The Secret Life Of Adults - Part 1

It’s a remarkable thing the transition into adulthood. One day you’re snuggly wrapped in the warm and calming blanket of your parents care and consideration, and next…BOOM…You’re sheepishly left flinching from a lethal blow of grown up responsibility, financial uncertainty and uncomfortable social expectation, which leaves you nervously shuffling between a fledgling happiness and a fear of disappointing others.

Frankly growing up sucks, but as second stint millennials we can’t really say we didn’t see the tidal wave of expectancy coming, because this growing up malarkey is part and parcel of the traditional shedding of youth; a life altering occasion marked by no grand function, guided by no coherent documentation, and awarding no real prestige other than the right to legally consume alcohol.

However, unlike the other poor twenty something souls that came, saw and failed before us; never have the young lives of a generation been so definitively mapped out before them; begging the questions:

At what stage do we turn from socially dependent to culturally dependable?

Are we thriving during this transition?

What are the impediments to personal growth and happiness?

And…

Why are so many of us recoiling, resisting and suffering at the hands of conventional constructs of happiness?

The mere desire to exist is rife. It plagues our youth, and our schools. It contaminates the government, our dole queues and the construct of family. We are working to live and trying with all our might to escape the mundanity of the mid-week at the weekend; trying to find happiness in ways and places that cannot sustain personal joy and self-actualisation.

Is it any wonder then, that people are left confusingly unfulfilled and achingly dis-satisfied when deviation from the ‘Grand Plan’ is emphatically considered to be a social failure, a personal deficiency, a tragic story of poor parenting and a sorry case of mental instability?

Some say the rules are simple and effective.

Do well in school. Go to university. Pursue further education if you feel it will be financially or professionally beneficial. Get a job. Settle down. Rent a house. Buy a house. Get married. Have Children. And for many of us, some of these social constructs may have brought us happiness in all kinds of extents and time frames, from the interim to the infinite.

Nevertheless, it would be hard for any of us to deny the fact we’re living lives which are not truly our own, and the worse part is that we actually feel we’re exercising our democratic freedom of choice, because we’re told: “You can go anywhere and do anything with your life!” (Whilst simultaneously being micro managed by multiple parties to conform to every single one of the social expectations dictated above.)

BUT IS THIS LIFE? IS THIS LIVING?

For me the answer is a categoric NO! 

I’m half way through the above check list and I’ve done everything I should, when I should, and at the tender age of 24 I know that I’m largely missing the point of my own existence, because I live in fear of straying from the norm, settling for the good, in fear of pursuing the great.

In my inaugural blog, I touched on this topic, coining the phrase: ‘Comedy Tidings Of The Duck’; one who appears to be effortless gliding through life when in reality, very few people see the worry and effort of little legs kicking furiously below the surface.

The ‘Secret Life of Adults’ has every intention of exposing the uncomfortable topics that are leeching the spontaneity and joy out of life, aiming to expose and unseat this kind of social disposition and absolutely not giving a duck in the process!

Because this good daughter, this good student, this good girl hasn’t yet found a holistic happiness on the mainstream path of compliancy, and I have my suspicions you haven’t either.

And if we’re not questioning our decisions, contemplating our values, examining our societies and challenging our peers and leadership, then the only real reason for our existence is economy. The work trudge, the wheel of industry and a pointless continuation of utopian births and malcontented deaths which are created and halted in the hope, that there is something more meaningful out there for us all…

….and that my friends is worth a discussion or two.

To be continued…

From Etihad flight A330 with love. Always.