I don’t have my life together, nor do you, and neither does anybody else and that’s okay.
If I had a dollar for every time I saw a poignant Tumblr post or Gif lamenting a person’s inability to hold their life together so that it is as picturesque as others' seem to be, I’d have enough money to pay for all the ice cream I binge eat when I get stressed out over not having my life together. I think that young people these days are obsessed with having their lives together because we aren’t sure what that means anymore. I think our obsession with having our lives together when we aren't even sure what that means is far more pervasive than we give it credit for. Nowhere is this obsession more evident than in the newly created verb, "Adulting."
“Adulting” is our generation trying to ask the world what does it mean to be an adult in the postmodern era. Does it mean buying a couch or handling your money responsibly, or does it mean doing your taxes and getting married? Well, as with all things, the truth resist simplicity.
In the modern and premodern eras becoming an adult was defined by five things: moving out of your parent's house, finishing your education, financial independence, getting married, and having kids. All of these markers of adulthood used to occur in our early to mid-20s but now those things can be extended all the way into our early to late 30s.
These days I don’t know when I am going to become financially independent or whether or not I might move back in with my parents (sorry Mama). I may not want to get married and I certainly don’t want kids, so how do I know when I am an adult? Unfortunately, I don’t have an easy answer, I do , however, have a hard one. I think the only way that we can assess our adulthood is by asking questions about “adulting.”
“Am I adulting?”
“Is this what being an adult feels like?”
By asking this questions we reveal our freedom from conventions of the past. Formerly being an adult mean the five things I mentioned earlier: moving out, finishing your education, having your own money, finding a spouse, and having some offspring. These days it can mean whatever we want it to mean. Maybe I’ll become an adult when I feel like I am contributing to society in a meaningful way, maybe I’ll become an adult when I feel like I can really connect with people on a deep level, maybe I’ll become an adult when I feel content with myself. Whatever the measure of adulting is I am going to have to find it myself and live it myself. As the great writer Sartre, “everything has been figured out, except how to live.” It’s okay to not have your life together because no one has figured out how yet, we are living it and that’s okay, it’s got to be. We share our accomplishments and our good times, but we don’t tell people about our failures and our inability to understand the absurdity of life. I think that maybe if we shared our failures with each other we wouldn’t be so afraid of not having our lives together, and we’d realize that it is all okay.
