The English language is filled with examples of nouns that have become verbs. Whereas we used to place bookmarks between pages to remind us where we left off reading, we now bookmark virtual pages online. A worker not only has a task, they are tasked with completing it. And, at least since 2016, according to my research, not only are people 18 years and older adults, they have to adult.
According to Merriam-Webster, “[t]o adult is to behave like an adult, to do the things that adults regularly have to do.” My own anecdotal evidence seems to confirm that simply attaining 18 years does not an adult make. A person has to embrace the rights as well as the responsibilities of adulthood in order to make it. In other words, adults must choose to adult. I graduated from Cass City High School (now Cass City Junior/Senior High School) ten years ago this past May. While walking across the stage and receiving my diploma on that muggy May evening did not make me an adult, it did mark a shift in my role in society. And the truth is, I like adulting. Sure, there’s plenty I don’t savor, like paying taxes or waiting in line at the DMV. But generally, I’m glad I’m an adult. I like earning a living and budgeting. I like checking the batteries in our smoke detectors and changing out furnace filters. I’m even grateful I can change a dirty diaper from time to time (don’t tell my wife); afterall, it means I have a family to lead and care for. Three years ago, I picked up a book I was sure I wouldn’t finish. But Ben Sasse’s The Vanishing American Adult was so good I couldn’t put it down. Although Sasse is a United States senator, his book is not a political treatise or a get-off-my-lawn diatribe against “kids these days”. Rather, he offers a sobering analysis of what he calls America’s “coming of age crisis” and then offers practical and, frankly, inspiring advice on how to remedy it on a grassroots level. “We need to find ways to liberate our kids from the tyranny of the present,” Sasse writes. “One basic way to do that is to know other people, especially older people.” I agree. I’ve had friendships with people considerably older than myself, whose stories and presence have ballasted (there’s another noun-verb) my early adult life. Names like Frank Morris, Jack and Ruth Esau, Don Greenleaf, and Katie Jackson come to mind. All of them, in some way or another, have touched my life and expanded my view of the world and myself. Plus, there’s just something about knowing people who have weathered depressions, wars, and epidemics--and still smile after the fact--that makes you feel this adulting stuff isn’t as bad as some might think. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a diaper to change.
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AuthorTy Perry is a writer based in metro-Detroit. Archives
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