musings of adulthood

I have been thinking a lot recently, for various reasons, about the concept of adulthood. What makes a person an adult? Fifty years ago, people turned eighteen, got married, had kids, and were suddenly adults. That’s certainly what my parents did: married, army/nurse, work work, kids. Bam, adulthood.

Nowadays the equation is trickier. Most of us, or at least most of the people I know, go to some sort of secondary education. Almost nobody gets married right out of high school. A few take the leap after college, but even so, the vast majority of people I actually know are nowhere near marriage, and even further from children. I’m one year younger than my parents were when they had me, older than they were when they started trying to have children, and the concept of being that responsible for another living being frankly sends me into a cold sweat.

So, as we put off marriage and children, the question becomes when do we “grow up?” And how?

I live on my own, support myself, have a full-time job that requires a college degree, and do very well at it. I plan my days so they are full of fulfilling/money-earning activities, I cook dinner, wash dishes, pay rent. I’ve been doing this madness for a year and a half now, but if you were to ask me (in a nonprofessional situation) if I consider myself an adult, I would laugh and bark, “God, no!”

Most of my friends from college are in, objectively, the same life situation as I am. They are working, or studying, learning how to budget on their miserable salary, trying to have some fun when they can. Of course, they are doing it in America. Despite the fact that their life is essentially the same as mine, I feel that if you were to ask them if they consider themselves to be adults the answer would be a resounding yes. Not all, but most.

So what makes me still shy away from the dreaded a-word?

Is it fear of responsibility? A few weeks ago I think that would have been my conclusion, but the simple fact of the matter is that I love responsibility. I love being the person to plan something, split a check, write a test, whatever. When people need me, I am happy.

Is it a fear of making a decision about my life? Surely this is a part of my psyche. Societal dictates, no matter how much you are aware of them as such and try to resist them, are so deeply ingrained into us that you can’t help but feel them pushing on your brain and heart every single day. As a “smart” woman, am I wasting my life traveling and teaching? I know that there are many, many people who would say that I should be acing some grad program on my way to totally rewriting tax law and thus saving mankind. Or some such thing. And that can put an impossible pressure on me to do that, to stop frittering away my youth. But the simple fact is that I honestly, honestly, do not believe I am doing any such thing. Knowing a little bit about the world outside my race, class, country, language, personal history can never do anything but help me. Living in a country where I don’t speak the language has forced me to learn to love myself in a way that I think nothing else ever could, because the simple fact is that I spend most of my time alone. It has forced me to become resourceful and persistent. And it has forced me to accept that there are just some things that I cannot do, or even understand. I am not worried that I am not on my own right way.

Is it Hungary? Here, people start life later. They usually don’t even graduate high school until they are nineteen or twenty years old. I must admit that it does take some of the societal pressure off of me when my colleagues exclaim “Twenty-two years old and already working for two years?!?!!” In another way, Hungary provides me with a sort of buffer to so-called “real life.” Here, I have found a deep internal peace and happiness. Of course, moving away from home, first to California and then to here, also means that I can only see my family twice a year. It cost me my best friend, and I cannot blame her… I left. It means that I cannot see my friends from home who know and love me, or go on their trips with them. It means I will go a year without holding my dog. This calmness inside of me has not been cheaply bought, even if my journeys have also brought several other frankly amazing people into my life.

Is it naiveté? I don’t think it is. Especially after last year. I know that I cannot save the world or even really help her. I know that no matter how hard I try to change the things I view as wrong or unjust or harmful, I really cannot. I know that I can fail, even at something that I pour my entire soul into. I know that there are people that will dislike me for no real reason, and some who will dislike me for very good reasons. I know that the person you love most in the world may be unable to forgive you. I know that you can love a boy with all your heart and have him do the same and that might still not be enough.

Despite knowing all this, though, I refuse to accept it. Or maybe those aren’t the best words, but to be honest I don’t know any that are better. I will not change the world, but I will put love out into it. My smile might be the thing that someone needs. My foreignness might allow my students to express themselves in ways they didn’t know they could. Every time I embarrass myself by doing something American that they don’t do here, it doesn’t matter, because if I do it out of love and joy, then I am simply bringing some goodness into a person’s life that they wouldn't have experienced otherwise.

Because in the end, there is enough stress and anger and sadness and grudge holding and ugliness in the world. Knowing this, understanding in my head that I cannot actually do anything about it, does not mean that I have to understand it in my heart.

I spent this weekend with a very dear friend whom I haven’t seen, or even really spoken to for any actual amount of time, for three years. Three years ago… I can’t properly express how afraid I was of life, or the impossibly detailed and rigid plans I made for myself to avoid actually living the thing. As we chattered away nonstop at each other, as I explained my past three years and what I had taken away with me, as I explained how happy simple things like snowflakes and raspberry beer and fluffy blankets can make me, he asked me what happened to the strident professional dreams I once had. I laughed, and then fell silent. After a moment, I replied that I wasn’t worried. In a line stolen from Briggi, I told him that “happiness is living life in the present simple tense.”

Maybe the reason I feel younger than I ever have is because I find myself open, vulnerable and hopeful, fascinated by all the little things around me. I find myself unwilling to accept that happiness hinges on my salary, my resume, or who I know. Or maybe this is adulthood, or my adulthood, and society has just tricked me into believing that it must feel some other way. I don't expect that I will understand it any time soon, and that is absolutely okay.

As for “running away from real life”… real life is a series of beautiful moments, strung together with the mundane, that sting your eyes and pull the air from your chest.

So, if you excuse me… I’m going to go try to find another one.

La frágil existencia milagrosa y casual,
la vida más pequeña vale mil veces más
que la nación más grande que se invente jamás. ~lodvg