Remember when you were in grade school and you went to camp held by high school kids and they seemed so mature. Yet, when you were sixteen and holding camps you didn't feel much older than the kids you were teaching. 

Remember when 22 sounded like the age you were going to have everything figured out by? It sounded like financial stability, a promising relationship, set career goals, and the end of all of the uncertainty that came with adolescence. Now, looking around, 22 feels the same way 18 did if you just add in a little more cracks in your body and intolerance for hangovers. 

Do you ever find yourself anxious because you don't have the answers you thought you would by now? That you're still not quite sure what is lying on the other side of the hill you're currently climbing, and you're not even sure if the hill you're climbing right now is the hill you want to be on at all? Why did it seem like the older we got, the more we would have a grasp on things? 

When I was younger and I saw people who were my age, they all seemed like they were doing just fine, and yet, I am terrified that I am never going to have it all figured out. Did people older than us have things figured out before we did? Did they find the secret key to adulthood at sixteen when we're still struggling to unlock it at 30? 

The answer is that no one is as adult as they seem on the outside. "Adult" is just a social construct. No one has everything figured out at any point. Every person at any age is struggling with something they thought they would have figured out by now. The answers come sometimes, and sometimes they never come at all. No one truly knows if what they are doing is exactly what they want or should be doing. Every single person no matter the age yearns for something else to lock into place to make their life better than it currently is. 

The human experience is made up of searching for ourselves, and as we get to be adults we just search for ourselves in different outlets than we did as children. We search for ourselves in career paths and religions and independence they way we once searched for ourselves on playgrounds and in classrooms. No matter the age of anyone, we're all still searching for ourselves. We're all still molding ourselves and the world around to become better versions. No one will ever stop searching. No one will ever have all of the answers. No one will ever truly be an adult. 

In 25 years, we will all look around and realize that the age we are really doesn't feel or sound as old as it did to us at the age we are now. We will realize that we still don't have the answers. Contentment will only come to those who realize that it is completely okay to not feel as adult as they think they should.