Becoming an Adult

This fall, my husband turns 30. I once thought that was old, but I’m heading there in a couple of years myself. Thirty feels, well, adult. Staid. Stable. Maybe square?

This year, life is more adult-like. We bought a house, watched our parents grow older, and well, did more adult things. We bought a house, paid down debt, and looked the future square in the face.

It can be sobering. But instead of the expected dread, I’m beginning to find more peace.

You don’t magically change at a certain age, but there is a sliding scale of sorts: at one end, a young grownup finding his way in the world. At the other, an adult with more direction, more purpose. Responsibilities often enter the equation, as do disappointment, death, and taxes.

This burden is nothing new. Wordsworth wrote about a carefree childhood and the envious old man who dreams of such a delightful world. Ultimately, though, he recognizes that even adulthood has a deep joy that breeds “perpetual benediction.” To modern minds, this can be interpreted as gratefulness and happiness.

As my family has dealt with medical emergencies, debt, and the grittier side of marriage, I’m reminded that it takes a bit of messiness to become an adult. Oh, I was a grown up at 18. I could talk like an adult, dress like a young one, and hold a job and maintain good grades.  But ask me what I wanted in life and I had no clue. Nearly 10 years later, I don’t have life completely figured out, but I know what’s good and what makes me happy: my son, my health, my husband, good food, God’s gifts, and a little success.

Adulthood is more complicated, more nuanced than being grown up. Grown up is being at school and enjoying that freedom, but still having your mother wash your laundry on Christmas break. Being an adult means paying off your student loans, and keeping the celebration to dinner at Chipotle because there are medical bills next on the list.

It’s not just taking on responsibilities, because teenagers have babies, get jobs. It’s having something in mind, a goal. The winding road of your twenties becomes something steadier, even if it’s not perfectly smooth. Youth strives for happiness, while adults realize its deeper meaning. Happiness is not a thing or a person, but a hard-fought place that can be won in bad times and good.

With every birthday I celebrate, I wonder if adults are happier, more content than their younger counterparts. I wonder if in exchange for the more responsibilities, the diapers and the mortgage, there’s often a sense of “this is where I belong,” that is translated into happiness.

Our twenties have been full of gargantuan ups and downs: great jobs, bad job, and medical nightmares. But at the beginning of the end, I’m beginning to see more stability. We have a real home. We watch Nate grow, talk, run. We fight, make up, and do life together. The important things in life are settled.

Oh, I still get wanderlust. I want to explore the world, write that momentous book, teach children to write. But I can dream within what gifts have been given. These people, this life, is a part of me and without them, I am not whole nor happy.