I’m trying something new this week. This essay is more personal than all the rest combined. I’ve been grappling with some thoughts for a while, and usually writing is a process through which I try to clear my thoughts. I don’t always share them, but I’m making an exception here. It’s more of a journal entry and a dialogue that I’m having with myself. I dunno if this would be relatable to everyone, but if resonates with you, do let me know.
After I was done, I felt it might be cool to put it up as a video with a narration. This is the street view from the window of my kitchen.
What I’ve had can be labelled as a pretty standard childhood and teenhood. I’ve had loving parents and great friendships. I’m lucky to still be friends with some of them. My transition to the initial stages of adulthood — basically, into my twenties — has been nothing but smooth. And yet my mid-thirties, they tell a somewhat different story.
I’m 35 now, and as time passes, things for me are becoming more and more confusing. In a lot of ways, I feel the certainties of my youth have given way to the complexities of adulthood. I find myself grappling with questions that may not have easy answers.
This technically cannot be categorised as a midlife crisis. People usually have a midlife crisis in their forties and in their fifties. Definitely not when they are 35! On top of that, I’ve always considered myself a sort of a late bloomer.
When it comes to mental maturity, I’ve always kind of lagged by a couple of years. I guess this is one of the reasons I had a smooth transition from my teens to my twenties. When others were 20 and sensitive, mentally I was 15 and dumb.
But while they had a tough time transitioning into their twenties from their teens, I’m kind of having a tough time transitioning into my late-thirties from my early-thirties.
The dilemma is that I’m categorically too young to be in mid-life. I’m also too old to be a young adult. And given that a lot of things happen to me very late and very slowly, what I’m going through is more likely to be a “delayed onset of adulting.” At least that’s my analysis.
The kind of struggles people have in their twenties, I’m beginning to have them in my thirties. Most likely these are the same kinds of adulting issues everybody has to deal with, I’m just having to deal with them a couple of years too late.
Becoming an adult is often portrayed as this right to passage to become “responsible for yourself.” Henceforth, your life is completely in your very own hands, and you’d have to take the “burden of the credit” for whatever good or bad that happens to you.
Henceforth, you don’t have to do anything just because someone said so. You don’t have to follow orders anymore. Henceforth, you can do whatever you want. And this is precisely what I’m struggling with.
This freedom, it can be paralysing. Now that I have the freedom do what whatever I want with my life, I’m constantly haunted by the question: What all should I do so that my life becomes meaningful? And, what is a “meaningful life” anyway? How would I know if I have achieved one? How do I know if I’m even on the right path to finding meaning?
Part of the reason this is a challenging question to answer is because I’m also struggling with creating memories. Meaning comes from substance, and what gives substance to our lives are our memories.
ADULTING MAKES US DIABETIC
As a kid, everything was new. There were no plans for the future, and no strategy to deal with the present. I took it one day at a time — dealt with things as they happened. I guess we all did more or less the same.
Every day was a significant event in itself. But I’ve been noticing that as I’ve grown and grown and kept on accumulating memories after memories, at some point it started becoming harder and harder for new memories and experiences to make their mark.
As a kid, a normal day at school or a half-an-hour spent with friends was enough to create a new fun memory. But as an adult, even if there’s a big event — a trip with friends, a promotion, a stage performance, a published novel, skydiving, releasing a movie, selling a business, you name it — the effect withers away faster than autumn leaves in a brisk windstorm, and the everyday mundane sets back in before you even know it.
I’m often surprised how a whole week passes away in a jiffy. Even though a lot happens in the 24 hours of a day, but nothing is significant enough to make its mark. I find it very depressing. I guess all of us find it depressing. For obvious reasons.
But more than that, I also find it very concerning. Because, if we’re struggling to create new memories, how on earth would we be creating meaning?
Since smaller events are no longer significant enough to make their mark — we are in a constant need of grander and grander experiences every time. After your first solo trip to Vietnam becomes memorable, your next destination might have to be Syria if you really want it to be worth remembering. The next one might have to be war-torn Ukraine for you feel anywhere near what you felt the first time.
I feel adulting turns us into a person with a very high tolerance for sugar. To really have a sugar rush, every time you need a lot lot more sugar than average. Soon, this won’t be enough and you would need more. This clearly isn’t sustainable. Adulting, for lack of a better phrase, gives us diabetes.
And as if the struggle to create newer and newer memories wasn’t enough, it’s also becoming more and more challenging to really care about things.
There was a point when I was a fanatic about sports and movies. These days, any kind of obsession feels slightly stupid.
The only upside is that I’ve not become some sort a religious or political fanatic, that I haven’t joined a cult, like many of those lost souls desperately searching for purpose. But this lack of a good cause to rally behind is also one of the reasons everything feels a little devoid of meaning.
On top of that, adulting is also kind of boring. Recently I realised that all of my fun memories as an adult are of times when I’ve behaved like a kid — carefree, unafraid, and unaware of the consequences.
It’s not ironical that adulting is exactly the opposite — being careful, being cautious, and being cognisant. This makes everything kind of obvious and monotonous. It’s like evolution, but backward. No wonder kids struggle to become adults.
I’M PREPARED TO GIVE THE GRIM REAPER THE FINGER
The last thing I want is for the Grim Reaper to show up on my deathbed and take a lot of pleasure in showing me all the lives that I could have lived had I done things differently. The last thing I want is feeling increasingly depressed, sinking deeper and deeper, until I reach a point where I simply want to give up and just die.
I mean, the reaper is gonna show up. That’s a given. And he is gonna show us the lives we could have lived. There’s no avoiding that.
And we’re gonna have a bit of a wonder and a lot of FOMO, because technically, we cannot live all the lives. Even if we have lived our best life, we’d always wonder how things could have been had we done things differently. But, wondering what the other lives could have been and feeling depressed about it are two completely different scenarios.
Avoiding feeling sorry for yourself and begging the reaper to take you with him is only possible if you’ve lived a life that was not only full of fun, but also if you have lived a life without a lot of regret. Otherwise, what’s the difference between living and simply existing?
I dunno whether it’s possible to live without any sort of regret. But for all practical purposes, living with minimum regret should be possible, and should be good enough to look eye-to-eye with the reaper.
I guess, that’s the definition of a meaningful life. One that is more and more of fun memories and less and less of regret. At least that’s my working definition.
The irony is that I don’t see a way of knowing the quality of my life looking forward. Currently my life’s GPS is in a state where it’s constantly “Recalculating…” it’s path.
There’s a constant state of confusion and pathlessness and I have this gnawing feeling that I’m slowly running out of time. The last thing I wanna do is meet the reaper underprepared.
To deal with this dilemma, I do this exercise where I try to ask myself every once in a while, if the reaper were to show up today, at this very moment, would I be prepared to meet him? This helps me evaluate my immediate present and my past instead of worrying so much about things that are yet to come. Thankfully, most of the time, I do feel that I’m prepared to give the reaper the finger when I meet him.
All of us want to live a long and happy and prosperous and fulfilling life, and we plan for it accordingly. At least, most of us do. But I feel life doesn’t happen in the future — even though we spend a lot of our time thinking about it.
Life I think happens in the past. I can see the life that I’ve lived only by looking back. When I try to look forward, all I see is haze and confusion. It’s like navigating a labyrinth that doesn’t have a map.
This still gives me some hope though. Even though my GPS is always “Recalculating…,” this also means that it’s constantly trying to workout the best route forward. Even though this creates a feeling of being lost, I try to see my “struggle to successful adulting” not as a pothole on the road, rather as a much much needed detour on the road to meaning.