You always hear it on not-that-funny romcoms, or TV shows,trying to prove that they're funny because the characters, who are clearly fully grown, aren't actually adults. They'll have a joke, or a dialogue, or even a whole scene, dedicated to how much they hate the word "adulting". They'll talk about how there's really nothing different, and how saying that they're adults only makes them feel old.
I respectfully disagree. Being an adult has nothing to do with age. In fact, almost nothing in life does. It's about mentality. I feel like in some areas of my life, I am an adult. I catch the bus back home at the end of the day trying to remember if I took the chicken out of the freezer for dinner; if I have time, I'll wash all the dishes in the sink whenever it starts to accumulate; and I always make sure to eat at least 3 fruits a day whenever possible. In most aspects of my life, I think and act like and adult, because I've had to.
However, in whatever areas I don't have to, I fight it as much as I possibly can. At school, I sometimes walk around barefoot on the first floor, even though I've been told off before; unless I'm working, I avoid sitting in chairs "normally"; in rehearsal, I always take my dramatic side over the top, and make unnecessary jokes that put us way behind schedule, just to get a few laughs. In a lot of aspects of my life, I allow myself to be childish, because I've had to.
If I could spend the rest of my life falling asleep on the couch and magically waking up in my bed, I would. If I never had to make chocolate milk for myself, and could instead have my mom do it, in whatever way it is that moms do that just tastes so much better, I would. If I could go to fancy restaurants and not be expected to just sit still for 2 hours, but instead, wander over to the playground and run around, I think I would. Maybe.
But those who do face life head on, whether it be at 15 when living alone for the first time, or at 40 when their parents throw them out of the basement, it's not usually something we choose. It's something that comes from the choices we make.
"Not everything comes along just when we want it. There are times when decisions just have to be made, or you certainly will miss out." That line is from one of my favorite movies, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and I think it perfectly represents what "adulting" is. We carve our path through life from the choices we make, and those
choices require certain behaviors from us, and whether we accept those
or not is what determines if we are "adulting".
In order to fully be adults, we have to choose to accept the responsibilities. Don't make me quote Spider-man, but Uncle Ben had a point. I accept that parts of me are adult-like, because I made a choice to live without my mom, and that required me to grow up. And while I never chose to be an adult, I accepted it as the "Terms and Conditions" for other decisions in my life.
So if you want to spend your life just going out drinking with your buddies and talking about how much you "hate this adult life," that's up to you, but that is not "adulting". That is living out a sitcom, where no one ever goes to work, but they all have fancy apartments and great food all the time. However, if I have to learn to separate white clothes from colored ones in order to get where I want to go, then I will.
