How to cope with Adulting

Ever wondered about that day, when you were forced to assume ‘responsibility of things in life’? Or asked to be more ‘mature’? It could have been either self-driven or due to an externality. That was the time when you realised that you were ‘adulting’.

For some people, it might happen at a bar, a funeral, by witnessing the suffering of closed ones, during an examination while chewing your pen, while tripping on drugs or while looking at a miserable poor guy on the road. For me, it happened, while I was in DeeTee (a very famous pub in Manipal). DeeTee is where kids from MIT cheer through their sorrows of life (like not being able to score that hot chick or 2nd October being a dry day). I observed these kids dancing through the trippy tunes of life, enjoying life as if there is no tomorrow. And I, being the ‘adult’ was contemplating about life being so simple when I was one of them. This only helped me realise that I was in the ‘adulting’ phase since, time immemorial.

I don’t know if this is the best or the worst part, but you will face ‘adulting’. It is age agnostic. For the longest of time, you would not know that you are in it. It will just alter the way you live. It is just another ‘way of life’, but no matter what, you can’t escape it.

Some say that adulting teaches you a lot of things in life. I say it forces you to learn those things. Life would create such circumstances around you, that before you know it, you would be in it. It’s like you were enjoying, high-speed internet on your phone and all of a sudden, the internet is banned. This is when the actual journey of your life starts and for most of you it would be about finding ‘the purpose of life’. But is it all philosophy? I don’t think so.

There is a practical way to look at it as well and figure out a way to ‘live’ through it. All of these started with that ‘one particular incident’ which happened with you or with someone else and you happened to be in that situation. But you could have been prepared for such an event with the only unknown variable being the ‘time of occurrence’.

But “History repeats itself”. If history repeats, so do the ‘mistakes’ in history. There is a great deal of learning embedded in the history of other peoples’ life and your life as well. Note the mistakes done by them and by yourself, analyse the situation in which the mistakes occurred and learn from it. Identify the reasons for failure and figure out ways to navigate it. It’s okay to make new mistakes and fail because that would help you to learn and grow. This would prepare you to understand the complications of life. Such that, when it comes, it doesn’t come as a surprise and shatter you. “Always learn from other peoples’ mistake”. Although, be very cautious that these are not going to prepare you for ‘come what may’ but at least, you would have some sense of what might come and how to tackle the situation.

Are you now wondering, why were you reading this whole ‘adulting’ crap? Possibly you are already ‘adulting’. So, stop contemplating and start ‘living’.