what does "grown up" really mean?

I always wondered what it would feel like to be a grown up...what it would be like to be out there, self-sufficient and adventurous.

There are many questions to ponder the idea of adulthood when you think about it. What defines a grown up? Is it graduating from high school/college? Turning 18 or 21? Getting married? Voting? Having a career? Having the ability to travel? Buying a house? Having kids? Having grand-kids?

I think this is one of the conundrums 20 and 30-somethings often feel. We leave school and our teen years, and we start the search to find ourselves. We search for meaning. We search for purpose. We search for careers and lifestyle changes and a chance to figure out what we believe. While searching for and chasing these things, time passes much more quickly than we realize. We wake up and realize that years have passed and we're getting old.

Birthdays, for me at least, seem to bring a moment of reflection. I look at myself and my peers and wonder how we got to where we are. When did we finally become grown up?

Since becoming an adult (and by adult, I mean the agreed-upon American age of adulthood), I feel like I've done a lot. I worked and studied hard and graduated from college. I had roommates. I got married. I started a career I was passionate about. I lived in several cities, states, and even countries. I had a pet. I taught and mentored hundreds of young people and even some adults. I studied (though I haven't quite mastered) other languages. I traveled and met new people and owned my own business. I took pictures and I wrote blogs.

Despite all that, I still don't quite feel like a grown up. I don't feel like I have it all together. In fact, I look at my parents and in-laws and other well-grounded adults in my life and realize that sometimes I feel like a complete mess.

Talking to other peers, it seems that many of them don't feel grown up either. Mind you, these are adults. Adults who are responsible and well-educated, married, and/or have children and families of their own. But they still don't feel grown up.

I wonder if we ever will. Will we look down on our grand-kids someday and finally feel like we've reached that sense of adulthood? When we retire from the careers we worked hard at for 30+ years? When we celebrate 25 or 50 years of marriage? When we notice the wrinkles on our hands and faces? When we look back at our memories? Will it just hit us one day, like a truck, out of the blue?

Or...maybe it's okay to not feel like a grown up yet and to realize that there's plenty left awaiting us. That we're still changing and we may never find ourselves for the singular reason that we are always changing and evolving and adapting.

Another year has passed and I still don't have the answers to these questions. I wonder if I ever will. Maybe that will be the moment I finally feel I've finally grown up.

i guess this is growing up

I've never really felt like an adult. I have a friend who comments each time we see each other on how we are really growing up, citing the fact that I am married, have a house, a career, pets -- every marking of the stereotypical American adult, minus the 2.5 kids and mini-van (or SUV??)

But I guess I have never really agreed. Honestly, I have always felt just the same as I always have, somewhere between those confinements of teen-dom and old age. I always wondered if I would ever feel that "adult-ness" feeling coming on or if it would just happen. If it didn't happen with finding the love of my life, being married, moving away from home or even finishing college and starting my career, what would it be? Having kids? Buying a house? Turning 30 or even 40?

I hadn't thought about it for a while, but I realized recently that feeling like a grown up isn't always a great thing. If being an adult means being knocked down by the failing economy just as so many others have, knowing that our parents won't be there to bail us out, I don't know if I want to join those ranks! We are seeing so many of our friends having their second or even third kids, and we are nowhere near that phase in our own lives. We keep seeing friends, as young as we are, who have already divorced. We have seen death and life and everything in between...and it's made me realize that feeling like a grown up may not be all that it's cracked up to be.

The feeling is bound to appear eventually and I can't help but wonder if it's a good thing. Will it be a relief to finally be that grown-up I always dreamed of becoming, even though it comes complete with the same fears and worries of the older generations who lived before us; or should I be clinging to that security blanket of youth, never letting go? I know we can't have it both ways, not really, but it's difficult to make the choice. 

Or maybe it isn't a choice at all. Maybe it just happens out of the blue, when we realize we have finally reached that stage of life. All I know is that I haven't reached that place yet.