Ask Lemmy

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

"When do I start feeling like an adult?"

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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'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.

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

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.

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.

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 know I'm mature. I know I'm put into positions of responsibility. I still feel like a teenager.

I'm 42, and I feel like I'm cosplaying and LARPing as an adult. I'm able to convince everyone but myself.

Mortage, kids, and a pretty nice career is my equivalent of a fursuit - something to hide behind in an effort to find acceptance from likeminded.

When I started saying "I can't do that, I'm an important guy with shit to lose" I became an adult.

You're fine, some days I barely feel human let alone adult. I imagine the overwhelming majority are faking it till they make it. It's one of those clichés that's cliché for a reason.

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

I only really feel like an adult when I spend time with kids and young people. Even though the students I teach are at university, and thus technically adults... I'm always struck by how often they seem 'immature'.

And to be clear, I don't even really mean that as a criticism. Sure, at times they don't pay attention and forget to do things and seem akward/nervous. But "adults' do all those things too. The difference is the adults have generally accepted these flaws and come up with coping strategies (both good and bad) like avoiding those situations, or blaming other people.

So, what makes me feel like an adult is not that I'm on top of things, or that I'm no longer a mess. It's that I know I'm a mess, and I no longer hope that one day I'll get everything sorted, and tbh, that's fine.

I worked for a guy in his 90s who felt this way.

I have kids myself, but I don't feel ashamed of letting them know that I don't always have the answers or that sometimes I like to jump the trampoline for fun.

Adults who seem like they know everything and act responsible all the time actually seem "juvenile" in my opinion.

They don't really get it, you know? Like they got to that level of life by following expectations and then stopped developing past that and just keep trotting along. Some people get stuck there while others "soften up" when they get grandchildren and less responsibility or whatever.

People mature in different paces, but the whole "being grown up" is definitely just an optional phase.

My little daughter thinks I'm an adult and calls me daddy

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.

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

Adulting is an illusion.

For me it was after both of my parents had passed away. There's something about losing the people who could still see and treat you as their child, no matter how old you had become, that changes things. I do still feel like I'm waiting to be a grow up sometimes. My great grandfather lived to 101, and still often felt that way. But once the "adults" who raised you are gone, you find yourself out in the open and may have to admit that you're the adult now.

"Being an adult" means doing all the things your parents did when you were young with the confidence and determination you assumed they had at the time.

Also doesn't help that much of modern management culture is suffocatingly paternalistic. Bosses want you to continue getting an education, they want you to dress a certain way, they're out assigning you work after hours, they're harping on you for showing up late or leaving early without regard to traffic conditions or life events. There's HR policy around shaming you for being overweight or diabetic or pregnant that's pitched as "how you can save some money!" but mostly revolves around saving the company paid sick leave and benefits. You're told to save in a 401k, but forbidden from managing your money independent of a brokerage. You're told to live independent of parents or roommates, but without the income to afford a home or an apartment convenient to your workplace. You're constantly subjected to reviews and milestones that only ever seem to monopolize your time and never result in career advancement.

You get the same attitude from businesses you interact with - everyone from salesmen to bill collectors to DMV officials have a way of talking down to you and using shame or disappointment to manipulate your behaviors. TV is increasingly just a series of jangling keys. Social Media is just 40 year olds who act like they're still in High School. PTA meetings feel like the blind leading the blind, as you meet with people who are just as infantilized as you've been, trying to convey why this month's deluge of standardized tests is more important than the last in a way you'll believe more than they do.

And that's before you get to the fucking Police. An entire multi-billion dollar bureaucracy dedicated to being America's abusive stepfather.

It sucks out there, man.

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.

Im not quite there yet, but literally everyone feels this. You know what you know and you don't know what you don't know. Being an adult is figuring out how to distinguish between the two. If you're able to recognize that something isn't in your breadth of knowledge and you're able to consult with someone else who is more educated on the subject matter OR you're able to self-educate before applying your ignorance, then that makes you an adult in my eyes. Or at least is a large part of the bigger picture.

I started feeling like an adult at about age 30. But 20 years later I still don't feel that different than I did in my 20s.

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.