Raising More Questions Than I Can Answer.
When did I become an adult? Is it when I started trading in my skinny jeans for navy chinos? When I realized I own multiple suits and a plethora of dress shoes for all occasions ranging from business casual to functional, yet fashionable? Or when I started reading the Globe over breakfast? Is it when I got a full time job? When I realized I spend more time eating alone than eating with others? When I discovered all I need is a strong cup of joe to start my day? What about when I started paying my own credit cards? Or when I started looking for apartments? Is there a moment in time -- some established concrete occurrence -- that I can look back to and distinguish as my transition to adulthood? Something pretty and neat and uncomplicated that I can set as a Facebook life event? "On December 1, 2014 Daniel Lee finally ascended to adulthood." I'm running through argumentative rhetoric right now, but it's pretty clear that the transition to adulthood is gradual -- something illusory, elusive, something we can't pin down. It just happens. But if it just happens, how can we be prepared for it when it comes? The simple answer is that there is no way to prepare. We are cast out into society as semi-functional replicas of maturity, trying to convince our friends and family that we can truly operate as adults -- that we can properly feed ourselves without accidentally consuming almost cooked chicken, that we can make it through the morning without spilling coffee on our nearly ironed dress shirts, that we can actually drink water from cups filled to the brim with ice, like at restaurants and the like, without dribbling all over ourselves and looking like over-ripened toddlers. As we fail to imitate adulthood from now into the future -- when we've spilled coffee on ourselves, failed to properly iron clothes, purchased overly expensive internet plans, given ourselves salmonella -- we will continue to improve. And in that sense, life is constant improvement. So maybe I'll never be an Adult, in the Platonic sense of capitalized forms. Maybe life will progress and I'll never reach an apex -- a place where I feel like I've reached true adulthood. There is no conclusion to my speculation, but if there were an imitation of one, perhaps it would be that maturity can't be neatly dichotomized into adulthood and pre-adulthood. It's all transitional. So I'll continue to watch cartoons, as I read the Globe over breakfast and a very strong cup of coffee.
