This is the part where I pretend I’m qualified to give life advice.
To be fair, though, I never claimed it would be good advice. But I’ve completed the requisite therapy sessions, so who’s to say? In a way — with everyone having a unique perspective — everyone is in some way qualified to give advice.
Albeit, not necessarily good advice.
That’s my legally-required disclaimer done, so let’s move on, shall we?
To be an adult is to let things go.
I should let things go.
The word “things” includes all the ideas of the people I should have been, the things I should have done, the promises made by past selves, and the dreams of days long past.
The possibilities as far I can see them are limited only to the width of my imagination; I have the freedom to do the unthinkable and have often only been constrained by the anxieties caused by others’ perception.
The point is: who I am is not who I was.
Who I was does not know what I now know; and who I am does not know what I am yet to know.
I must allow myself to exist in my own expansive fluidity. To be anew. Free to be, and free to become.
Not to be an adult is to appear to be one.
To fulfill the preselected criteria without deviation and without passion, living only to expectations, and exceeding only in the amount of opera you can tolerate without dozing off.
Not to be an adult is to tick all the boxes and to colour inside the lines and to be frightfully dull.
I find that existence unfathomable. Unfortunately, it’s all some people live for.
There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
Now, you can change all the “I“s to “you“s, and pretend what I’ve written applies to your life in some way.
And you can do that without any help from me. You’re an adult.
Aspiring Adult 