I’ve been feeling like an adult.
This isn’t due to my fiscal responsibilities or my tidy home or any other things I used to use as a measure for maturity, but from feeling like everything makes sense. Like I have all the answers the way adults seem to do, because I can see the big picture, I understand what truly matters, and I don’t sweat the small things anymore.
It’s only now that I’m at a point where I feel like a grown up. Like this is finally who I’ll be for the rest of my life.
That’s not to say I’ve finished growing, that I’m not human or infallible, but there aren’t the same struggles or changes that I used to have, so my emotions and attitudes have evened out.
For a while I wondered if I’d just become another turning-30 cliché, but I realized it was never about age. Various things have brought me to this maturity, from conversations to relationships to trips far away. It all happened to be around the beginning of a new decade in my life.
Maybe I’ve been feeling this way only because things are going so well. It’ll take some hardship to test how far I’ve truly come as an adult, but until then I’ll try to live like a child, cause too often youth is wasted on the young.
I think adults don’t have all the answers, they just know there’re no absolute answers. They realise that a person’s virtues and strengths are often also his or her vices and weaknessess. So adults should be less fastidious and more relaxed.
If you don’t feel uptight about speaking French or Cantonese with a foreign accent, that’s a good sign. Foreign accents can be charming. If you’re O.K. with being served with eggs that are not a multiple of 2, that’s a good sign. All in all, being seriously unserious, or vice versa, is a good sign. Well, that’s my take of it.
I didn’t quite mean that adults literally have all the answers, only that they seem to know everything and be invulnerable when we’re young and looking up to them. That’s the position I find myself in lately, where I’m looking towards this new found strength and maturity as the child I used to be.
I believe you’ve faced your hardest challenge and it’s behind you.
You will be a tougher, smarter man, and I believe you’ll do well for yourself.
Now: Don’t forget to PLAY!~
It’s funny, I never really thought of anything as being the most difficult challenge, but when I consider the time and heartache, I can’t help but agree.
feeling like everything makes sense. Like I have all the answers the way adults seem to do, because I can see the big picture, I understand what truly matters, and I don’t sweat the small things anymore
I think I’m actually crying because I’ve never heard it so plainly described, and so definitively plain for me to see that it’s a place I have yet to come to, and one that feels so out of reach. I’m 29. I’ll be 30 in 6‑ish months… we’re not that far apart in age. Why does it feel like often sense is as far from my reach as China or winning 20million?
I firmly believe youth is wasted on the young, because they never really do realize what they have when they have it, and squander some of the most wondrous times of their lives trying to be older, act older, act wiser, talk smarter, look more mature than they ever are, to really find the most magic in that age… I like your perspective. But I also envy the fact that you feel like you’ve figured it out. Maybe it’ll be the same for me in my 30s…
Age may not have come into play with your life, but largely on the whole, age has a lot to do with it for the general populace. The majority of 21 year olds are complete and utter idiots. I’m sure the same could be said of many 41 year olds, but I wouldn’t credit the entire demographic as being retarded in the same way teens or young adults are.
Anyway…
I’m very happy for you, Jeff.
PS. I saw the Tea tray things I sent you for Christmas that one year at my favorite upscale market, and it totally made me think of you.
Cheers.
I don’t think you’re far away in terms of maturity. It takes a lot of wisdom to come to the realizations you have. Perhaps you just need a little push, the right inspiration, the proper epiphany to cross that line (if such a line can ever be defined). As you say, the old can be as stupid and immature as the young, so age has nothing to do with it.
(I totally need to buy more Tea Forte bags to use with those trays.)