adult

10 Reasons Why Growing Up Doesn’t Actually Suck


It doesn’t take a genius to realize that our modern society values youth very highly.  Turn on the TV or flip through any magazine & you will be greeted with a veritable host of ads showcasing products that proclaim they can “erase wrinkles,” “cover up greys,” or “give you the energy of youth,” etc, etc.  In the media we are constantly assaulted with pictures of young hot celebrities & on a more day-to-day level we inevitably hear people making comments about how much getting old & growing up sucks.  Since graduating from college I have even noticed a difference in the things I see on Facebook.  I now see a lot of statuses about how much “real life” sucks & there seems to be a ridiculous amount of nostalgia going around for the innocence & simplicity of childhood.  Now I for one spent a great deal of my childhood & adolescence pining for adulthood & the freedoms it would bring.  Perhaps in some ways it’s sad that I didn’t just enjoy my life to the fullest at those stages as I suppose most kids/teens do.  But I have to say that even though being an adult is hard, I for one am not disappointed at all.  I am happier now than I’ve ever been.  One of my greatest goals in life is to always retain the energy & vibrancy of youth while balancing this with the wisdom & serenity of getting older.  So today I thought I’d compile a list of reasons why growing up doesn’t actually suck.  In truth there are a lot of things I LOVE about getting older & I think our society could certainly use a reminder of these things from time to time, so here we go:

growing up

  1. Growing up means no longer having to obsess over every facet of your appearance.  I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but when I was a teenager I spent entirely too much time worrying about every tiny bit of my appearance.  If even one hair was out of line, I was sure I looked horrible & that everyone was secretly laughing at me.  Though I’ve never been the type to really follow fashion trends, I still felt the need to be as “in style” as possible.  Well, one of the great things about getting older is the ability to just not give a crap about such things.  And to know that you are better off because of it.  I don’t mean that I don’t care about looking my best; I certainly do.  But if I have a “bad hair day” or a day when my acne is acting up & making my face look like a teenager’s all over again, I have the maturity to know that this too shall pass.  I also know that if anyone thinks less of me for not wearing the trendiest clothes or not having perfect skin or anything superficial like that, then those people aren’t worth worrying about anyway.  I’m far from the confident person I hope to be someday but I’ve also come a long way from the girl I used to be, & I’m proud of that.
  2. Growing up means realizing that your mom was right when she said it was more important to be respected than to be liked.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m a born people-pleaser.  It just comes naturally to me to want to make others happy & to be well-liked by everyone.  But I have learned to temper that when necessary because I have discovered that it truly is impossible to please everyone all the time.  And that’s ok.  It’s just life.
  3. Stemming from the last point, getting older means having the courage to say no to people who are just trying to use you to their own advantage.  It means having enough self-respect to not waste your valuable time on people who don’t actually care about you.  Getting older means realizing that your worth is not diminished by those who do not recognize or appreciate you.  This gives you the confidence to say no to those who do not actually have your best interests at heart.
  4. Getting older means not having to panic every time something doesn’t go “your way.”  It means realizing that just because you’ve had a bad day or even a bad week, month, or year, it doesn’t mean you’re doomed to have a bad life.  And getting older means realizing that your attitude is the greatest determinant in your own happiness.  (This is both scary & enlightening.  I could write a whole blog post on this subject & I probably will soon.)
  5. Getting older means learning how to agree to disagree.  It means building friendships with people who are vastly different from you & instead of trying to “convert” them you are content to learn from each other & use your differences to build a stronger relationship.
  6. Getting older means independence.  Ah, what a glorious word!  This is what I longed for so much as a child.  I know most people end up regretting such longings because they say the price of freedom is too great.  But I disagree.  I think if you make good decisions in life, you will set yourself up for success & you’ll be able to reap the rewards of independence to the fullest.  I love that as an adult I can choose my career, my spouse, where I live, what house to buy, what to wear, who to be friends with, where to go to school, what to eat, basically everything!
  7. Growing up means realizing that there is no one right way for everyone in life.  There’s nothing more freeing than understanding that there is no exact prescription for success that every person must follow.  Growing up means having the freedom to make mistakes & learn from them.
  8. Growing up means realizing that sometimes life sucks.  It means looking evil in the face & realizing that this world is a cold & scary place.  (That wasn’t supposed to rhyme…)  I know this must seem like a bad thing.  And it’s this loss of innocence that so many people mourn so greatly.  But I’ve never understood why people celebrate innocence so much.  It’s nothing more than an illusion.  For of what value is happiness if it’s based on something that is fake?  To me that’s what “innocence” is.  It’s the happiness that comes from not realizing how bad the world can really be.  I think the happiness we can experience as adults is all the greater because we have had to see so many of the dark sides of life too.  Which is of greater value: the happiness of a child who does not yet understand the world or the happiness of an adult who has looked into the pit of hell, faced the monsters of the world, & come out alive?  Maybe I was a weird child (ok, who am I kidding, I was DEFINITELY a weird child for a number of reasons), but I don’t ever remember feeling the type of blissfully ignorant happiness that people always talk about children experiencing.  In any case, I believe the happiness & love we can experience as adults is all the greater because it’s a real choice.  We have chosen to seek joy even though we have seen that life is often cruel & unfair.  We have chosen to seek peace even though we know that life can be violent to even the meekest of us.  This thought process requires a bit of mental gymnastics at times but I truly believe I am happier now than I’ve ever been.  Yes, I have days when I look at the world & feel like there’s no hope.  But those days aren’t the norm & when they do happen I have the wisdom to know those feelings will pass.  Whew, that was a deep one.
  9. Growing up means realizing that the journey is as important as the destination.  It means understanding that life is short & we truly must live every day like it’s our last, as cliché as that may be.
  10. Getting older means realizing that just because your life isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it isn’t great.  It’s so easy to look in the mirror & think “I’d be so much prettier if my nose were just a little straighter” or “I’d be so much happier if I could afford that fancy car I’ve always wanted” or any number of such things.  It’s so easy to compare yourself to your friends, coworkers, or even celebrities & feel like your life just doesn’t measure up.  But growing up means realizing that everyone’s life isn’t measured against the same yardstick.  We all have our own meter for success & happiness & that’s the only one that really matters.

