About the thing they call adulthood
We thought we were adults when we were 18.
And when we were 21.
And at University we thought we were so grown up, because we had to go and buy our own cereal and wake up by ourselves.
But the whole adult thing doesn’t start until you have to get your own health insurance.
No – it doesn’t start until you’ve had to call your health insurance company during your lunch break because they have such short opening times and discuss your case with an unmotivated employee, only to end up being more confused than ever and not having received an answer to one single question.
When that is over, you can start to fill out your tax papers. “Please fill out the correct code”…… WHAT CODE?
I’ve seen the movie into the wild. And I was impressed by the bear. But I still couldn’t understand why someone would want to give up everything to go and live in Alaska. Now I know. Because “everything” means nothing. “Everything” is the system that runs the world. There is not one single country you can live in and not being controlled by tax collectors, health insurance companies, city hall administration, identification documents, banks, land lords and worst of all: sales people. Maybe in the Sahara.. Although I’m pretty sure tax people will track you down there as well. And sales people definitely. And they will find out your phone number even if you don’t have one.
Being an adult means getting a non-existing degree in administration and dealing with people who couldn’t care less to get things done YOU couldn’t care less about. By yourself.
And then there’s this one, beautiful thing about being an adult (in our privileged western world) that contradicts everything else: you have a choice.You can choose what job you accept. You can choose when you leave.You can choose where you live.You can even choose if you want to be part of society or not. If you want to be, you can unfortunately not choose if you pay taxes or not, but you can choose in which country you pay them and how you handle it.
You can choose your bedtime and what you eat. You can choose if you go out or not. You can choose what you talk about and who your friends are. You can’t choose your family, but you can choose how you treat them. And you can choose to stay or to leave.
There is more freedom to becoming an adult than they want us to believe.
