Navigating the World of Becoming an Adult

As the first day of summer arrives, many kids all over the globe are starting their long-awaited break from the overbearing pressure of school. Public pools are packed with screams of utter joy from the children who are usually half asleep at their desks most of the year. Summer seems to be that time in childhood where the restraints from school and parents finally seem to wear off. A few years go by and it’s finally time for high school graduation. It seems to be time for the ultimate summer break. If high school wasn’t the best time of our lives, college must be even better, right? Living on our own and making our own rules, living life the way we have always dreamed. No mom and dad always looking over our shoulders telling us what to do. For the first year, maybe two or three, it’s so fun to finally feel like we can do whatever we want. That’s when it hits. We can do whatever we want. After 18 long years of someone constantly telling you where to go, when to do things, what to wear, it’s finally up to us. It felt freeing, but now all we feel is lost.

It’s so amazing to be able to explore the world on our own, but in ways it’s scary and confusing as well. There has always been this barrier which softens the blows of the world, but it softens the joy as well. As a child, we are immune to the politics and the conflict, but as we grow older these harmful world actions have more and more impact. In the same ways, as a child we felt some of our happiest times, but it isn’t until we have truly explored and made our own lives and experiences that we may find even more joyous moments like getting married and having children. However, in this moment, this transitional moment, it’s hard to judge what the future could hold and how the past can effect us. Do we believe in true love? Do we want to continue with this major? Do we want to live here? Do we want to get married? It all seems to come so fast. One moment we are children with someone always helping and guiding us in the right direction, and without facing much wrong, we are now left to determine what the right direction is for ourselves.

This can be heavily overwhelming, especially in the age of social media. We can analyze and critique the best and worst parts of our own and others' lives and they never seem to go away. We see death, we see loss, we see marriage, we see birth, but most of all, we see what we are missing. We compare and contrast our authentic selves with the carefully constructed image of someone else. When we do this, most of the times we find that we come up inadequate. But wouldn’t we also come up inadequate when comparing ourselves to Wonder Woman or Superman? We are not these personas, we can create them, but they will never be us. We are Clark Kent without Superman, we are average, and sometimes being average is enough. We don’t have written out story lines that are always exciting and always somehow turn out in our favor. We must realize the world can sometimes be fun or sometimes be cruel and we are only doing our best in the face of all of it.

Life isn’t always knowing about what’s in front of us. It’s taking it one day at a time and asking our authentic selves what it is that makes us happy. We can’t always take into consideration what others are doing or what they may think of us. We are the only ones living our own life, and we can’t let judgements from others dictate what fulfills us. It’s okay to not know. It’s okay to be doing nothing. It’s okay to slow down and take a deep breath. Most importantly it’s okay to take time to get to know ourselves.