Walking with wet socks: Why is ‘adulting’ uncomfortable?
Growing up, I had a favourite cousin. He was lanky, quiet, and shy, unlike the rest of my family. At 12, his quietness was a form of passive withdrawal- an invisible stain on his ability to hold meaningful conversations. During the same time, when I was 14, my quietness was a form of protest- to actively move away from discourses I found problematic and unworthy of investment. Therefore, it came as no surprise to anyone when the two of us huddled together and laughed at things that no one else understood. As two adolescent loggerheads, we would argue about why things should be a certain way, both sure that the other one was wrong. When I fell short of optimism, he would tell me about one thing that was going right and when he lost sight of objectivity, I would slide a pair of glasses across the table. So, when at 2o he told me that the world is a ‘random’ place and no meaning exists until you make any, it unsettled me. Popular culture would react to his state of mind with a chuckle, and add “Life happened.” But how and when did ‘life’ lap its way in?
When relatives and parents sit across the table and vociferously challenge the gravity of our struggles, why does their logic not sit right with us? Regardless of my opinions on generalized, angrily made arguments like “Your generation wants to have things spoon-fed to you”, or “Life was so much more difficult in our time”, their logic is not just a product of anger. It is a product of cohort effects- differences in the way individuals experience events or ‘life’ over time. A rather popular example of this would be the ease with which memes categorize internet users into a Gen Z pool, a millennial pool or the infamous yet ever active ‘boomer’ pool. All three groups look at the same world with their own warped lens, and this lens is a creation of their unique experiences. In the early 80’s, my father was my age. He was applying for jobs with the government, had introduced my mother (his first girlfriend) to his family, and had his whole life fanned out ahead of him. He did not have a telephone and neither did my college-going mother. Therefore, like a hopeless romantic, he would save up for his end-of-the month trip to her university (230 kms away from his office), and take her out to a boating club. At 22, I have had my fair share of dating experiences, I can get on a video-call with my partner whenever I want to, and I am sitting on my 11th hour of screen time explaining why.
But who is an adult? In a typical description of the term, ‘western’ cultures place emphasis on financial and residential independence, marriage and family to qualify as an adult. In the Indian context, residential independence may be replaced by additional stress on parental responsibilities. In short, reaching adulthood may be either partially or completely divorced from sharing a residence with parents. Of course, this is largely true for patrilineal/patrilocal communities in India. However, there has been an undercurrent of change in both the time and understanding of adulthood over the years. Individuals well into their mid-late 20s sometimes continue to both live with and depend on their parents for financial support. This observation was made by a psychologist, Jeffrey Arnett in 2000. He found it especially intriguing in the context of Western- Individualistic cultures, where ‘living with parents’ is often frowned upon, and turned into comical references. Before we get into our parents’ heads and try to cautiously untangle the reason for their disapproval, let us take a look at the chronology of life and death- something that can explain a major part of this shift.
Over the past 100 years or so, life expectancy has almost doubled. This can be attributed to scientific discoveries, inventions, access to emergency healthcare, vaccinations, and improved nutrition and lifestyle. What happens when we are expected to live shorter lives? Despite the possibility of this question taking a nihilistic turn, the answer is not philosophical but more economical/social in nature. When it’s ‘normal’ for people to die sooner, you are also more likely to take up caregiving (economic, emotional and social) responsibilities sooner. And as a result of limited opportunities, recruitment into long-term desk work for a limited pool of candidates becomes more predictable and less competitive. This may partly explain the discouragement of frequent changes in jobs even today- because the idea of a stable, long-term desk job is considered both prestigious and exclusive. During the World Wars, recruitment and deployment of young soldiers led to a decrease in the age of marriage. This was for two reasons- one, there was a mortal uncertainty about returning from war and two, taking over an important adult role is very often associated with assuming other adult responsibilities like marriage.
A third and final facet of this transition can be understood in terms of the ironically infamous technological boom. Technology has veined its way into every stream of our lives- communication, travel, access, healthcare and to be more flexible, ways of living. Allow me to explain why it may therefore be an ironically infamous idea.
