What Makes You An Adult?

you can do bong rips, read and listen to free jazz, hate work, and still pay bills, get dental cleanings and go to bed early enough to get some sleep before the alarm goes off.

wow thank u for affirming me

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I didn't say that Aimless, and tbh, I've worked a lot of different jobs to survive. Don't know where the hostility is coming from.

Also map otm. Like I don't make much money, would stand to make more and am moving in that direction, but I definitely am a responsible adult who has spreadsheets of household spending that are meticulous for the past five years.

Like being a crazed weirdo and taking care of one's responsibilities are definitely not mutually exclusive, never meant it to be read as binaristic

I will happily admit that gallons of gin and bushels of weed and loads of jazz-listening are involved in my coping strategies for adulthood.

Personally I don't love working but I accept it as the price of my freedom to do bong hits while my children live in a stable home and enjoy plentiful food and clothing

knowing that none of these options is necessarily the answer

i'll go with that Mike Myers gag "understanding escrow"

I'm a baseline adult, I guess, based on the criteria being bandied about itt. I just don't generally feel like much of an adult when in the presence of other, more adulty adults. I'm just adult enough to get by (ie I pay bills and rent and manage to keep us stocked in essentials but I am otherwise completely shit with money, eg no savings or investments but piles of dumb + worthless crap that tauntingly surround me on all sides).

Middle-Aged Man!

i knew i was an adult when i got excited about budgeting and saving money :((((

Having to care for a dependent to the extent that they matter more than you seems like an option. Could be a child, could be a sibling, could be a parent

Or a pet ocelot

Just sayin

don't drink, don't smoke -- what do i do

Anyone who has taken on thousands in debt for their cat’s cancer treatment is an adult IMO

Many of these answers are depressing, and about loss or constriction, I don't find adulthood especially depressing, losing, or constricting.

I had some very adult thoughts, and very adult understandings, and even a few very adult experiences when I was a child. But they didn't make me an adult, because they were fleeting. From adolescence on, I'd have glancing moments of adulthood... and then I spent college and my early twenties gadding about trying to find meaning in the universe and it was all very silly and depressing. And achingly earnest.

To my mind, adulthood is a series of recognitions that anybody, even a little squirt, can have. But until the recognitions are truly felt (not just thought) and lived and integrated into the essence of an outlook, I don't think they become 'adult.' I guess every-kid comes pre-loaded with some pieces of adult-brain, and has to learn others, and the exact make-up is different for each person.

Some of the things I had to learn 'the hard way' were:

As long as I am me, I will always have to live with myself so I better get square with my choices.
I can't lie, cheat, steal, use meanness to hurt other people... I am through-and-through a moral being.
I don't want to die, but, like, I'm going to and it's actually not a big deal to anybody but a very small number of people.
Healthy humans don't vacillate between 'happy' and 'sad' ... they're content with neutral.
It's hard to cause harm with individual acts of compassion.

Some things I am still learning are

If you speak the truth it will anger people who embrace bogusness, and you should always speak the truth
There is a kind of anger that is compassionate
People who believe themselves to be 'gifted' can be dangerous, and often need a lot of compassion
It never pays to take shortcuts; I am not a 'shortcut person,' even if that means I can't have the comforts other people can have.

i like the last two posts a lot

Going and buying carpeting for the house. That felt like a pretty adult thing to do.

excellent post by remy

That's a great post, remy bean.

I've got a lot of the trappings of adulthood (a mortgage, two teenaged kids, various - mild - chronic ailments; I drive, cook, garden, fix shit) but I don't think any of those things particularly carry an essence of adulthood or maturity in and of themselves. Which is to say, adulthood is a style, really, or a mode of being. I've had what in retrospect looks like a pretty comfortable run at things, and I was still pretty childish until the last five years or so - almost like I was bitterly clinging to the gasps and vestiges of my adolescence: I got drunk a lot (and was a shitty drunk), I didn't face into a future that very much needed my attention, I was stuck in a job that was slowly killing me (with boredom). I wasn't an awful husband or dad, but I very much wasn't a great one. The thing that changed me (and to which I was nudged, then shoved, then dragged) was becoming a teacher - a process that, it's not too dramatic to say, broke me and out of which I'm still putting myself back together. Very much for the better.

The greatest thing is that it forced (and forces) me to be present, and out of that attention comes a sense of agency and causality: I'm in charge of this thing; my actions have repercussions in ways I'm still making sense of; I have to make sense of the mess and find a way to live. This all sounds blindingly obvious now it's written down (and needlessly portentous, probably) but it took me until my late 30s to realise it. To paraphrase Charles Olson, we have to learn the simplest things last.

