When you're a kid, all you want is to grow up. But there are some brutal truths about adulting that nobody ever shared, until you grew up.
When you’re a kid, you think your parents know everything. They can do everything, know everything. Also, they can simply swipe and take whatever’s in the shopping basket.
Chores were for other people, and there was nothing better than jumping on the bed, the couch or running around in the garden, because energy was not at a premium. It was just there.
And then we grow up. We adult. And we have kids of our own. Then we realise a few home truths. And they can be a little, well, depressing.
Nobody has a clue, WTF
Adulting does not mean you have any clue as to what’s going on.
Life doesn’t come with a manual, and grown-ups improvise as they go along. Meetings, work, figuring out relationships and parenting. It’s all guesswork, and sometimes we even turn to Dr Phil for advice.
But every day is a new challenge, and there’s no way to predict which way it will go. We just do it because we wing it. WTF.
Playdates turn into scheduled get-togethers
Having friends is great. Getting to see them is another story.
Life’s so busy that scheduling a braai or dinner party between commitments, DIYs at home, date nights, and school events becomes a nightmare.
A coffee on the go has even become a challenge, because chinwags and sips are often disrupted by messages, calls and emails.
Love letters turned into bills
When adulting, sweet nothings and poems to your lover no longer make it to the top of the pile on your desk.
That’s because stacked on top of it are a never-ending layer of bills. Pay this, pay that, debit this and never credit that. In the horror flick of adulting, bills are the nightmare on your street.
Parents can get tired
A shocking news flash. Parents are knackered when the day’s end and weekends arrive.
Now you understand why your folks did not always want to run around in the garden playing tag on Sunday afternoons or why they were spatchcocked across the couch napping when you tried to replicate the science experiment you saw on YouTube last week. Adults tire.
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Careers become jobs
It’s the rinse and repeat of the daily grind that erodes the passion you might have once felt about your chosen vocation.
Accounting now seems dull when previously numbers danced like pole dancers on a page, courtrooms are simply a collection of objections and above all, it’s just become a job that pays the bills.
The romance of work, what we become as adults, quickly gets a slap in the face from reality.
That is, unless you are a racing car driver, a rock star or a movie star. But then again, that may become somewhat, well, yawnable.
Freedom has a price
Is there really such a thing, though? As adults, our actions, possessions, living arrangements, and commuting habits all come with a price tag.
This, in turn, is determined by life’s station, your paycheck, and so on. It was far nicer when, as a youngster, gifts, dinners, activities, and fun stuff simply appeared, and price tags were just labels on cool stuff you earned with chores.
You are your parents
It’s the gift that keeps on giving, even though many of us swore we’d never act like our parents did.
Yet, when it comes down to it, we repeat the ‘no’s’, the “because you can’t have sweets before dinner’s”, the “because I said so’s”.
Then come the dad jokes. It’s as if there are some things we are simply not immune to, and they are inevitably inherited across generations.
