What if Peter Pan was wrong?
From the time we are born, we are put into categories based on our age. Newborn, toddler, child, pre-teen (tween?), teenager.
Then we turn 18 and the world gets a little bit confused about what to call us. According to some definitions, we're adults. We can buy cigarettes or join the military, but we can't reserve a hotel room in our name, rent a car without extra costs, or purchase alcohol. And most of us, realistically, are still heavily (if not totally) relying on our parents for financial support. So let's call us college-aged.
The nice thing about being 18, or college-aged, and then actually being in college is that we still fit into a package. The world (read: adults) expects some but not too much out of us. We're still on that brink of independence, so we have the freedom to explore and figure out what the meaning of life is. There are hundreds (probably thousands) of theories about how we develop during this stage of life, what kind of psychological growth we undergo at this point, and how these processes determine what adulthood will be like.
And then we become adults. A D U L T S. All of a sudden, we are lumped into one giant category for the rest of our lives. Even the mid-life crisis crowd and the senior citizens are adults. But how can the 55-year-old dad who buys a brand new Ferrari and takes weekend trips to Las Vegas possible be in the same category as us? Us, the early-to-mid twenties crowd, the not-a-girl-not-yet-wanting-to-admit-I'm-a-woman crowd, the living-in-my-parents'-basement crowd.
Oh, I hear you. We are young adults. Okay, okay. That makes us feel a lot better. Right?
Seriously. What does that even mean?
It's safe to say that we all define and reach adulthood at different points in our lives. Thekid teenager who graduated from high school at 18, moved into his own place, started working full time, and paid his own bills probably became an adult a lot sooner than I did.
My adult life began when I graduated from college. Sort of.
Graduate school was my purgatory. This weird, undefined space in between the blissful, idealistic college world and the harsh realities of adult world. I was living as on-my-own as I could, but my paycheck from my assistantship stipend barely covered my rent. I spent money only on the essentials, and my loving parents who were quite sick of supporting me by this point continued to help me out as much as they could.
I didn't know who to be friends with (real friends, the kind you actually hang out with on the weekends): my 30-year-old, married coworkers or the 20-something students who worked in my office? I felt connected to both of them, but still felt like I had to choose.
I was fully student and fully employee. I was in classes for 12 hours a week, working between 20 and 30 hours a week, and writing a thesis in my spare time. I still felt like a college kid in my heart, but my schedule (and my no-longer-18-year-old body) did not allow for all-nighters and midnight milkshakes. I wanted desperately to be taken seriously by my definitely-adult coworkers, but spending an evening eating cheese and talking about in-laws and politics wasn't very appealing either.
Remember that feeling you felt in middle school? The one where you're staring in the mirror saying, "Where do I belong? The cool kids make me cry and the nerdy kids make me feel stupid."
[Side note: There's middle school awkward, and then there's not-quite-an-adult awkward. One has braces, drama, and hormones; the other has budgets, decisions, and hormones--the ones that that tell you you're supposed to be reproducing by now (guys, you just won't understand).]
There they are again--categories. Why do humans like to categorize everything? We're finite creatures. We feel better when things fit into a defined space, a carved out area, a designated spot. It's how we make sense of our lives, the daily ins and outs of our mundane existence.
But I propose that we try, for a minute, to step outside of these boxes. What if, instead of pre-teens and teenagers and college-aged and adults, we're all just people. No, not just people. Individuals.
That's the beauty of life, isn't it? That we each get to live our very own. That we each have our own story to write, our own choices to make, our own lessons to learn, our own path to choose. There is no formula! (Or maybe there is and someone has it and is just holding out on the rest of us.)
So today (because why wait until the New Year), I will start living my life according to the unknown plan that God has for me--not according to the made up expectations of the world. I will press into the Lord's perfect will for my life, and will intentionally pray about stepping into this journey. I will actively push out the messages from society that tell me I should be doing X by this time in my life and should have done Y five years ago. I will embrace, wholeheartedly, the present. The moment. And I will be thankful for exactly the place that I am in--even if there isn't a word or a category to define it.