I am firmly committed to making my own mistakes and owning the consequences.

my emphasis -- for me, YMP hit the nail on the head here. I guess that is "Other".

Diagnosed with a chronic illness
Undergoing major surgery
Getting married
Getting divorced
Having a kid
Taking on a mortgage
Death of a parent
Other

Depending on how major my multiple surgeries are considered, I only need a divorce for the full set.

For me it wasn't quite having children, it was realising I put their welfare at the top of the list in decisions.

Other - posting on the internet

yeah I voted having children but mainly because "realising I put their welfare at the top of the list in decisions" is what I think of here, where you could replace "their welfare" with "the welfare of a few particular humans", because it could be that you take welfare responsibility for e.g. a parent in a way that your own personal welfare is no longer your chief priority. I say "a few particular humans" because I don't think being involved in charitable work is necessarily enough, unless that work involves a close personal relationship with some of the people you're working with & you subvert your own ends for their ends.

I would add losing one's religion to the list, even if that's not an option I would vote for.

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cmd-f "sex"
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wtf

It might be a stupid answer, but my first thought was "first key sexual experience." If it's a good one, it's an introduction to one's adult body; if it's a bad one, especially a coerced or nonconsensual one, it's an introduction to the miseries and cruelty of adulthood.

I've been paying my own way since I was roughly 20, have stuck it out almost 16 years at my current company, have good savings, am fairly independent, and have been helping take care of my parents. most days I still feel like a 12 year old inside - not in a good way, but mostly in a 'timidity' sort of way.

i don't mean to put down other people's experiences of sacrifice of self in raising children but i think that's a really limited and frankly sad vision of adulthood especially when so many admirable adults choose not to have children and also when the world is on track to warm 3c by 2050. tests of sacrifice for and devotion to others is an important part of being a well-rounded and not-miserable adult imo but i wish it wasn't so often in the name of blood family or like nation/the patriarchy or whatever.

hell people do the same thing for their cats / dogs as milo mentioned. i wish people were a little more abstract / general about what these experiences mean when they talk about them especially when traditional modes of access to these experiences are frankly becoming toxic and also leave a lot of people out of the discussion.

as many people have pointed out, having children, like having sex, doesn't necessarily make one an adult. the same applies to working a job, getting married/divorced, or losing a parent. one can still be very childish in the wake of any of the events listed in the poll. it has more to do with evolving an emotional maturity, as opposed to mere grimness or resignation. adulthood has its joys, too.

Nothing. There is no such thing as adulthood.

i might argue the opposite: there's no such thing as childhood!

If this question has an answer it might be recognising that you're both wright/rong

my chainsmoking Kerry grandma once told me when I was 14: just cos I'm a ugly old relic it doesn't mean I see life any differently to you young lad. Now I'm an ugly ageing relic I know exactly what she meant!

anyway, i've been reading jacques derrida's the gift of death and feel like maybe the real answer to this question is .. accepting your inevitable death as a gift that no one else can take from you and using that perspective to 'be' more fully. in some ways my answer to this question would be 'learning to be fully alive and present,' which there is strong evidence that a lot of people never achieve this hence they never become adults.

otm I'm still back there marveling at this.

otm2

Does Derrida discuss Heidegger in that piece? Now I want to read it.

remy’s post yesterday evening is my favorite so far, I think

The Gift of Death is a really good and p accessible Derrida. There's definitely some Heidegger in there but I can't remember much detail.

i would also recommend shrooms

the first half at least is an explication of an essay by jan patocka. there's quite a bit of heidegger. some levinas. there's also reference to western christianity in somewhat positive terms. so if any of that puts you off i would proceed with caution. it's a bit of a religious/mystical text but it's also derrida so it really gets into the nitty gritty of phenomenological concepts and language. i was skeptical at first but now i'm enjoying it.

so you agree with me

shrooms = phenomenology so yes

I second all the love for The Gift of Death. As an aside, Donner la mort, the less passive original French title, is a banal euphemistic expression which means 'to kill', so it's a poisoned gift in more ways than one (this reminds me that a 'Gift' is literally 'poison' in German). For the morbidly inclined among us, I also recommend Derrida's even more accessible seminars on the death penalty (2 vols., 1999-2001) and there's also an earlier seminar, La vie la mort (1975-1976) that was edited last year in French and whose English translation was published a couple of months ago, but I haven't read it yet.

Chronological age. Pretending otherwise provides manchildren with yet more excuses to act as if they are forever 14.

