There is no clear line when someone truly counts as an adult. Is it a number? is it the act of leaving or live alone? Are there milestones like starting a study program or finishing it? Is it the first job or is it the coolest job to push me into adulthood? Is it the first kiss or the first boyfriend? Is it the steady Good Bye to one's own youth?
For many it is to give life but for me currently it is to find peace in my own life. All my life I've been ticking boxes but when I started to grief - I think - that was the moment I became an adult. We die alone they say. The responsibility one has for one's own life can easily be forgotten or why do so many choose self-destruction by becoming smokers, alcoholics, drug abusers or give themselves in the hands of the many industries? Many will say it's indulgence but it doesn't feel like it. It doesn't even feel like contentment.
Is watching old pictures and videos of oneself to understand who that person was when I lived my life in the past the ultimate act of self-reflection? Can this be called the first steps towards contentment or is it just scaring me, making me sad? Is adulthood just finding peace with one's own aging? How painful is it to look in the mirror and realizing to not be yesterday's young person anymore? Maybe we're uploading pictures of us onto social media to somehow deal with that pain awaiting us later on. A flower will wither. Where is the obsession coming from collecting video games to revive moments we lived in the past long gone? Is it self-grieving? What does it mean in the search of one's inner peace? Or the search for self-contentment? Can self-contentment and creating content of oneself fall together? To what extent is one living a fulfilled life? Does it have to be a mix of filling it myself and it being filled by others? Or can it be just - be - ? In a state of non-waiting for what the future holds. What if living in the moment is not enough for me? What if I want more? What would this 'more' be? It seems like self-reconciliation and contentment with oneself is not possible, but is it really?
Becoming an adult may mean to deal with things we don't like but we manage them somehow. No one likes to be torn out of a good life , but the one's who manage nevertheless can truly be called grown-ups.
