Adulthood

Adulthood

 

Somebody told me something like: act on the things you can change and learn to let go of the things you can’t. So, that. Also, be willing to change your mind about the world, which would probably be good.

            Do your own laundry (without referring to it as “my own laundry”�" it’s just Laundry). Don’t call your mom a b***h anymore; get a LinkedIn and upload a nice profile picture. Be a decent person�" not obscenely good nor ignorantly bad. Pay an undeserved amount of attention to the most unimportant things you’ve ever heard of, like the Post Office, the bank, the ATM at the bank, new patient paperwork, Orchard Supply Hardware, powerstrips, nice walks, your grandmother’s three friends all called Susan-ish-something. Swipe your credit card at the grocery store with a careless briskness so people never suspect you to be thinking “Yep, just used my credit card,” and should the situation play out that your card doesn’t take the first time and the screen prompts you to swipe again, do so mostly void of discomfort because you’re not supposed to care much what the grocery clerk thinks of you and failing at the grocery store is supposed to be one of the not a big deal things.

Smile the lipless non-smile at people to express the sophisticated unhappiness of your Adult-life, particularly in places like the airport or the elevator, about which you really ought to be unhappy, and you don’t even say “Good, how are you?” anymore, you say “Doing alright, how about yourself?” so as to convey a greater complexity to your experience and a wisdom in you choosing to be so reticent about it. Stop suspecting you might be good at improv.

             Care about the upbringing of your miscellaneous peer when he’s telling you about it in excruciating detail because it’s so different from your own and that’s what makes it fascinating; stop thinking it’s weird that your parents have sex; stop thinking sex is weird, cool, or terrible; stop thinking sex is anything.

And when you fall in love with your best friend, don’t. Only because you’re not supposed to let things happen to you anymore.

            Take care of yourself in the most methodized and passionless way, in the way your mother takes baths every evening but still answers “Yes, honey?” to your father; wholly disconnect from the lust for yourself. Cook sometimes but don’t think “Hey, I’m cooking,” and bake pretty much never until you’re seventy, in which case your age itself is enough for everybody to presume you must have had really important or traumatic experiences that permit you to just bake.

The fundamental task of your Adulthood is to keep yourself alive and doing alright how about yourself. And to make sure everyone knows you’re not naïve or anything, and that you’ve thought everything through. You will certainly be alright, but you’ll miss the clerk at the grocery store, and yourself too. At first, the basic sin of Adulthood is mere pretending; when you go to the grocery store you feel you’re about to blow your cover any second. It’s uncomfortable but in a lively way because even pretending is still a new kind of activity required in order to be an Adult. Now, as The Young People wait longer and longer to arbitrarily metamorphosize into Adults, it’s clear that we never stop being young people�" we just lose our youth. Adulthood is youth but turned passive. How devastating that the arrogance of youth is replaced not by humility, but by acquiescence? Believe that the two are different�" we are enlightened into humility but subdued into acquiescence. I wanted to be enlightened into Adulthood, but I didn’t consider that the aspiration itself was something constructed by youth too and therefore must be left behind. Adulthood says a dry welcome and I nod appropriately. We are the not-doers, the not-seers, the not-beers, and we are taking a Wednesday Zumba class to the song of enjoyment when we once could guiltlessly twirl to its clamor, loving it, often even hating it.

 

Reviews

[Chris]

Okay, I laughed - and chuckled a place or two out loud. But by-and-by - I see you have a handle on "becoming". Good perceptiveness. Be aware that credit cards DO "burp" and Debit cards get mysteriously overdrawn... and the "dealing" takes awareness, heart, and sometimes nerve. Zumba seems to be a rite of passage - chuckling again. And laundry never gets old - it's just that having things to wear can make a difference in how you answer the door let alone skype...