Will get a copy. Derrida a large void in my reading, for the most part.

I’m half-trolling of course but really getting (rather than merely reading) Derrida also makes you an adult.

tryin to catch you riding derrida

We already call manchildren "adults" because they have attained the legal age of majority. I haven't noticed this nomenclature having any effect when it comes to their self-excusing their own childish or irresponsible behavior.

nb: in my view, the act of making excuses for oneself should be viewed as grounds for immediate exclusion from adulthood. We can explain our motives, but only those you let down can excuse us. Grasping this distinction is a key adult concept.

in my view, the act of making excuses for oneself should be viewed as grounds for immediate exclusion from adulthood

Indeed. As should use of the verbal abomination that is 'adulting'.

Suddenly, we heard a rustling from the nearby bush on which the discarded entrails lay snagged. My father pointed his bullet gun at the bush and pulled me near him. We watched in disbelief as a short, portly, filthy old man with a long white beard and dressed in decaying rags emerged from the base of the bush.

"Who are you! What are you doing here!" my father barked at our campsite intruder with stern, Adult-like gravitas.

The man appeared disoriented, blinking in the sunlight. He had with him only a notebook and a pen.

"Identify yourself, or I shall dispatch you with my bullet gun!" my father commanded.

"Don't shoot," the strange man croaked softly. "I am here to help. I have been crouching in this bush observing people since the 1970s. I understand you are having a very intense coming-of-age ritual, but I have concerns regarding your parenting methods, and I wish to share my opinion with you."

"You have WHAT? You wish to WHAT??" my father cocked his bullet gun and aimed it at the strange man. I tensed up, incredibly frightened, knowing something terrible was about to happen.

"Your way is to control with violence and hate," the man calmly explained. "This is not the way to be a True Adult Man. The way to be a True Adult Man, like me, is to control with intelligence and emotion."

Stunned and caught off guard by the mysterious interloper from the bush, my father stomped and stammered, "who in the hell do you think you are? Give me one reason I shouldn't pump you full of buckshot from my bullet gun, much like how I have dispatched the animal whose corpse lies partially processed here on this rock before me, you fool?"

The man chuckled a wise and insightful chuckle. "Because," he said with a wise and insightful grin, "I am God."

At this moment the man reached up to the top of his forehead, grasped a zipper that had been hidden beneath his receding hairline, and peeled away his human face flesh to reveal a glowing mass of ethereal blue light, much like how Brian Dennehey did in the wonderful 1985 feature film Cocoon.

"Guess you've got a lot to learn about being an Adult, fuckface!" said God as he floated away up into heaven where he lived. My father and I were pretty weirded out, gotta admit. We killed a few more animals that weekend and then drove home, but not really talking about the encounter with God as much as you might think, because we heard on the radio that the Dalles Cowboys had just won their second consecutive Super Bowl victory over the Buffalo Bills that weekend. Emmitt Smith was in his prime, I tell you what.

Anyway, a few years later I told my mom about how my dad tried to get me to either kill him or have sex with a woman to become an Adult. She did not like that, and got pretty upset about it. They eventually got divorced.

taking on debt is how our societies seem to mark 'this person is an adult now'.

this is a really interesting idea! ... like, it also relates to how some of the folks in this thread who aren't "traditionalists" approach life, kinda, or maybe just me? ... like, thinking about the different durations of debt vis a vis responsibility. Also R.I.P. David Graeber, just because y'know, "debt."

There is short-term debt: credit cards being the most common, and residential leases
There is medium-term debt (I'm not using technical terms here, just fyi): student loans are theoretically an example, in that theoretically you are supposed to be able to pay them off in 10 years, I think?
There is long-term debt: mortgages (generally 30-year, though I guess some people do 15 year mortgages, probably less common nowadays)
And there is forever-debt: babbies -- though perhaps this could be long-term -- idk

But as someone that only has short-term debt, I definitely sometimes feel like "less of an adult" than people with mortgages and kids -- long-term debtors. On the other hand, I am pretty secure in my "adulthood" though I don't really see it as being all that aspirational tbh.

n.b. I was raised by parents that at least once every two years gave me a birthday card with some excerpt from "If" by Rudyard Kipling ... so, that aspirational quality of "being a man" (being an adult) was really drilled into me.

nb: in my view, the act of making excuses for oneself should be viewed as grounds for immediate exclusion from adulthood.

There is no exclusion from adulthood. One cannot opt out of adult responsibilities. Adult respect perhaps, but if that's what this thread is about, I have no opinion to share.

those creatures jumped the barricade and headed for the sea

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