Responsibility, motivation, discipline, maturity

What does it all mean?

Today on the radio station the better half listens to in the morning, they asked the question are you an adult or something similar. This got me to thinking, what is an adult?

Is it age? meeting certain requirements defined by society? achieving something? paying your bills? 

Some people call themselves adults who can’t even spell the word. Others spend more time correcting you than doing anything else. Does this matter either way? 

I think many of us have some type of concept of who they may call an adult. I do not think among these many people that it is all the same definition. Why? 

Or there are people who are called children at heart. Does this mean they are adults generally? And what is a child at heart? 

Does this mean most adults are stiff and boring if they are not children at heart?

When I was young I would listen to adults call other adults children because of their behavior. Yet, how often did these adults behave like children versus not meet the expectations of other people that called themselves adults? Sometimes you could see their point and other times it seemed they were just being critical. So growing up, what role models do people have so they understand how to grow up to be an adult? I fear many do not have an idea of who to emulate. And if you ever asked an adult what all this meant, you heard words like the ones in the title above. Yet, no one really explains how those words apply. 

And if this goes on for generations, what happens to being an adult? Is it a moving target?

I do not have an answer to what is an adult. I know I am older than many others, I have a job, pay my bills, act goofy, hang out with people my own age to college-age children, not afraid to stand up for what I believe in sometimes, ignore reality other times, take responsibility for my mistakes most of the time, try to teach others what is better even if I have failed in that endeavor, I have raised children to take care of themselves, try to avoid responsibility sometimes, do chores I do not want to do, every now and then take on something extra, yet with all this am I an adult? Who knows?

Yet in our society, it is important that people consider you an adult whatever that means or is defined. I don’t know but the local radio station dedicated morning call in time to people to call in and discuss if they are an adult or act like an adult so it must be important. 

To me, this represents one of the problems of modern society and that is we want to label people to fit our definitions of who people should be, yet make no determination if this person is a worthwhile person. And then that leads to another post on what is a worthwhile person. Well, there goes the evening. :-)

Cheers