Ask Lemmy

Adults are just large children. Accept this and move on. You will never understand anything, really. Those that seem to are just pretending.

Our parents were faking knowing what they were doing, just like we are.

Being an adult in the sense of being responsible, feel pretty good about. Pay the bills. Feed myself. Go to work.

Being an adult in the sense of having no fun, or tightly restricted fun, not so much. Still go see live music and play video games.

I used to genuinely worry as an 8 year old that I’d get older and just lose all sense of fun and silliness.

Turns out in my early 40s I’m just that very same 8 year old but I know a few more things and like boobs more than I used to.

This is a good and a bad thing.

There is no dividing line between when you're young/middle aged/old. It doesn't exist. I remember being 10. I remember being 20. I remember being 30. I remember being 40. I am still the same sentient entity I was at all those ages.

There is no reason to assign any "age group" to yourself. Be the age you feel inside.

Many of the traits of childhood are wonderful and you should cling to them. Sense of wonder and curiosity, goofiness, don't take yourself too seriousky, adventure, physicality, etc.

I think I get what you're saying, that sometimes one wonders if relative to some of your peers of you're "achieving" enough. That's a trickier question because some introspection from this is good.

• Are you truly content?
• Is your future somewhat secured? (forward-thinking with finances, career, health). Or are you doing the more reckless Yolo teenage thing? (this aspect of being a child, especially if one has kids, I'd say isn't good lol).

I've always felt like a kid and told myself I wouldn't grow up.

Still the same. I think having a somewhat traumatized childhood also makes you want to live as a child freely again.

Also not having kids helps. I can do anything I want and make my own schedule.

I never understood boring old people. Ill be doing projects and having adventures until im 80.

I don't know what the word "adult" means. It's just a made up term we tell kids so we can guide them more effectively towards not falling off a cliff and dying.

Well I mean, we're all just mostly LARPing this whole adult thing, right?

I feel like adding a positive experience to contrast the more negative comments (including my own). The summer I graduated high school was perhaps one of the best times in my life. I really, truly felt that I had my whole life ahead of me.

I spent all of June training with my first guide dog. The clearest memory I have of realizing I was finally an adult was when we were flying home after training. I was sitting at the gate, my new dog lying quietly under my chair, my feet resting slightly forward into the walkway to accommodate her, my head filled with future plans and possibilities. I thought about how I would provide a loving home for this carefully bred, meticulously vetted, and rigorously trained canine that this organization had entrusted me with. I imagined our first semester of college together. I hadn't gotten into my first choice school or major but that was OK; I had a backup plan and was looking forward to it. A kid ran past me, pulling me out of my thoughts, then I heard his mother say "Watch out for that man's foot." That's it. I was a "man" not a "boy" or a "kid" or a "child". The world saw me as an adult. The future may not have turned out how I thought, but in that moment, I was exactly who I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to do, exactly where I was supposed to be, and man it felt good.

"When do I start feeling like an adult?"

That's the neat part! You don't!

I'm 30 and feel barely any different than I did as a teenager. Probably doesn't help I still live with my parents. Although going to my childhood best friend's funeral on Sunday might shake things up.

I feel like I came at this from another direction. In my twenties I cut my foot pretty bad on a rusty screw so I went to the hospital and got stitches. The doctor didn’t prescribe me an antibiotic and I foolishly thought “oh they’re a doctor, I must not need one!” I of course got a pretty bad infection within a few days that required me to be on IV antibiotics for several days. I’m lucky I didn’t need any debridement or worse. I learned through that experience that nobody knows what the fuck is going on and you cannot count on “adults” because we generally know fuck-all.

I'm in my 40s and I still don't get it. I keep asking myself when my life as an independent adult who has my own place to live and access to decent transportation will begin.

Just hit the big 40 recently and I still feel just as immature as I did in my twenties. Just with a bunch of new and exotic pain.

The idea of "growing up" is bullshit and probably stunts a lot of kids growth and development.

Adult is just being 18+ years old. What you may be looking for is how to mature as an adult. That’s done by trying, failing, and learning over and over again. You’ll always have some fear of new things, but you eventually learn how to bounce back from failure to reduce the fear. As you get older, you’ll lose the support of family because they die. As that happens, you’ll learn to fend for yourself. You will not mature if your are doing the same old stuff because it’s comfortable.

Fake it til you make it

When I turned 18 and my grandmother was in her 80s, she told me, "I still feel exactly like I did when I was your age."

I asked if that meant she was frustrated by how slowly she moved (she used a rollator by that point), and she confirmed it did.

You'll never really feel like an adult, but your body will keep on aging anyway. And you'll never really get used to that, either.

Nobody knows how to be an adult. Everyone is posing.

i strongly believe we have deluded ourselves as a society to associate natural human feelings with youth when they are simply how humans perceive and feel regardless of age. every single older person i ask if they feel their age says no. they all tell me they feel like they’re in their 20s at the oldest, some still teenagers. your body ages, you get wiser due to life experiences, but you don’t “become an adult” ever, because what we consider adulthood is a Western lie built upon capitalist standards and strict American individualism (if you’re in the US).

i don’t feel 36. i don’t know what that would even entail. i feel “younger,” but i don’t see it that way. i feel like a human being connected to his actual existence and acknowledging it rather than allowing it to be repressed because i’m too old for x y z. we are all young-minded permanently. that’s just how humans are. it isn’t reserved for the physically young.

Yep. At least partially. Never been able to achieve any of the milestones of adulthood. Marriage, home ownership, kids, etc. Could never afford anything.

Sounds like we're all in the same boat here.

Adulting is an illusion.

It's right around the time that you realize your parents were just doing the best they could and didn't know how to "adult" either that you start to understand that you're destined to do the same thing. We're all just making it up as we go and hoping to do better than the previous generation. Generation after generation built upon the knowledge of iteration.

So yeah, mentally, I don't feel significantly different than I have at any other time in the past twenty years, aside from knowledge and experience, but I also realize that I'm viewed significantly different by others, so you kind of have to act the part and fake it till you make it.

I'm almost 50 and had to look up DAE 🤷 It turns out that it is an abbreviation for 48 meanings!

I figured it stands for Does Anyone Else but what has clearly changed as I grew older is, how tired I am of abbreviations

You don't have an insight into other people's minds so you attribute their behavior and decisions to some knowledge you don't have but they do.
This is a fake feeling caused by lack of information. Everyone is improvising life.

Some reading as introduction to the cause of the phenomenon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_bias

My body reminds me I'm an adult every day.

I don't feel any different than I did in high school. Mentally or physically.