On Coming of Age

                                     

September 7, 2013. 10:41 am. My Favorite Coffee Shop in Lincoln, Nebraska.

It's been quite a long time since my last post, so there's that. In the long interim I've moved to Nebraska to begin working on my PhD in Philosophy (a topic which will most certainly make excellent content for another blog post).

Nevertheless, what brings me back to the blogosphere is this - what really goes into coming of age? Recently it's been a prominent feature of my abiding thoughts but truly, if I look back on all of my memories it seems like a series of comings of ages. I'm not exactly sure at what specific age a person "comes of age" at but I think we can all look back on the long list of firsts in our past and reflect on how each and every one changed our being in some big or small way.

The particular coming of age I'm talking about here though is the transition from childhood into adulthood. When exactly does one become an "adult," and I don't mean in a legal or religious sense but at what point do we look at a person and consider them an adult, moreover at what point can we look at ourselves and think, "I am, in fact, an adult." What defines that? Is it a physical state of being? Is it our financial independence? The state of our romantic relationships? Our emotional maturity? 

Furthermore, I do believe I've looked at myself and others at given times and thought, "There's an adult," only to decide later on how completely wrong I was. I remember on my eighteenth birthday I surprised my aunt (and parents) with my very first tattoo and, to put it shortly, they were not thrilled. I was legally an adult and it was my body and in so many ways I look back and realize I was still just a child. 

So what defines "adult" specifically? I have no clue. What's odder still, the older I get and the more mile stones I put behind me the foggier this notion of adulthood becomes. I can tell you that, getting your first job, getting fired for stealing sushi from your first job, getting your drivers license, turning eighteen, getting your first tattoo, graduating from high school, starting college, starting your first "real" romantic relationship, ending your first "real" romantic relationship, graduating from college, moving out of your parents house, moving to Nebraska and starting grad school are just some highlights on my long list of firsts that I thought might make make me feel "adult." And now I stand ahead of them and realize I was wrong every time. 

I often think that adulthood will come somewhere down the line - when I'm responsible for a spouse or a child or an aging parent,  after some other first experience I just haven't come to yet. Lord knows that at twenty-two years old I have quite a bit of life left to live. Perhaps coming of age is just up the road.

And yet, maybe adulthood is just this name we give to everything we are not; maybe it's this mirage of a horizon that we always see ahead but never reach. Or maybe, like every guess I've made before about what grown up is, I'm wrong again.