Still Adulting….(with lists)

Class Doesn't End When You Graduate

Apparently, my brain wasn't finished with adulting.

I wrote recently about the unglamorous version of adulting, you know the part nobody really teaches you. Taking care of yourself. Letting other people take care of you. Building community. Remembering that your own needs don't belong at the very bottom of the list.

And of course, because apparently my brain likes to keep working on things after I've already written about them, another thought showed up.

Maybe part of the problem is that we spend so much of our childhood being taught how to become adults that we forget something important once we actually get there:

The learning isn't supposed to stop.

As kids, we learn constantly. We learn how to talk and read and write. We learn the rules of the classroom, the playground, and our families. We learn how to make friends, how to share, how to behave, how to be good.

And somewhere in all of that, we're also learning about ourselves. What gets us praised. What gets us in trouble. What makes people happy with us. What feels safe. What doesn't.

We're learning how to be a person in the world.

And then eventually, we graduate.

School ends. The formal lessons stop. And somehow we're expected to know what we're doing.

We're supposed to know how to have relationships, communicate, handle disappointment, care for ourselves, make decisions, know what we believe, know who we are, and somehow have a reasonable idea of what comes next.

Which, when you really think about it, is kind of a lot to expect from someone simply because they've reached adulthood.

Because those aren't things you graduate from.

They're things you keep learning.

Maybe childhood gives us a foundation. Some of us get a really solid one. Some of us get one with a few cracks. And some of us spend a good portion of adulthood realizing that something we thought was a foundation was actually just something we learned to survive on top of.

However we got here, eventually we have to decide what we're going to build from there.

And that's where adulthood gets interesting.

Because the lessons change when you've lived a little.

We learn about kindness as children. Then life teaches us that kindness without boundaries can become self-abandonment. We learn about independence, and eventually discover that independence without connection can become loneliness. We learn to be responsible, and then discover that being responsible for everything isn't the same thing as being responsible for ourselves.

We learn to communicate, and eventually discover that communicating honestly is considerably harder than knowing how to talk.

We learn to take care of ourselves, and then our bodies change. Our circumstances change. Our relationships change. Our capacity changes. And suddenly something that worked beautifully before doesn't work anymore.

Same lesson.

Different depth.

I used to think growing up meant becoming more certain.

Now I'm not so sure.

Maybe growing up is becoming more curious.

Curious enough to notice when an old answer doesn't quite fit anymore. Curious enough to stop and ask, What do I actually need now?

Not what did I need at 25. Not what worked five years ago. Not what everyone else seems to be doing.

What do I need now?

Here.

In this body.

In this season.

With the life I actually have.

That's a different kind of learning than the kind we did in school. There isn't always a textbook. There isn't necessarily a teacher standing at the front of the room. There isn't a final exam where someone tells you whether you got it right.

Sometimes life is the teacher.

Sometimes it's a relationship. Sometimes it's our body. Sometimes it's a mistake we wish we hadn't made. Sometimes it's grief. Sometimes it's simply the quiet realization that the thing we've been calling “fine” hasn't actually been fine for quite a while.

And sometimes the lesson is noticing that we've changed.

This is something I think about a lot in my work with the four energy bodies—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

We can understand something intellectually and still not know how to live it.

We can know that rest matters and still feel guilty when we rest. We can know that boundaries matter and still struggle to set one. We can understand that our emotions carry information and still try to outrun them.

The information isn't necessarily the missing piece.

Sometimes the missing piece is depth.

It's taking something we've known for years and allowing it to become something we actually live. Moving an idea from our head into our body, our choices, our relationships, our actual Tuesday afternoon.

That's a different kind of education.

That's the education of adulthood.

And maybe this is one of the most underappreciated gifts of getting older:

We get to learn the same things again.

Not because we failed the first time.

Because we're not the same person we were the first time.

“Take care of yourself” means something different after you've lived through a season that emptied you. “Let people help you” means something different after you've discovered how exhausting it is to always be the capable one. “Know yourself” means something different when you're finally willing to meet the parts of yourself you edited out for other people's comfort.

The lesson hasn't changed.

We have.

We don't outgrow the lessons.

We grow into them.

And maybe we're not supposed to figure all of this out alone.

Learning as an adult can be strangely lonely. There is no homeroom. No bell rings to tell us it's time to talk about relationships or grief or purpose or belonging.

And yet so much of what we're learning is relational.

We need other people to help us see ourselves. People who have walked a little farther down the road. People who can say, “I've been there.” People who can challenge an old story, remind us of something we've forgotten, or simply sit beside us while we figure out what the next lesson is.

Maybe community isn't just where we go to feel connected.

Maybe community is part of how we continue to learn.

So I'm trying to remember this.

I don't need to have arrived.

I don't need to have mastered myself or figured out the perfect way to live.

I can stay a student.

I can be curious. I can notice when something that used to work doesn't anymore. I can revisit an old lesson and discover something new inside it. I can ask better questions. I can let my life teach me.

Maybe that's a much kinder definition of growth than the one we're usually handed.

Growth isn't necessarily becoming someone completely different.

Sometimes it's becoming more deeply who you already are.

Sometimes it's taking what you learned as a child and finally understanding it with an adult's heart.

Sometimes it's realizing that the lesson you thought you had finished was actually just the first chapter.

The class doesn't end when you graduate.

Maybe there was never supposed to be a graduation.

Maybe we're meant to keep learning for as long as we're here.

Still learning.

Still becoming.

Still here.

Honored to walk with you,

Erin