Adulting is Hard

I am a thinker, a worrier and an emotional person. Sometimes I use it to my advantage by writing blogs and empathizing with people but it can also be my weakness especially when I tend to overthink. I always reflect on the happenings in my life and put meaning as to why I am in a certain situation. Many people say, you should just enjoy life and stop worrying. But how do you even do that when the decisions you make today will most probably affect your future? Can you always say, "come what may?" Notice that I used always to maintain the premise that there are still some battles you could fight your way to the top and there are those which you should know when to give up. One day out of the blue, I wondered on the concept of "adulting."

Every after life's storms, there's a silver lining.

Finally a new post after a month of hiatus. Funny how it's so easy to break a momentum (one of the goals that I listed this year was to write 1-2 articles every month) because adulting happened. I was suddenly transferred to another team and left my first bosses ever since I stepped into the workforce jungle. I felt like a student on her first day at the university. Imagine going around this unchartered territory where my only trusted companion is myself. But the past three weeks went well. Hoping for more days which I can still describe as "it went well." #AdultingisHard

Adulting. Is it even a recognized word or a slang? When you type it in Google, the meanings come from sources like that of the Urban Dictionary yet we always use it nowadays as if it has long been written in our English dictionaries. We use it to connote the stage in our life where we transition from being dependent to our parents or guardians to finally being an independent person able to stand on his own. It's about landing a job related to your undergraduate course or your passion right after graduating from college, paying bills because your parents will not do it for you anymore, being promoted to a higher job position, buying a car, traveling around the world, building that dream house, marrying our ideal partners, getting pregnant, starting a business and so on and so fort. Unconsciously, we are trying to make a hierarchy in our minds of how our lives should be and any slight deviation from the list would make us disappointed and leave us feeling like a failure. We are constantly affected by our surroundings - our society. On how others think of how life has to be lived. Constantly comparing and looking on what others have that we don't.

So I am writing this post to remind myself you us, that it is okay if we don't know the answers to a lot of questions; because we have a lifetime to research and to find the solutions to those. It's okay if a lot from our age group or Facebook friends are getting engaged, married, pregnant, promoted and richer; because the only person we should compare ourselves to is (drumroll..) OUR OWN SELVES. It's okay to get lost in this challenging and competitive world; because the people seated near us are also feeling the same at times. It's okay to make mistakes; because we learn from it and we promise not to do it again. It's totally okay to say "I'll never be like THAT," but ending exactly like what we said we won't; because maybe where we are right now is really where we should be. It's okay to pretend that we are independent and that we can handle everything and yet we are shaking and crying inside; because we are being trained to be stronger amidst the challenges of life.

At times, I still can't believe I am able to act like an adult. I am surprised that I am able to financially support other people or that I am capable of processing my own thoughts more maturely. I guess it comes out naturally as one ages. All the experiences will eventually lead to this. Adulting is hard but our innate resilience is also as solid and unbreakable. The ability to adapt or to fight back to the challenges of life is just there, hiding inside each and every one of us. Seek out and you will see. 😉