One thing that separates human beings from other primates is not language, communication or even culture; it’s ratcheting. We build on ‘existing resources’ and improvise to achieve more efficient results. For instance, if a rock could be used to carve on sand, we created patterns, and if patterns could mean less lag in communication, we created codes of convention. In the same manner, technology is a product of ratcheting. If it comes down to a basic purpose, the goals served are usually neither foreign nor unthinkable. Face-to-face verbal communication, a letter, an email, a WhatsApp message, or a Zoom call- at the end of the day, they serve the purpose of extending communication. Therefore, to say that technology is an alien entity that has turned an entire generation into lazy, detached and socially inept idealists is both factually and logically incorrect.
This, along with the global market being more liberal and cultural globalization seeping into everyday life may have impacted numerous events. But one crucial development has been in terms of knowledge, regardless of cohort, or demographic. In short, like the previous generations with regard to the one before, we simply know more and perhaps, want to be more.
In writing this blog, I contacted 35 people who were either in their late teens or early-mid-twenties (Average age: 22 years). Of the lot, one person said that they considered themself an adult. Around 40% of them stated that they didn’t see themselves as adults. And a whopping 57% didn’t know where to place themselves. One person added, “I feel as adult as I did when I was 18, while another stated, “Maybe, maybe not…I am not one according to society’s standards of adulthood”. One participant interestingly added that she is a ‘novice adult’- someone who has newly entered the throws of adulthood at 18. But none of these participants identified as adolescents either. So, if they have grown beyond the phase of ‘typically’ reluctant, uncomfortable, and chaotic adolescents and haven’t reached adulthood yet, what do we call them? One may argue that my tiny pool of participants inadequately represents my argument. But for almost two decades now, Arnett’s research with thousands of ‘adults’ (18–25 years, and sometimes beyond) paints the same picture. More than any other factor- residence, marriage, family, job- one thing that is striking about young adults is their own conceptualization of adulthood.
There seems to be a dichotomy between expectations and desired outcomes. On the one hand, their chronological age may put them in a category of adults. But perhaps, they are aware of discrepancies in this rather inflexible classification of roles. Arnett, therefore, calls them (us) ‘emerging’ adults.
We are older (and debatably wiser) than we were at adolescence but are swinging freely between that and adulthood. We are making conscious, and sometimes unusual choices. We are choosing to dissect social phenomenon and question conventions- taking politically fierce stances, picking exploration over settlement, transition over stability and maybe chaos over quietness. It would be wrong to say that every action we take- every action independent from the expected norm- is motivated by a clear, or even planned goal. A change in academic pursuits, a risky professional move, walking away from long-term but unhappy relationships, or even monogamous relationships, are not in line with traditional constructs of adulthood. Yet they are choices motivated by one thing: the freedom to make them. Perhaps, it’s not that we do not ‘want to grow up’, perhaps there is a need to reflect on the boundary between growth and adulthood.
Recently, as Final Year MA students in Counselling Psychology, my classmates and I attended a class on Couples Counselling. We were divided into groups of five and asked, “What makes a healthy relationship/marriage?” Going by a dyadic-monogamous understanding of romantic relationships, we (groups of 22–23-year olds) spoke of numerous things- communication, friendship, comfort, honesty, loyalty. Nobody mentioned love. Are healthy relationships in 2020 devoid of love? I would like to believe that that is far from the truth. Young adults are largely and sometimes ‘painfully’ aware of what love is. If not a monogamous, long-term relationship, most of us have had a slice of cake from the ever-turning buffet of ‘love’. But we’re also aware that ‘love’ is ambiguous. Despite my itch to dismiss the concept of ‘boundless love’ as vague, and often leading to obsessive dysfunctionality, I will hold my tongue back because it is not unimportant. I have used double negatives to express this because while love is required, it is not enough.
