Mad Murphy – THE AVERSION OF ADULTHOOD

THE AVERSION TO ADULTHOOD

WOW… another season of this. I was hoping for a bit of society improvement, and I guess some things have gotten better, but… this was requested, so I guess not too much has changed.

WHY IS THE JOKE “I NEED AN ADULT” SO FUNNY? Some of the people I know are in their late teens, so they’re not technically adults, but some of the others ARE over 21, and they still make this joke, why? You ARE an adult, why would you need one? There are also many posters I see making the joke “I don’t know how to adult” or “Growing Up is hard” and I just don’t get why these are so popular with millennials. Is the physical process of maturing painful? Does it actually hurt to grow taller. Is the added ability to drink like a fish too psychologically taxing?

And then I thought about it. It’s not the physical aspect, its the mental aspect. So, it must mean that the brain takes on too much when growing up and you are plagued with constant migraines. No… that’s not it. So what is it? Why is “adulting” so hard?

It’s hard because you were not given the proper skills and tools to make the transition into adulthood smoother. It was a sudden jolt, rather than a gradual transformation like those before you. Remember that video I had about proper parenting? THIS is the result of improper parenting. You have NO clue what you’re up against, you were never taught to fly and now you are plummeting out of the nest to your death.

There is an entire generation of parents out there that were taught that they HAD to have kids, or that they were SUPPOSED to have kids, or that having kids would increase their SOCIAL STATUS. But when it came to the responsibility of actually raising them, they mostly drew blanks. You can’t just pump a baby out, pin a hundred to its diaper and wish it the best of luck. That’s child cruelty, you would be immediate jailed for that. So why is it, that destroying any chance of them succeeding immediately is a crime, but destroying any chance of them succeeding over a long period of time isn’t? That remains to be seen, and we won’t get into the whole abuse aspect of this, but when you think of it, not preparing your child for tomorrow IS, in fact, a form of abuse.

People don’t like to think about tomorrow. Why? Because it’s not today. I see this a lot now. People are focused on today, because they live in for yesterday, and completely forget that tomorrow is coming soon. And then tomorrow comes and people all complain “NO ONE SAID THERE WAS GOING TO BE A TOMORROW!”. I have facepalmed so much in the last 5 years that I have a permanent hand-shaped tattoo on my forehead.

I have realized that when people say “I need an adult”, they really mean “I can’t handle this” or “I can’t deal with this”, and that realization makes me even more angry. Someone just talked about their penis, how can you NOT handle that? It may be out of place, and inappropriate, but you can handle it, it’s not the worst thing that’ll happen to you. And in that, I have realized that maybe they can’t. Maybe they haven’t tools and skills to deal with simple shit like that. Maybe, they have been guarded for so long, that when they are forced to deal with stuff that happens in the real world, they have no idea how to deal with it. Maybe that’s it. Maybe you just don’t know that you have been sheltered your entire life, and that when you set one foot into the real world, that everything is going to change, that no one is going to protect you any longer, that no one is going to cover for you any longer, that no one is going to be there for you when you screw up any longer, and THAT is what scares you.

You should have been taught this a LONG time ago. You should have been in adult training since you started kindergarten. You should have been testing the waters of the deep end, learning how to swim, and maybe jumping in and seeing if you can do it all on your own while you were under the protection of your parents. This is a parent’s job. They were entrusted with the task of filling up this tiny vessel with the skills and the tools to survive once they left the nest. And many of them didn’t, for the reasons I listed before.

Remember all those times when you were a kid, when you said “I wanna be a grown up”, or all those times you say now “Well, I’m practically a grown up”. What happened to that? Now that you’re a grown up, you want to be a kid again. It’s because you weren’t prepared. You were taught that shoving a pill down your throat is much easier than actually sitting down with you and talking about what’s bugging you. And I honestly believe that if you have some form of social anxiety today, that if you had an open line of communication with your parents, 75% of those social anxieties would not exist.

