When does one become an adult?

Is it when one leaves home and starts confronting the obstacles of life? What about those of us who have started doing that in the early childhood? Can you become an adult at 4 or 5 years old? I don’t think so… you start creating coping mechanisms and get more mature, responsible, in a sad, melancholic way but it is not what I am asking about…

Or maybe it’s when one finishes school…around 18..or maybe 21… and the society tells you that you are a grown man or woman… even become accountable in the face of law…. Or maybe it’s when you start the job… or a serious relationship or you marry… is it when you have a child of your own? What about those who marry because “it’s really the time to settle down, once and for all” mommy said? Or when you got a house, an apartment, pay bills and mortgage interest every month? 

How about when people say about someone he/she still hasn’t grown up…but she/he’s like 40…. Or maybe because he/she’s single, never been married, doesn’t have children, still enjoys dreaming from time to time, can’t ever be am adult?

I will try to answer this question. It’s a subjective answer, I’m afraid. But I don’t give a fuck if I’m right or wrong cause it’s my article.

I think you become an adult in stages. And on different levels. At conscious and unconscious level. For some people, becoming an adult it’s more natural. I’m talking about emotional adulthood, of course. And for this to happen, one needs several needs to be secured.

So, having a foundation: a certain type of ….. personality, an inborn way of being. Some are just more  mature, wise, since their infancy. Then it’s about the chance of growing up in a family/context, where one has  at least one model of responsible person around. Or maybe not? Then I think it’s about the inborn way I’ve written earlier which compensate. It’s a whole puzzle of healthy limits, love, contexts for learning, smart & wise people around, balancing frustration with getting what one needs and more.

And at one point in time, more conscious for some, it’s about accepting your parents as just other human beings who did their best. Not the best for you but the best of what they were capable of. And also, when you are capable of expressing your own truth to them, to others… who you became, what you feel, what you believe in.  Just recognizing it for your own sake, not theirs. Accepting all the possible consequences, accepting that you are responsible for yourselves and one needs to tell his/her truth even thou it might hurt the parent, especially when it’s the truth of that child-part inside of you.

Being an adult it’s quite complex. I was told that being a child is also. I forgot somehow. But I guess it is…differently but still.   

You become an adult when you bring together different parts of you and you hold them tight and let them go and bring them back again because you have an understating, deep within you, that it’s ok. When you live your body, you breath and sense a certain acceptance of the world as it is, of you, of the past and the uncertainty of the future. When you recognize in the others human beings who have their own struggles, whose emotions are not strange to you. When you are not overcome by fear but have learned to live with it in a more healthy, wise way. When you get your shit together and you love yourself in spite of knowing you can be shitty too. Because you also know you have the capacity to do something about it and you do it. Until you don’t. And then you might do it again. And so do others.