 As an addendum, if anyone wants to help me create better titles for my blog posts, that would be awesome.  I like to think I’m a pretty decent writer but when it comes to creating titles for papers, essays, poems, or blog posts, I’m always at a loss, as you can clearly see by the super clever title of this post.  😉

6 CommentsLeave a comment

Love is Blind . . . Or Is It?


I just finished reading an intriguing book (which I found at a local thrift store) called The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver.  It’s really quite an improbable story (but a touching one nonetheless) about a young girl from Eastern Kentucky who escapes her backwoods hometown to travel out West & in the process adopts a young Indian child from Oklahoma.  Like I said it’s an improbable story but a powerful one just the same.  The central theme of the novel appears to be that life is difficult, unfair, & sometimes downright heart-breaking but nonetheless it is beautiful, joyful, & very much worth living.  The second apparent theme, which stems from the first, is that the best we can hope for in this world is to give & receive love & to enjoy life as much as we can for as long as we can.

love

The book also focuses on how parents feel the need to protect their children from the world & all the dangers & sorrows it contains, but in the end such a task is futile & in fact impossible.  I found this last theme particularly powerful because it’s something I’ve thought about a lot lately.  As I have mentioned in some of my previous blog posts, I have started thinking a lot more about having kids over the past six months or so.  Just a year ago I was still very much unsure if I wanted to have kids at all.  Ever.  Now I’m suddenly very sure that I do & I’m even thinking that I might want them a lot sooner than I’d originally thought possible (I’m talking two to three years from now).  I’m not sure exactly what caused this change in me & I suppose it really doesn’t matter.  But one thing I think about a lot in relation to having children is that I don’t want my children to grow up over-protected and naïve because that can really be quite dangerous.  But at the same time I feel like no one escapes childhood unscathed; indeed, as adults we are all somewhat scarred from our childhood & adolescence no matter how wonderful our parents were.  So part of me feels like parenthood would be this incredible burden because I’d constantly feel the need to make sure I don’t “scar” my children in any way while at the same time knowing that there’s no way around it because no one is perfect.  What a conundrum, especially for a perfectionist like me!  I guess what I have to realize is exactly what a friend was telling me today: as parents, as in all aspects of life, we have to remember that we cannot control everything so we just have to do the best we can & know that that is enough.

Sometimes I feel a bit cynical for my age because it’s impossible for me to ignore the unfairness of life.  My career in healthcare only enhances this sometimes as I’m constantly presented with situations in which bad things happen to good people, often beyond their control.  As a consequence I often feel older than I am & in fact basically everyone who doesn’t already know my age seems shocked when they find out how young I really am.  But I don’t really mind this because I think perhaps the greatest thing in life is to keep going even when you realize how bleak things can be.  Perhaps it is the same with parenthood.  What I mean is, as children we can’t imagine that our parents don’t always love us with every fiber of their being.  We can’t imagine that they have moments in which they question everything they’ve ever done as a parent even to the point of wondering whether they should even be a parent at all.  But as adults we realize this is very much the reality of life.  And perhaps as adults we can appreciate how much greater is the love of a parent for a child when they persist in raising & loving their child in spite of these fears.  The same goes for loving our spouses, romantic partners, friends, & families.  Real love doesn’t exist because of a lack of fears, uncertainties, or difficulties.  Real love exists in spite of all these things.  Real love persists even when the road of life is rocky & challenging, indeed even when there appears to be no path at all.

