What makes an adult an adult of their mind?

[clever_sky]

I know that this sounds like a childish topic but I was just curious to see what everyone else makes of this question. I’m legally what my society would call a “young adult” but I don’t feel any different from when I was a teenager. Only difference is I feel more stressed out but I don’t think that really counts. So far I’ve compiled a list of things the average college or university student, ideas I’ve gather from my fellow peers, would consider to be qualities or activities that makes an adult and adult. And I’ve listed my pessimistic logical, yet slightly immature, responses below them as well:

1) Drinking/Smoking/Drugs
Response: Things that are down right damaging and a waste of money as well as resources. That said I admit I am guilty of consuming the first of these three because I do on occasion have a drink with family and friends but I only pursue sweet wines (aka dessert wines) and in small qualities. But too much of something is never a good thing, right?

2) Sex
Response: I’ve never had sex with another person before but from what I’ve gathered it’s rather overrated and some what painful. So when people ask why I haven’t tried it yet, I usually quote one of my favorite MAD TV lines: “Running is like sex, its best when you do it alone.”

3) Getting your own apartment/flat
Response: Okay so you get some freedom from nosy parents but at the same time are you able to save money for the future, like for retirement or your future (assuming you don’t have any yet) child’s education?

4) Studying abroad
Response: It’s nice that you want to learn more about the world but going to Europe for a month and staying in a dormitory isn’t really truly helping you learn about another culture. One should really pursue friendships outside one’s social/college bubble. I personally want to do Peace Corp or something outside the norm that has a positive impact. Although at the moment I’m sort of on a short leash with my slightly overbearing parents at this time, so those goals will have to put on hold for the time being…

5) Getting a Job/ Getting your Dream Job
Response: I’ve never really had an actually job before, partly out of fear of becoming like parents and actually ‘growing up’ but also due to my shy nature in real life. But that’s my first step to self-independence or at least that’s what I believe.

At the same time however, I think kids my age are far too concerned about getting a great paying job to satisfy their parents’ egos. As a result, they aren’t happy with themselves or their life because they aren’t pursuing what they really want out of life.

From what I understand, based from this life and past ones, it’s important to do something you love but at the same time it needs to be something practical/realistic. That is, it needs to be something that will definitely give you a job after you graduate. For the ‘adults’ reading this, is this not correct?

My dream job, at the moment, would be to become a social entrepreneur. That is, to help others become self-sufficient enough to feed their families and help them provide their families with the best education possible. In short, my idealistic/ optimistic self wants to help others and to travel the world. To me money isn’t really that important. For while it (money) does make life easier, it doesn’t necessarily make it a content/happy one.

Okay guys, tell me what you think! You can make your own responses to “the list of 5 things that college students think makes an adult an adult” or you can simply write your own ideas/ views of this topic. Have fun folks! 😉

[UFOBelieve]

Wow, very interesting topic!! May I ask how old you are? I got 21 mid November. You can write me a PM if you don’t want to put it here, of course. (Edit: I have just seen it in your profile.. never mind. ^^)

This is also a topic I’ve been into in the last few months. A little background: I began studying in the last wintersemester, 07/08, but it was the wrong field of study, totally wrong (information science), so I took a holiday semester, moved out in October, and am right now studying Philosophy and Catholic Theology on another university than the first.

When I moved into the dormitory, I was also thinking about my definition of an adult and how much I fit it. I figured there were two ways to define it: Either my own way of defining ‘adult’, and how much I want to live up to that, or my parents’ way. Before going to deep into it, I figured, the best thing would be not to think about this too much – you see, those are role models that come from our society, not from you. I really don’t want to go too deeply into how / how much they put those things into our heads, but this is where it comes from, to a big degree.
Not only society, but also your friends. You see how your friends move out, they tell you how awesome it is, and make you a little jealous, and so you think hey, this could indeed be great, and there you go. Of course this can help you find out who you are and what you want, you can’t find out your own perfect way to live that perfectly suits you without experimenting around. But what I’m trying to say here is that maybe even the term adult was invented by society to draw a big fat line between the child who doesn’t have to care about anything and the working father of a family who.. maybe does nothing but worry about their monthly income and how to feed his beloved children.

So, when I sat in my dorms, wondering how much I fit my own image of an ‘adult’, I figured that I shouldn’t care. What I am always trying to do is follow my instinct, follow the way that pleases me the most, do the things I like the most. Because if you force yourself to do this or that to fit this or that image that you or someone else (parents maybe) have of yourself, this doesn’t please yourself at all but rather puts a lot of pressure on yourself.
So my conclusion would be, if you live after your own idea of yourself, or the highest idea of yourself, you can’t go wrong, and if you don’t care so much about whether you’re an adult now or not, you can truly enjoy the way you are, right now, without having to justify it to yourself. Define your own idea of how you are!

Rofl, all that said, I can still see your interest in having those questions answered. Since I am also more or less in the same situation as you are, I will still answer those question with all that in mind.

1) Drinking/Smoking/Drugs
Oh yeah, guilty. 😆 Except for the drugs part (gladly), I do like to consume those things. I KNOW I shouldn’t, believe me, I KNOW, but … as I said before, I am trying to do what’s pleasing me the most, and in theory I know it’s wrong, but on a party with all my friends … having fun and relaxing and enjoying yourself and others is the premise/goal there, so the thing that wouldn’t be fun for me and would totally be against this would be not to drink. Yeah I know.. it also doesn’t make too much sense to me personally … but I just can’t give it up. Maybe I’m just too young and I am still too much into enjoying my life the most simple way I can.

