This month (like almost every month since graduating college) has re-taught me multiple lessons. Things that I thought I had mastered, I saw turned on their head which in turn made me have to react a bit differently.
One of my closest friends since graduation made her way to PCB this weekend and we had a long chat with one of our mutual reporter friends about how difficult the transition to adult life is.
"I mean, how do you adult?" DP said while we laughed over wine and beer.
It's a question we ended up mulling over for a couple hours, at first complaining about how little we truly knew about being an adult, then blaming our parents for not telling us more than "you better enjoy your youth while you have it" and how college would be the "best four years of our life," finally we came to an agreement that it's just something that you grow into, though some of us were doing better than others.
Andrew, for example, had his apartment that looked like something out of a magazine without trying to be too trendy. He's 23 with a $3,000 living room set, walking around in slacks and a button down. He's also engaged, set to be married in a few months to his girlfriend of a few years. He rationalizes that while he spent a bit of time paying for the living room set (because, if you could see our salaries you would cringe) it would be the set that he has in their first home together. He's preparing to look for more jobs and will probably be out of here before the summer into a bigger city with a lot more going for him.
He is logical.
He is a planner.
He just seems to get it.
This is a guy that understands how you adult.
It's funny because I never looked at adulthood as having it all together, it was more about being able to sort through all the crap and determine what matters most and pursuing it - but there comes a time when you have to stop and figure out what that thing is. For the three of us, pursuing our dream looks very similar: we're all in a job that we've wanted for years. For all intents and purposes, we are each our very own success story.
A few years ago a book came out that discussed the topic. A subsequent review was published in the New York Times on Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men by Michael Kimmel. The article, written by Wesley Yang touches on some of the topic area but there was something that stuck out to me:
They move into communal housing with their college buddies. They work dead-end jobs. “The young have been raised in a culture that promises instant gratification,” [Kimmel] tells us. “The idea of working hard for future rewards just doesn’t resonate with them.” They play video games like Grand Theft Auto, in which the player’s avatar can have sex with a prostitute and recover his money by murdering her. They watch pornography in groups, “jiving with each other about what they’d like to do to the girl on the screen.” They “ ‘hook up’ occasionally with a ‘friend with benefits,’ go out with their buddies, drink too much and save too little.” They listen to violent rap music and to talk radio hosts who encourage their sense of “aggrieved entitlement” toward a world that has snatched away the masculine dominance they imagined would someday be theirs.
The book, clearly geared towards talking about men, hits on some hard points. It begins by talking about how in 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men under 30 had achieved the five milestones that mark a transition into adulthood: leaving home, completing their education, starting work, getting married and becoming a parent. By 2000, those numbers dropped to 46 percent in women and 31 percent of men with the clencher being that 20 percent of all 25-year-olds live at home with their parents."The passage between adolescence and adulthood has morphed from a transitional moment to a separate life stage," Kimmel says.
And he's right - but, of course, we knew that.
At 23, I define adulthood by those same milestones, but I doubt I will get there by 30. I have 6.5 years to get to that point, but it seems like an impossible task to get those last two without being happy with my situation in the first and third milestones. Am I happy to have left home? Of course - but do I want to make a home in PCB? That, at least in my present mind, is not an option, which then means that starting work isn't as much starting, but being in the right place and having the right job. For my generation it's not as much about getting started as it about being happy and content with where you are that defines if you're where you should be.
When you look at the last two, it's almost a comical concept. For many of my peers, the idea of getting married by 25 is ridiculous, reckless, irresponsible, impossible. We say that our brains aren't fully developed, we don't "know" ourselves enough, it won't last because we're too flighty, and it tacks right onto what Kimmel says about our desire for instant gratification - and also the idea that when faced with a problem in a marriage (or really anything), we're likely to just walk away versus trying to fix it.
It's interesting to think about, we're in a time where adulthood is no longer determined by the milestones we hit, but by the success that we hope to attain; What were once considered as milestones of adulthood are now markers that we aim for after we've become adults. Is there a way to change this thinking? Or is it a permanent ideology that will only change with time? I'm interested to find out - and of course, whatever you think on it would be greatly appreciated as well.
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