At What Age are You Grown Up?

Asking the hard questions has resulted in some heavy posts. See here, here, and here. We all need to take a deep breath, through the nose out through the mouth. Heavy posts are exhausting for the reader and the writer. I don’t want to be theological today or talk about heartache or God’s will for my life or what we should and should not pray about. I just want to tell you what I did yesterday. I had an obligation-free Sunday, so I went to pilates then went grocery shopping. While I was at the grocery store I thought about what I would need in order to cook that week and have lunch at work. I used my discount card as I checked out and went home and read the first 60 or so pages of Love Wins (there will be posts), then I cleaned the bathroom and felt like I was on a roll so I cleaned the kitchen too. Then I cooked an actual real meal, using leaves from my new basil plant that I brought back to life after allowing it to teeter on the brink of death for almost a week. Oh, and I also took out the recycling.

And now you’re the one asking questions: Why is Andrea telling me this? Why did she interrupt my perfectly normal Monday morning with a perfectly normal blog post? Why did she almost let her basil plant die? Aren’t those plants almost impossible to kill?

I tell you all of this to announce that I think I finally feel grown up. I’m 24. Some may think it’s taken me a while, some may think I shouldn’t be saying the word grown up for another ten years. When is it exactly that we are grown up? For me, it was Sunday, April 3, 2011, when I noticed my strange contentment and, to be honest, sense of accomplishment after a day where the most exciting thing that happened to me was finding a pomegranate-scented body wash at the grocery store.

Is this what being grown up is supposed to feel like? Using your weekends to get things done, to pull out the cleaning supplies and put them away again, only to pull them back out the next weekend? And if so, why is growing up all we want to do,

until we finally get there?

No Comments

  1. sadaf@large on April 4, 2011 at 10:13 am

    Very well said!

  2. Katie on April 4, 2011 at 12:54 pm

    I’m 21, and I have days where I feel like a grown up but days that still feel like a small child. I think Sandra Cisneros says it well in “Eleven” where the protagonist says, “Today I am turning 11, but I am also 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1.” Going to the grocery store makes me feel like a grown up. Having people over to my apartment, balancing my checkbook, and driving 15-passenger vans make me feel like a grown up, too. Complaining about the food choices in the caf, begging professors to let me turn work in late, and asking my parents for money make me feel like a child.

    Congratulations on reaching adulthood! But venture back to childhood once in awhile… but not back to the limbo-state that’s between the two.

    Katie

  3. Carlos Lopez on April 4, 2011 at 11:17 pm

    Hahahaha.

    I did that on Saturday (used my card discount, paid with my own money, read like 8 chapters of “Arch of triumph”, cleaned the bathroom ,the kitchen and cooked), Probably I´m 1 day older than you! hahaha. -Laundry will be on Wednesday.

    Anyway that “important” things of “adult” people sometimes are just our responsibilities, and we do them because we just have/need to:
    – I needed food on the fridge, it was almost empty.
    – I used my card discount because that way I saved some money.
    – I cleaned the kitchen because it was necessary.
    – My bathroom needed to be cleaned, Believe me! Hahaha.
    – I cooked because after all that work I was hungry and I deserved it! (I made a salad, that is so mature!!!!!).

    But…. what if maybe we grew up enough when we are able to make decisions. That´s the hard part in life. It is not laundry, pay bills, wash the car, or buy healthy food, but it is to be able to see our life, do the right and smart decisions to take ourselves to our best. :).

    Have a wonderful week. I´ll look forward your next post!.

  4. kerry on April 5, 2011 at 1:18 pm

    I have to say: hurrah for lighter life questions! Life questions should sometimes be fun, too.

    So, I’m not sure that we are ever grown up. I’m 30 (ouch) and I have a Very Responsible Job. I live on my own in the wilderness; I’ve got lots of schooling behind me; I’ve seen the preschoolers I taught Sunday School to when I was an undergraduate student enter high school; most of my friends are married and have kids – many of them school-aged. But half the time, I still feel like I’m 15 and just trying to figure things out. And I think that’s okay: I mean, I have the essentials down: I know how to take care of myself and others. But I’m kind of realizing that there isn’t a number that makes you grown up. I am always learning how to live generously and contribute to the world well. There are always things that arise requiring us to grow. So, I don’t think we’re ever “grown up”.

    A qualification: I think the whole “adult-escense” phenomenon is crap (I’m not sure how to spell that … but I mean the increasing frequency with which adults act like teenagers). Just because we are always growing doesn’t give us permission to waste time playing video games and hiding out in our parents’ basements, without take on grown up responsibilities, like employment and relationships.

  5. Rick C on April 5, 2011 at 2:41 pm

    Me? I feel like a child at times. I’ve been watching the PBS rerun this week of Ken Burns’ fabulous and extraordinarily done documentary The Civil War! I watched this program in 1990 when it first aired and now the rerun is just as spectacular. The scope of this conflict and what it meant not only for those who fought the war. the United States itself and globally is overwhelming. This was more than just about a way of life, it was about free will as well as freedom for all men and their equality. Makes one feel like he’s but a grain of sand among enormous elephant sized boulders. The men and women of this theatre were born for this moment, which of course includes Clara Barton the founder of the American Red Cross. If the immensity of this struggle dosen’t humble you and make you think and look at it all through the eyes of child I don’t know what will. April 12, 2011 is the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War with the bombardment of Ft. Sumter, South Carolina.

    The book I’m reading at the moment is The Empire of the Summer Moon. To me it is a very humbling historical account.

  6. Sadaf Shah on April 7, 2011 at 9:27 am

    By the way lets not grow up any more being kids is so much more fun 😉

  7. MichaelEdits on April 26, 2011 at 9:09 am

    I seem to recall feeling grown up when I was 24, but now I’m 48 and know that I’m not even close. That sounds like a quip, but it’s not.

  8. kevin on April 30, 2011 at 10:02 pm

    well im 22 and i know im grown up

Leave a Comment





This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.