I’ve often heard it said that love is blind & that lovers are often so enveloped in their own romance that they are blinded to not only each other’s faults but the faults of the world around them.  But I beg to differ.  I believe true love (whether romantic or otherwise, for honestly I don’t think there’s too much difference but that’s a whole other blog post right there) rather than blinding us opens our eyes to see the world more clearly.  I do believe this means we will “stop to smell the roses” a bit more & learn to appreciate the everyday joys in life, but I also believe it means that we won’t be blinded to the injustices in the world or to each other’s faults.  Rather I believe we will be encouraged & empowered to better ourselves & the world around us & to tackle the injustices of life with as much passion as we can muster.  Indeed real love gives us the courage to face an uncertain world & to know that even if our lives aren’t perfect they can still be beautiful & meaningful.

[I included the picture of cards that spell out love because I like the implications of love being somewhat like a card game.  We’re all dealt a different hand in life but we have to make the most of what cards we have, knowing that in the end our lives come down somewhat to luck but more so to skill & attitude in handling whatever comes our way.]

0 CommentsLeave a comment

I Started a Blog!


Some time in the014 past year a friend of mine from college suggested I start a blog when I was feeling kind of bored with life.  It’s actually an idea I’ve been tossing around for a long time.  As much as I love writing & photography, a blog seems like the perfect way to share all of my ideas, experiences, & questions about life.  But I’ve always hesitated to actually do it because I wasn’t sure how to get started on the technology side of things & in addition I feel a little arrogant thinking that people will actually WANT to read the things I write.  But nonetheless I’ve been inspired by one of my best friends who just started her own fantastic blog so I’ve decided to give it a whirl.

For my first post I decided to keep things light & humorous.  So here goes!

I’m including a picture of my adorable welsh corgi puppy, Chaucer.  You’re welcome.

 25 Signs You Might Actually Be an Adult After All

  1. Half the texts you receive are from your job asking if you can come in to work an extra shift. (Ok, maybe not half but a significant portion.)
  2. Your Facebook newsfeed is filled with pictures of babies, pets, & recipes instead of parties & clubs.
  3. You can say “5 years ago when I was in college.”
  4. You can say “10 years ago when I was in high school.”
  5. The signs at the grocery store that say “Your birthday must be on or before such & such day of such & such year to buy alcohol or cigarettes” freak you out.  How could that year possibly be in the 90’s?!
  6. Speaking of which, how is it possible that the 80’s are no longer 20 years ago?!
  7. If you don’t already have kids, the idea of having them someday becomes less & less strange even if only two years ago you couldn’t imagine it at all.
  8. Unless you work night shift, staying up past 11 pm qualifies as staying up late.
  9. You see teenagers at the mall & wonder what the heck is wrong with them.  Surely you never acted THAT annoying, right?
  10. A drink at home is infinitely more enticing than a drink out . . . Who wants to pay the ridiculous mark-up?
  11. You realize that karma is real, & sometimes it’s nice to watch her work.
  12. You no longer get carded (or at least a lot less frequently).
  13. People refer to you as Mr. or Mrs./Ms. & you want to tell them you’re not old enough to go by that but then you realize you actually are.
  14. Instead of asking “Are you married?” people skip straight to “Do you have kids?”
  15. You no longer obsess over every single aspect of your appearance before leaving the house b/c you’ve realized no one actually cares that much.
  16. You no longer care if your clothes are totally “in style” & thus you don’t force yourself to wear things you don’t like just to “be cool.”
  17. You’ve come to the realization that you will never please everyone & not everyone is going to like you.  And you are totally ok with this.
  18. Every time you consider making a big purchase you think about how many hours you have to work to pay for it.
  19. You wonder how the heck your mom managed to work full time & still cook a meal every night.
  20. On a similar note, you find yourself actually enjoying cooking even if you don’t do it as much as you know you should.
  21. You find babies cute for the first time in your life.  (Ok, I guess a lot of people have always found babies cute.)
  22. You have a retirement plan/account.  Or you at least think about getting one.
  23. You no longer know anyone in your local high school.  However, you know a lot of the people on the arrest docket.  Or in the marriage/baby announcements.
  24. Modern pop music makes your ears bleed.
  25. You just read through this list and laughed because you know these things are true.  But you are totally ok with that because you have realized that just being alive is such an incredible blessing.
5 CommentsLeave a comment