Young adults often have strong feelings of affection and infatuation towards people who they are not dating/seeing/or sure of marrying. Perhaps, this is why, 30% of adults in the survey added that they weren’t in romantic relationships, 10% were ‘involved’ with someone, and 60% said that it was ‘complicated’. Logically, I would have explored what complicated means. But practically, if you’re a 20–30-year-old adult reading this article, you already know what complications in adult romantic relationships may mean. I do not attribute this to only a reluctance to be ‘tied to one person’, but other equally important values that individuals pursue. The first one could just be the knowledge of what love ‘consists’ of. Unlike tangible commodities like the cake you bake for your partner, or the common meanings attached to friendship, love can look like a lot of things. For starters, it can look like BOTH the effort behind baking a cake from scratch, and the comfort of a friendship.
This general awareness of both abstract and concrete concepts (‘love’, as opposed to observable efforts to express affection) may also lead to exploration of other areas of life. The most basic of these reflections constitutes exploring one’s identity. As adolescents, we usually view the world in blocks of white and black- things are either good or bad, someone is either rooting for us or opposing us, the world is either ideal or hopeless. With age, however, things fall on a spectrum. Constructs of morality, politics, social structures, and larger realities now begin to fit into lighter/darker shades of grey. We’re constantly assimilating new information, discovering more about ourselves, plating a scoop of good with the bad, and gulping down the bitter with something sweet. This is not to say that this experience is exclusive to our generation, but combined with the many other things that our parents had not experienced as adults (including a pandemic), the sum total of our stories is unique.
A respondent mentioned, “The rosy picture I had of the world I lived in… it’s crumbling every day.” The statement pushed me into an unexpected flight of thoughts. In the years preceding the ‘now’ that is, I did have a rosier picture of the world. It was easier to have faith, to fight back, and to advocate for what seemed to be a question of basic decency. Waddling through years of self-conscious rumination as an adolescent was accompanied by spikes of excitement- of finding myself living as the protagonist of the story. But in living as an adult, I sigh more often, I withdraw from things that make me uncomfortable. And even though it looks like avoiding conflict on the surface, I do not see it meeting the goal.
Growing up itself is a concoction of uneasy realizations. It is made up of seeing your idols fall- pursing your lips at the mistakes they are capable of making, and accepting the perishable reality of their humanness. It is also made up of choosing the people you want to love, and losing them- to death, change, and most frustratingly, life. It is knowing that people we love are against what the values we hold dear, and not knowing how to stop loving them. It is the empty vessel you’re handed to fill with your choices, and a baggage full of everything you were told was right or wrong.
I do not completely agree with Arnett when he introduces a new term because ‘adulting’ now is different. The conceptualisation is rooted in saying, “We don’t challenge what adulthood means; therefore, we will explain these experiences by putting them into a different box.” And even if I were to agree to the latter, I do not agree to using it interchangeably for growth. This ‘discomfort’ of finding ourselves in a world we can’t be sure of is not an escape from taking up ‘inflexible adult roles’. Perhaps, there is a need to revise why adult roles are so inflexible. Is there a logical reason in thinking of adulthood as the epitome of ‘control’, ‘self-sufficiency’ and ‘stability’? Do we really need to allocate a time for emerging adults to reach an elevation of ‘exploration’?
In short, the world is an uneasy place to live in. It is an experiential equivalent of walking with wet socks on your feet, having the sleeve of your shirt touch wet food, and the screech of chalk gliding down the blackboard. But as young adults, it is also made up of the bitter-sweet hopes and dreams we wake up with. It may be driven by the next season of your favourite show, the warm (but slightly stinky) kisses of your pet, having your parents depend on you for things, your friends checking in on you, a long hug you can cry over when all of this is over. From where my cousin stands, the world falls just short of the good. And on days when I do not have the time or the luxury to reflect, I join him too. But sometimes, it helps to remember the people we were- driven by rebellion, spontaneity and a little more hope- to remember that there is no ‘rulebook’ for growing up, and that tomorrow is closer than the rest of uncertainty.