2) Sex
Hmm.. tough one. I think ‘having sex’ isn’t making you adult. It’s something that adolescent guys do for fun because it’s awesome, and maybe it becomes something like a behaviour from the days of puberty. I would say, longing for a deep and satisfying firendship would be more adult that the desire to have sex with whoever crosses your way. ^^
(By the way, glad to have found another MAD TV fan here. This is one of the best series EVER!! 😆 )

3) Getting your own apartment/flat
I would indeed say that this is important. At a certain age, a person should learn to live on himself. OF COURSE I am still financially dependent on my parents and a credit, but things like buying groceries, keeping your apartement clean, your toilet, your dishes, and so on.. all of this is part of the process of taking responsibility for yourself, and I highly wanted to do so, I wanted to learn how to do this, and by the way, I think this is one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life. I can’t imagine it to be any other way right now, although I’m living in the dorms for only 2 1/2 months now.
For me it was also something like an inner ripening. On a psychological level. I just wanted to grow personally, to become a little more undependent, to make my own day structure, and so on and on.

4) Studying abroad
My personal situation is that my family is living in a rather small village, without any university. ^^ So I had to move to a larger town. When I was studying information science, I had to go 1:12 hour by train, and it .. SUCKED so hard. So I knew, when I was going to try studying again this October, I had to move to the town in order to have a feeling of studying there, belonging there, belonging to the people, having friends there, and so on. I wouldn’t say studying abroad is so important. In fact, I have a very good friend of mine who decided to study in our capital city, which is 4 hours away with the train! I would NEVER do that. I still love my parents, my brother and my whole friends much too much to do so, even for one single semester.
I don’t think studying abroad is necessary at all. Maybe if you do something like… information science. xD When you are going to get a nicely paid job very quick and need to have experience in different countries. But I’m not, so I don’t care. ^^

5) Getting a Job/ Getting your Dream Job
It took me a long time to figure out what my dream joy would be. Right now I think becoming a professor and teaching on a university is my absolute dream. You know what, actually I chose those two subjects of mine because I didn’t find ANY other thing I was interested in as much, and right now I trust ‘fate’ (or rather, all-that-is) that I will get a job. My orignial plan was to become a teacher of the two subjects.
Also if I don’t get a well-paid job, I’m sure there are other ways to be happy. I’m very sure. I can’t say what that would be, because I don’t know what the situation will be. But it’s always more or less your personal responsibility to become happy, and I am willing to rise to a challenge.

Alright, I hope I was of help. xD
Enjoy your times! And never cease to find your own answers. 🙂

[Ricky]

Valid questions and beautiful answers 😀

[Will]

…good questions…

…but there is nothing that drop-kicks you into adulthood like having a child !…

[opalescent]

Excellent point, Will… and I would like to note that the first three items on that list, entered into without preparation, can quickly lead to that dropkick 😆

So be careful out there, kids. You’ll all be fine.

[Will]

…this is an article I found on…

Adulthood

Most human beings cease to develop at around the age of ten or twelve. The average seventy year-old is often a ten year-old with sixty years time-in-grade. Our societies are of, by. and for Human Children, which explains the self-perpetuating nature of this ghoulish malady. as well as most of the silliness we see in the world.

The Human Child who has spent years at the same developmental stage understands growth as a process of solidification: of slow hardening into a rigid mass In our world of Human Children, this mortification of the spirit is considered normal. healthy and respectable.

If we gauge societies in light of the developmental maturity of their citizens, we see very little difference. even between extremes. One society may be. on average, slightly further along than another. but the reality is that no society has advanced beyond the stage where girls play dress-up and boys torture frogs. If we lived in a society conducive to healthy. normal development, everyone would outgrow childhood in the personality structure at the same time we outgrow it in the physical structure, but there is no such society. and no reason to think there ever will be. We are trapped in a state of self-aware simian consciousness. That is the human condition.

Any of the negative things we might say about people in general—that we’re greedy. corrupt, apathetic. stupid. hateful. violent. etcetera—are not symptoms of the human animal or the self-aware being, but of Human Childhood. Human Childhood. though. is itself just a symptom of the one core disease from which all others radiate: fear. Fear is the natural and certain state of one who lives with eyes closed. Ignorance is the condition of thinking one’s closed eyes are open and that the world of one’s imagining is the world as it exists.
Jed McKenna – Spiritual Warfare

[Zingdad]

I personally believe you are an adult the day you can say:

“I take absolute responsibility for everything that happens in my life”

Up to that point we blame mommy and daddy for this and that. We do stupid things becasue of our upbringing. Or our education. Or the neighbourhood we grew up in. Or what other people say and think. Anything other than our own choices and actions. We whine and moan about our circumstances. We expect someone else to come in and fix things up. Irrespective of who messed them up in the first place – someone ELSE must fix it. We find we need to believe that no matter what we do/choose/create someone will swoop in and give us a different result… something better than we have created. And when this doesn’t happen we get disappointed and angry. We demand that the government must fix it. Or the church. Or God. Someone must fix it. And when this STILL doesn’t happen we lash out in anger. We want to make them hurt becasue they aren’t doing what we expect. All becasue we won’t take responsibility for our own actions.

Sadly, by this definition, almost the whole worlds population are still children. Which is evident in the way we treat each other and the planet. We are not willing to be responsible for what we do so we get up to all kinds of destructive nonsense.

But back to the point. I personally think all the issues with respect to Drinking/Smoking/Drugs/Sex/Housing/Studying/Working can be resolved with the simple willingness to be absolutely responsible for your choices. Not one of these things is black-and-white. Every single one of them can be a great idea and a wonderful eperience or the worst choice of your life depending on the circumstances. You must choose. And you must be responsible. The alternative is to let someone else choose and blame them when it doesn’t work out. You see society or your parents of the government or whoever might have very firm views on what you should and shouldn’t be choosing. But YOU have to live your life.

[Author]

Posts