And that's what this blog will be about...my journey to learn what being an adult means in the life of Leslie, to discover the difference between happiness and joy, and to become the individual that I have been uniquely created to be--in all of my imperfection and humanity.
I hope you will join me on this adventure!
Then we turn 18 and the world gets a little bit confused about what to call us. According to some definitions, we're adults. We can buy cigarettes or join the military, but we can't reserve a hotel room in our name, rent a car without extra costs, or purchase alcohol. And most of us, realistically, are still heavily (if not totally) relying on our parents for financial support. So let's call us college-aged.
The nice thing about being 18, or college-aged, and then actually being in college is that we still fit into a package. The world (read: adults) expects some but not too much out of us. We're still on that brink of independence, so we have the freedom to explore and figure out what the meaning of life is. There are hundreds (probably thousands) of theories about how we develop during this stage of life, what kind of psychological growth we undergo at this point, and how these processes determine what adulthood will be like.
And then we become adults. A D U L T S. All of a sudden, we are lumped into one giant category for the rest of our lives. Even the mid-life crisis crowd and the senior citizens are adults. But how can the 55-year-old dad who buys a brand new Ferrari and takes weekend trips to Las Vegas possible be in the same category as us? Us, the early-to-mid twenties crowd, the not-a-girl-not-yet-wanting-to-admit-I'm-a-woman crowd, the living-in-my-parents'-basement crowd.
Oh, I hear you. We are young adults. Okay, okay. That makes us feel a lot better. Right?
Seriously. What does that even mean?
It's safe to say that we all define and reach adulthood at different points in our lives. The
My adult life began when I graduated from college. Sort of.
Graduate school was my purgatory. This weird, undefined space in between the blissful, idealistic college world and the harsh realities of adult world. I was living as on-my-own as I could, but my paycheck from my assistantship stipend barely covered my rent. I spent money only on the essentials, and my loving parents who were quite sick of supporting me by this point continued to help me out as much as they could.
I didn't know who to be friends with (real friends, the kind you actually hang out with on the weekends): my 30-year-old, married coworkers or the 20-something students who worked in my office? I felt connected to both of them, but still felt like I had to choose.
I was fully student and fully employee. I was in classes for 12 hours a week, working between 20 and 30 hours a week, and writing a thesis in my spare time. I still felt like a college kid in my heart, but my schedule (and my no-longer-18-year-old body) did not allow for all-nighters and midnight milkshakes. I wanted desperately to be taken seriously by my definitely-adult coworkers, but spending an evening eating cheese and talking about in-laws and politics wasn't very appealing either.
Remember that feeling you felt in middle school? The one where you're staring in the mirror saying, "Where do I belong? The cool kids make me cry and the nerdy kids make me feel stupid."
[Side note: There's middle school awkward, and then there's not-quite-an-adult awkward. One has braces, drama, and hormones; the other has budgets, decisions, and hormones--the ones that that tell you you're supposed to be reproducing by now (guys, you just won't understand).]
There they are again--categories. Why do humans like to categorize everything? We're finite creatures. We feel better when things fit into a defined space, a carved out area, a designated spot. It's how we make sense of our lives, the daily ins and outs of our mundane existence.
But I propose that we try, for a minute, to step outside of these boxes. What if, instead of pre-teens and teenagers and college-aged and adults, we're all just people. No, not just people. Individuals.
That's the beauty of life, isn't it? That we each get to live our very own. That we each have our own story to write, our own choices to make, our own lessons to learn, our own path to choose. There is no formula! (Or maybe there is and someone has it and is just holding out on the rest of us.)
So today (because why wait until the New Year), I will start living my life according to the unknown plan that God has for me--not according to the made up expectations of the world. I will press into the Lord's perfect will for my life, and will intentionally pray about stepping into this journey. I will actively push out the messages from society that tell me I should be doing X by this time in my life and should have done Y five years ago. I will embrace, wholeheartedly, the present. The moment. And I will be thankful for exactly the place that I am in--even if there isn't a word or a category to define it.
And that's what this blog will be about...my journey to learn what being an adult means in the life of Leslie, to discover the difference between happiness and joy, and to become the individual that I have been uniquely created to be--in all of my imperfection and humanity.
I hope you will join me on this adventure!
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