Unabridged

The Vice President of the organization I work for was showing me how to build a PivotTable in Excel. I thought I was proficient in Excel before; now I was learning something I didn't even know I didn't know. I was enthralled. But while I was listening to him explain how to set values and add filters, my brain jumped to a weird place: his small children at home. 

They don't know what their dad does at work, I thought. They don't know any details besides he leaves in the morning, goes to a place called work to do a thing called work, and comes home in the evening. They may be starting to understand that this is a thing some grown-ups do, ideally at least one per family, to make money to buy things, but they don't know that their dad used to work at a famous software company and gave it up to work in ministry. They don't know what a PivotTable is or even what Excel is. They know nothing of this world.

And it clicks in my brain: this is why my idea of adult is so skewed.

I am thoroughly enjoying this book Adulting: How to become a grown-up in 468 easy(ish) steps by Kelly Williams Brown. On the back cover it says, "Adult isn't a noun; it's a verb."

When we are kids, adults are these things that are just around. They're the big people who dress in the crisp clothes and go to jobs to work and feed us and tuck us in. They make food and plan vacations and know how to read chapter books. There is a clear distinction given the fact that, when we are little, we do not know how to cook a meal that involves an actual oven rather than a light-bulb powered one, and we couldn't even begin to organize a vacation. (Once, I tried to "run away". I packed a backpack with my doll in it and a book I liked and went into the backyard until someone noticed. No one noticed, so I came back inside. I was "away" for maybe five minutes.)

We didn't see them become grown-ups, they just were grown-ups because they knew more things and seemed to have stuff pretty well together most of the time. Grown-up seemed like a noun. 

The noun adult idea was reinforced by the most popular question I remember anyone asking me: What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to be. Noun.

This idea assumes that when I grow up I will be something. I will have a job presumably, a career hopefully (when I was around 6, I wanted to work four part time jobs: mermaid, dental hygienist for the elephants at the zoo, professional singer, and ballerina). There seemed to be a moment in time I should aspire to, when I grow up. There would be a time before it happened and a time after it happened, and afterwards I would be something.

Fast forward to December 2012. I am graduating from college. I sit through this ceremony and think, Is this it? Is this… grown up?  But I don't have a fancy job or even an idea of what I'd like to be. Is school really over? Is this real life?

My parents are proud, my best friend is excited, but I am lost and sad. Is not-grown-up-ness gone now? Must I start to be something? But what will I be? How will I decide? Does the fact that I haven't decided mean I've already failed?

It took me a year and a half to finally realize what is stated so simply on my new adulthood guidebook. Adult isn't a noun. It's not something I become one day or wake up as, as if the adult fairy will leave a career under my pillow. It's not a place I arrive at or a thing I turn into. It isn't a what or a who, a when or a where. It's a do. It's a happening. It's a verb.

Class of 2014, maybe you are excited this week as you finish classes and accomplish a college degree. You darn well should be excited and proud, too.  You did an amazing thing, you worked hard, and you and your parents just bought the most expensive piece of paper you will ever own. Wear an over-sized robe and a silly hat and show off that piece of paper.

But maybe like me you also have some emotions floating around in there that you didn't expect to feel. Maybe you feel nostalgic and oddly sad that you will never again turn in a paper or sit in those desks with the ridiculously tiny writing spaces. Maybe your time in school since kindergarten flashes in your mind like a movie montage and you think, Is this it? It's really over? Maybe you feel lost and scared and a little like you don't want to be a grown-up after all. No one told me this, but those are okay emotions to feel during this time as well. 

Relax a little, though, because you don't have to worry anymore about getting to some strange land called Adulthood. You will never arrive, you will only journey, and it's only tiring if you don't enjoy the ride.