Adulthood

I vividly remember when I was about 10 or 11 thinking how exciting it would feel to be an adult some day.

I’d be able to stay up as long I wanted and watch Conan on late night TV and understand the jokes. I could sit in a first-class plane seat and fly to somewhere cool like California or New York and drink a dirty martini or whatever. I’d have my own money (a lot of it) and no one could tell me what to do (including my mom).

Back then I was so envious of my older cousins who were adults with no rules and their own responsibilities. I couldn’t wait to just finally be an adult and get over with being a kid.

I always expected it would be some big definitive moment, where you just transform from kid to adult.

Like getting your first car or college graduation or maybe marriage or something, and it’s like walking through some magical doorway where all of a sudden you shed your childhood mind and body and just start thinking adult thoughts. A great metamorphosis.

But the older I get, the more I realize how dumb I was for thinking that. The truth is: there really is no such thing as adults. We’re all just children grown old. There is no real chasm of adulthood.

This feels like it becomes especially true in your mid-twenties, I think because it’s when there’s the greatest variation in life stage amongst your peers.

Like looking at my friends from high school and college right now, some have a wife and two kids and a house and a great pension. Others are still living in their childhood bedroom at their parents collecting unemployment and swiping through Tinder 3 hours a day.

Some people grow up in elementary school — kids of single parents with younger siblings, that type of thing. Other people never seem to grow up — I remember a few people in their 50s and 60s from my old day jobs that were some of the most immature people I’ve met.

Many people my age still don’t realize they’re supposed to be grown ups, and they do everything they can do avoid believing it. It seems each year that passes, young people get even older before they decide to grow up.

I think ultimately ‘adulthood’ is just a measure of cumulative personal responsibility. The more you are personally responsible for, the more of an adult you are.

This is naturally a gradual thing most of the time. You take on more and more little responsibilities as you get older — you go to college, take on student loans, get a job to pay them off, buy a house, have a few kids, maybe start a business, hire some employees, establish an endowment fund, leave an inheritance for your grandkids, and that’s life.

In many ways, our most revered figures in society are those that are able to take on and manage the most responsibility. World leaders, CEOs, cowboys, mothers and grandparents. The most impressive may often be young people thrown into the role of great responsibility — phenoms, prodigies like Alexander the Great or Mozart.

The fun thing about this is that you can simply choose to be a grown up when you’re a kid. Once you’re 18 you really can go out and just do it — start a company, make some money, invest it for retirement, change the world.

The only thing getting in the way is the daunting weight of this responsibility. Because it sure isn’t easy — and it takes extreme discipline. I am still a long way from figuring it out. But I am working my way there.

So remember. There are no adults. Only kids who’ve taken on responsibility.

Go out there and take it.

Peace,

Ramsey