But they do exist, because many parents took the easy way out. They gave you the pill, they forced medication into you, they told you to go to that shrink, they said you needed Jesus. And all this time, you didn’t need them to solve your teen angst, or make the bullies stop picking on you, you just needed acknowledgement. You needed validation. You needed just to be recognized that what you’re feeling is real, and not in your head. That’s what I see today. It’s not really about entitlement, it’s not about selfishness, or sexuality, or gender issues, or anything like that. You just want to feel that whatever you are feeling, it’s not wrong. It is what it is, because you are you. You are going to feel different from Joe Schmoe because you are you and Joe Schmoe is Joe Schmoe. And once you are comfortable with who you are, then you can begin to tackle dealing with everyone else.

Unfortunately, that isn’t how the world works. Nobody is perfect, and even parents can be completely full of shit. They say horrible things like “Why can’t you be more like your brother?” or “I don’t understand why you just can’t understand this.” or “Because I said so.” or “As long as you live under my roof, you will live by my rules.” Now some of those are acceptable when talking about doing bad things, like lying or stealing or harming siblings, but NOT when trying to express how you feel about yourself.

But I digress, point being, you all feel unprepared for adulthood. I have always looked at life as an RPG. you start off at Level 1 – you learn to walk and talk and eat solid food. At level 5, you learn how to read, write and ride a bike. At level 16, you learn how to drive, and make out with someone under the bleachers. At level 21, you learn how to drink, smoke, party, wake up in a field with no memory of the night before…. And then… the tutorial’s over. Now it’s your turn to take the adventure where ever you want it to go.

Some take it to awesome heights, to far lands and defeat many obstacles and reach level 99. Some never go anywhere, stay with mom and dad because it’s safe and maybe… maybe reach level 30.

Adulthood should NOT be scary, in fact, you should be looking forward to it. Look at everything you can do when you’re an adult. You can drink like a fish, do all the drugs you want, stay out late, gamble, vote… that be some good shit there. But, with great power comes great responsibility, and it’s sad that many of you think that’s only applicable to Peter Parker. If you want to stay out all night, you’ll need the money to afford it, so you’ll need to get a job. BUT, if you stay out TOO late on a night where you’ll need to get up early the next day to go to said job, that may affect your employment. You can have all the sex you want, but you need to be mindful with whom you sleep with, and carry protection, or else it may burn when you pee, and then you won’t want to have anymore sex. You may be listening to a video about the aversion to adulthood, only pick up on one minor detail about how you get to have sex, but since you are asexual, you only focus on that, throw a hissy that I didn’t include you and miss the rest of the message, so now you are no more closer to figuring out how to adult properly, because you only listened to what you wanted to listen to…

See what I did there…

I received a message from an individual on this topic who told me this:

When I was young, I was terrified of being an adult. I didn’t know how to pay taxes, vote, HELL, I hardly knew how to do my own laundry. I told my parents this, but they really didn’t know what to say, but they did try. It was on me mostly to figure things out, which it pretty intimidating to me, but with the internet, it was a lot easier.

I learned how to cook, the basics of taxes, the voting system (somewhat), and my school helped to teach the basics of how the U.S. government works too. With this like laundry, my mom helped where she could. Eventually, it came time for me to get a job, and this also scared the crap out of me. But I eventually got one and learned even more. But it took me a while to get over that fear. Sure, I’m just barely an adult now, but I feel like I’m finally figuring some things out, and it’s a great feeling. I still have a lot of things I don’t know yet, and I’ll learn as I go, and improvise when I need to.

This person gets it. Even though parents didn’t know HOW to parent, they still tried and helped where they could, and actually, that IS how you parent. But what I’m getting at is where their parents lacked, they made up for it by exerting themselves and expanding their knowledge and skills so that they can succeed as an adult, and I bet know… they look back and ask themselves “What was I so afraid of?”

Life is NOT a burden. It is NOT an existence of pain, and misery, and distress, and persecution. Life is an adventure. it has always been an adventure. an adventure filled with pitfalls and victories, with highs and lows, with happiness and misery, with beginnings and endings. Life has never been a straight line, and if that is what you were expecting, then I have some bad news for you.

Life will break your heart, and it will lift your spirit. Life will confuse the fuck out of you, and it will enlighten your soul. It’s ok to be scared, because life is a vast expanse of possibilities. There is no manual, because the book would just be too fucking big. It is the game, and those formative years are when you should’ve have learning how to play. There are things that matter, and things that will waste your time. There are no immediate rewards, no phoenix downs, no save points and no end bosses. You just have to get out there and live. The only person right now who’s holding you back is you.