Adulthood

Someone once said: “youth offers the promise of happiness, but life offers the realities of grief.”

When you look at the sky, you see the endless blue ocean. You try to figure out where it would end, and your rational mind would say “silly, blue is infinite!” That’s what our human life is like; stages from childhood to old age and in the end one last ragged breath,  before our body would go limp.

Being an adult is difficult, harsh sometimes.

Every morning, when I open my eyes to the so-called new day, I feel like closing them again and stay in bed. I want to curl up into a ball and forget what lies ahead of me. But, I get up anyway, and start my day; wishing for things to only get better.

I have got a busy life and routine from Monday to Friday. I am a sane person and I know what I want from my life, but there is this void growing inside me as a young woman.

One day I was over my best friend’s place, we were hanging out together catching up on what was going on in each other’s life. Out of blue, she asked me: “Pankti, are you happy?” I was puzzled by her intensity to read me so clearly. Yes, I was happy I told her. I had a loving family, friends and I was good at my academics. Life seems pretty much relaxed and smooth.

Later, that night I couldn’t sleep I was turning and twisting in my bed. Too tired to fall asleep, I was wide awake; thinking about my happiness.  I was not the same excited young girl when I was at 15. I didn’t laugh that very often. I was busy thinking about how many people counted on me. I felt responsible for not letting down the people who loved me. And somewhere in the middle of that, I lost myself. Sometimes growing up means you have to take the responsibility, you have to raise a kid, be a parent, work. Adulthood is indeed the most complicated phase of one’s life. Many people have so much stress of work and pressure to exceed in excellence that they have to survive on anti-depressant pills.

If I think in a logical sense, being an adult means I have to behave in a certain way. I have to be good at what I do. Eh? But I don’t think so, I think youth is a beautiful phase of life where we get our heart broken, we make mistakes but in the end, we grow. We all have regrets deep inside our heart. Things we can’t undo. Words, once said, cannot be taken back.

 

“When a child first catches adults out — when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just — his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child’s world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

 

And believe me, there are nights where each of us questions our purpose on this earth. We question our beliefs and there is no shame if you are confused; if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. That’s just fine. Because sometimes we just have to go with the flow to experience the zest of this journey.

I don’t know what adulthood would promise you, but I assure you that each of us has the capability to challenge our beliefs, to grow, to dream and to love.

Happy adulthood!

Love

Pankti