put them to work on the family farm. The options are so broad, the hardest part is to figure out what they are. Harder still, with so many options, even if you decide on one or a few, there's infinite freedom as to how to achieve that end.
Given this, it's small wonder that we're delaying adulthood. The amount of responsibility that adulthood brings is multiplied by the infinitely ambiguous freedom of choice such that "adulthood" has a meaning so broad and indeterminate that the only definition that I can come up with is as follows:
Being an adult just means that there's no one who can tell you that it will be OK.
I read recently about the putting off of adulthood longer and longer, with this delay comes an extension of adolescence. More and more, children move in with their parents after college, delay getting a serious job, delay starting a family, delay those things associated with adulthood. Even those who do get jobs and start families continue to be dependent upon their parents for decisions and support in ways that we didn't see in past generations. As I face the end of college here, I understand this in a new light. The freedom we have is so immense that it's utterly paralysing. No longer is there the restricting security of knowing that I'm going to marry the girl down the street and have 6 kids so we can put them to work on the family farm. The options are so broad, the hardest part is to figure out what they are. Harder still, with so many options, even if you decide on one or a few, there's infinite freedom as to how to achieve that end.
Given this, it's small wonder that we're delaying adulthood. The amount of responsibility that adulthood brings is multiplied by the infinitely ambiguous freedom of choice such that "adulthood" has a meaning so broad and indeterminate that the only definition that I can come up with is as follows:
Being an adult just means that there's no one who can tell you that it will be OK.