Even with a good career and all the “adult milestones” I don’t feel like an actual adult. I feel like I’m pretending to know what I’m doing. Anyone else experience this?
Yeah kinda. To me being a kid is all about the feeling of things not being up to you, you don’t make the real decisions and the ones you do get to make are inconsequential. The past doesn’t weigh on you and the future is a wide open mystery. Doesn’t feel like that anymore.
As far as I can tell:
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age <16: “Oh boy, I can’t wait to be an adult and do whatever I want!”
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age 16-19: “Look at me! I’m an adult! I’m the adultiest adult that ever adulted!! I reject all that is childish and embrace all that is totally-grown-up! Middle ground is for losers! I need everyone to know how ADULT I am and approve of it!!”
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around 20-ish: “…fuck. I’m an adult. I have responsibilities. I have to do taxes. Why does everything cost money?”
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25+: “I have legit no idea what being an adult is supposed to be like, but I’ll figure it out one day … I hope. Also my back hurts and I have a favorite spoon and lost the lid of 2/3 of my tupperware.”
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45+: “I’m an adult. I can do whatever TF I want. Ohh you want to convince me that videogames and cartoons are “too childish” for someone my age? Go ahead and sue me, lol.”
I’m nearing that last stage and I honestly care less and less about what being an adult is supposed to be like. The world is already a shitty enough place without ruining your own fun on arbitrary grounds like stuff being “too childish for your age” or the pressure to have found your purpose in life by a random age. I stopped trying to find “my calling” or a bigger meaning in life and just enjoy the ride instead. Not everyone is predestined to achieve some groundbreaking milestone in history. Maybe my purpose in life has always been to be that weird funny uncle that cracks insufferable puns at the worst times but actually listens to problems of loved ones, no matter how trivial they may seem. Maybe just winging it without actually knowing what the end result will be … is perfectly fine. It is okay to not know everything. It is okay to have silly little hobbies. It is okay to be a bit awkward. And it is okay to feel a bit lost sometimes. Adults are just old children with a driving permit.
Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.
Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.
So much this!
I see myself a bit in all those stages, but i don’t think i ever really ever (temporarily) outgrew “childish” things. Always liked cartoons, always read comics, always played games, and always told those that chided me for not growing up to fuck off. Now entering my 50s, the biggest difference is that people don’t have the courage to bother me about it anymore (and in the rare occasions when they do they don’t argue back after being told off :P )
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We all just have to do stuff all the time. That’s it. Welcome.
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This question is what an adult feels like.
Yup. The realization that we’re all just making it up as we go is when it happens. Welcome to adulting.
Yes, I feel like an adult.
The misconception though is that somehow you just “gain” wisdom and adult smarts and whatever. That’s all bullshit. I don’t feel like a different person than I did at 17, but I know I’m not a child, I know society expects me to be accountable for my own actions. I know I have a whole different set of responsibilities than I had as a teenager.
There is a paradox of confidence.
The people most confident in their competence tend to be the least competent in practice.
The Dunning–Kruger effect.
Self-cheerleaders tend to be morons, the most intelligent people by their nature tend to second guess their own abilities. Idiots just stroll through life taking whatever credit they can grab.
“The only thing I know is that I know nothing, and i am no quite sure that i know that.”
-Socrates
"Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.’
-Donald Trump
See the difference? By genuinely doubting, aka examining your abilities, you are in more competent company.
more people oughta read about and pay attention to philosophy shit is actually pretty interesting. if nothing else just to see how predictable the uneducated monkey brain is.
I’ve always considered the “why” to be the most important question for me.
In our society, the answer is almost always money, which is a means and not an end, and so western culture seems to be miserably grinding itself into the dirt, usually without ever looking up and asking what the deeper point is.
It’s really very tragic to me.
Putting the ‘capital’ in Capitalism.
Early 50s here and no, absolutely not. I still feel like I’m an immature teen inside my head, wondering what the hell happened.
looks in the mirror
…fuck
I feel like an adult. I’m in my 30s. But i got to make my own definition of adult. Really it’s not so much not feeling like an adult, it’s realizing none of the adults really know what they are doing.
I figure it’s just different responsibilities… if I didnt have kids I’d be doing more of what I want to do (like fireworks and motorcycling).I had to put that on pause for 12 years or so, and just now I’m starting to do more for me. It was a joint decision that I would be a present dad rather than career focussed. And to be honest it’s been great being able to switch off work and enjoy my personal time. Family circumstances have changed and ironically I’ve had to be even more present but with COVID changing the work force expectations,at least in my business, to be more flexible, that it all works.
I still feel 16 at heart and think I can get out of a chair really easily, but I can’t…my joints are stiffening and that really sucks.
I had to put that on pause
for 12 years or so
i cried
Either I’ve always been an adult, or I’ve never been an adult. Honestly not sure which.
Feeling like an actual adult is feeling the way you always have, but going to bed earlier and waking up with a pressing need to pee, but having to oil your joints like the tin man before you can move.
I feel called-out.
And your favorite brand of [insert here] was discontinued last year adding to the growing list of permanent minor dissapointments.
You’ll feel like an actual adult when you stop chasing after what you think society expects a successful adult to be.
Not only will that mean you yourself have the self-confidence of an adult and the adult ability to set one’s own milestones, but modern day society is pretty shallow and immature and not really design for people to be self-driven and independent (look at celebrity culture, look at how politics use Tribalism so that people react very much like they do with sports tribalism were the stakes are nowhere near as high, look at consumer society powered by marketing using manipulation strategies taken from Psychology).
If you’re lucky it might happen when you have your middle life crysis (though many, maybe most, just seem to become infantilised) or as result of some life-changing event.
Some of us are not chasing it, but instead are actively running away.
Yeah.
Once people actually figure themselves out and hence their objectives in life, from the ground up, they often stop trying to be whatever they are told or led to believe are society’s metrics for success, mainly because social messaging nowadays is very manipulative and self-serving, so anybody who unquestioningly guides oneself by those metrics is more likely than not just serving somebody else’s interests and egos.
I do. It happened somewhere in my mid-late 30s. The two main contributing factors have been:
- Years of therapy so that I’m able to have my shit together
- Having a kid so I’ve got a reason to have my shit together
Order of those two is very important!
Yeah, but only because my joints hurt if I do anything remotely exertion related. It’s less that I feel like an adult, more like I feel old.
