I am by no means an adult.
It’s amazing how ofter I hear this sentiment in various iterations expressed by people of my generation, usually those aged 21-35. I disregard the term “millennial” because it’s been plagued with negative connotations by those older than we are, so instead let us talk about us young-ish adults instead.
I don’t think my parents felt like adults when I was born. My mum was 23 and my dad was 25. My father was in the midst of his medical specialty, earning an intern salary, and my mum (who went through a technical high school program and graduated as an interior designer at 18) was working to help solvent the expenses of a young couple and an infant daughter. Yet they are what many baby boomers (not the case of my parents) mean when they say “when I was your age I had two kids, a house, and a mortgage”.
Times are not what they used to. No one can pay their way through college by washing dishes anymore, no one can buy a house with an entry level salary. Goodness, one can barely share rent on an entry level salary.
We’ve been lied to, being an adult is a fallacy and there isn’t a specific age in which one ever truly feels like one. It is a social construct that varies according to social expectations, but also according to the opportunities and possibilities of the times we live. It also has nothing to do with how “grownup” you act, or by how many responsibilities you have. It has a lot to do with coming to terms with yourself, with who you are, with how you define yourself and by how you choose to experience life.
Being an adult is rubbish, honestly, who wants that kind of grief?
And this might be one of the biggest problems my generation has to face. We don’t like the concept of adulthood. We don’t like what we’ve been told adults are supposed to be like. And it’s jarring when you reach a certain age just to realise that no, no one really knows what they’re going.
So is it really surprising that adult cartoons are seeing a golden age? (along with the rest of television, of course). Is it surprising that shows like BoJak Horseman and Rick & Morty represent two of the most nuanced, existentialist, and introspective, yet ridiculously silly narratives and content?
Yes, maybe we are immature. Maybe our generation suffers from a massive arrested development and we will burn industries to the ground and fill the holes with home-made wine and artisan beer and DIY avocado shelves. But we are the kids that got tired of being told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.
We are… Whatever we choose to be. And it’s a painful process to discover that, but it’s also thrilling. We are in a world in which change has never happened faster, in which lives are more public than ever, in which society is global and you can find best friends across the world. We aren’t limited by barriers anymore.
So it is not up to anyone to tell us who we are. I say let them try, because quite frankly my dears, we don’t give a damn.
