Just kidding!
When I started to write this essay, it was clear to me that I really had no idea what I wanted to say. These essays have been like diaries to me, logging the wider questions I have about the world and my own perceptions (or more likely my confusion) and there were a few plausible topics when I picked up my laptop this afternoon. It might be illuminating to know that I haven’t formed a full thought on any of them, but often that’s where I start anyways. So, here it goes.
I wanted to go back to something I talked about before. I wrote an essay a month or so ago about utilizing the mindset we have as children to liberate us from this impossible idea that we adults know everything, or that at least we should.
This time, I want to talk about this narrative of inexperience from the other side, where we lean on the idea that we are too young or inexperienced to do x or y or z. This is, in my opinion, is tied to imposter syndrome, and can instrumentalize the perceivable depth of our experiences to establish a set of guidelines for when we deem ourselves as ready or not ready.
In the grand scheme of things, I am still young. At 25, I feel both this insane crisis of time passing, and the overwhelming weight of a perceivable sixty years left on this planet. I know both are irrational, and nothing is guaranteed (including the idea that I’m over a quarter way through my life).
When we develop, we collect experience. In fact, it’s kind of the whole thing. In your 20’s, you have spent more of your experiences in situations of age-based ineptitude than you have as an adult person. This is not to say children are not people, but rather to highlight the power dynamics that are accredited by age in relation to assumed experience. By the nature of time, most of our lives are in the past and there is only a finite moment where we exist as the most knowledgeable we have ever been. Then, we learn more and dethrone this previous version.
We will often look to our past selves wishing we had known more. Same as we look to our younger peers and recognize the part of ourselves that was their age. Because you have yet to be anyone else, your reference point is entirely versions of you that are younger, that have less experience, and were likely behaving in ways you wouldn’t now (for better or for worse). This is because the only way you can reflect is with present knowledge that is applied to a past that perhaps lacked that information. Simply put, this complicates things.
I recently started a new job; it’s my first full-time non-profit job since graduating university last year. Before then, none of my jobs required a degree, or really any skill that will leave me in debt for as long as this will. It took a long time to get where I am now. But, in many ways the point that I am at in my life mirrors both the entry-level world that a lot of 21-year-olds face and the life experience of someone that is my age. I can compare my life to folks of many ages. It’s odd.
It has been hard to reconcile with both. By this I mean that I really felt as though I was behind. Having dropped out of school somewhere in the middle, brought to face the harsh post-COVID job market, and graduating with folks two years younger than me, it’s been impossible to navigate where I should be in my life. Comparatively, my timeline is like others who graduated when I did, but my peers from high school have long been in these positions. The reality is that there is no place in my life that I should be at. We are the only people in the world with our experience.
If we were to run a study, there would be far too many variables to isolate and establish who is truly faring ‘better’. So basically, fuck that.
The other side of this feeling is what I really want to delve deeper into. This is this idea that I am 25 and people view me as an adult. This couldn’t be possible, could it? In many ways I feel the same way I did at 12, or 17, or 20. What do you mean I’m not a kid anymore?
This is a grief they don’t tell you about. That you not only have a sudden confidence bestowed in you, but that confidence had to be born inside of you as instantly as it was granted by others externally. We all know what it’s like to wish to be a kid again, but we also know what it’s like to be dismissed because of being young. If I still hold that feeling, it doesn’t bode well for that confidence piece.
In more ways, I feel that the experiences I’ve had have not made me an adult. This is because I still feel small in comparison to the world, and the world is still teaching me so much. How do we sit with both this perceivable readiness for the world, and navigate the fact that we really won’t ever know anything? I don’t think we do.
The reason I chose this topic is because it is evidence that even the most beneficial mindsets can house effects that contribute to suffering if we’re not careful. Even embodying the mindset of a child can be detrimental to our sense of the world and our confidence as individuals. It’s important to be where we are now, there’s no exception to this rule. But, like I said before, there is certainly much to be learned as adults from children.
So yeah, grief is attached to change, and change is the only thing we are promised. It is inevitable, and we can rely solely on this in our lifetime. I remember realizing this at 14, on my way to Toronto with my friends on a GO train. A lightbulb moment. Am I not still her?
In many ways this is visualized by the seemingly linear progression we have as people, contextualized within the framework of aging and how we view our earthly timeline. Is this why can’t we go back? Because time doesn’t allow us? I ask this not in the desire to change the past.
Instead, I imagine it would be nice to sit with the self of another time and truly recognize that I am older, and different, and who I have been has been built upon by the years of experience since. Good grief.
But again, going back is dangerous. Hindsight is 20/20, and our current level of experience/inexperience is dynamic, ever-changing, and immeasurable. Comparison is useless, especially to others but also to the self.
So, back to the imposter syndrome piece. How do we identify what marks adulthood? If time is experience, what experiences tell us that we are finally there?
Well, I remember being 17 and putting a note on my phone that I would be grown up when I bought my first car. Every time I drive it, I’m still surprised someone let me make the purchase at 20 years old. So, not that.
We have laws in place to protect children which suggest that adulthood begins at 18. These are there to prevent age-related abuse (though it’s obviously still possible). So, in my opinion, this notion is only beneficial within the realm of protecting vulnerable populations from exploitation. It is important to note that gaps of experience still occur after 18, and age-related abuse can still happen. Though that’s a wider and frankly different conversation.
So, if we can’t decide what adulthood looks like objectively, I think we must form it for ourselves. We not only have to reconcile with the transition from childhood through literal transitions like moving out, or adopting financial independence, but also with the fact that we are someday, if we are lucky, going to be the oldest people alive. Will we know adulthood by then?
I can say for certain that the goalpost is going to move ahead of you every single time you reach it. We all want to feel this fulfilment by achieving what we think will bring it about. But as we know, it must be curated, not earned.
So yeah, I started this new job and suddenly I’m equal to all these people that I would otherwise view as experts in what they do. They want to hear my thoughts, and my experience through my education is enough of a credential to grant me some degree of authority. Weird.
I thought when I entered the ‘big kid’ workforce I’d finally feel like I had my head on straight. Though my developing (and crooked) frontal lobe has confirmed that this is a moot goal.
There’s a song I’ve been listening to called Nosebleeds by slimdan. I’m not just plugging this guy’s music for no reason; the song is all about this. About feeling like a kid, having this connection to your personal history, and falling too deep into it. It’s a good song.
So why am I saying all this? Well, to be honest, I don’t know. But I think it’s because there’s a part of each of us that leans on our experiences to deny or confirm for ourselves how established, successful, and adult we are. Through that, we tell ourselves when we are or aren’t ready to explore certain avenues or to venture toward the things we want. In many ways I think feeling like a kid can inhibit our willingness to branch out, to try new things, and to lean into the fact that you probably know just as much or as little as the next guy (and that’s fine!).
I do just want to quickly say that kids are often handed the short end of the stick, and that’s one of the reasons someone could feel that inexperience is a bad thing. That and our sticky little feeling of regret.
We are hard on ourselves for lacking knowledge that we can only acquire by going through experiences. Like I said in the other essay, even if things are new, it’s all an opportunity to remain curious—not that it’s any easier knowing that.
I want to tie this up in a nice little bow and say that this is something I think we might always feel, and it’s probably a good thing to find comfort in the fact that we feel the way we do because of self-development and the process of collecting meaningful experience. The idea that we don’t have enough wisdom to be considered an adult is probably best identified by the fact that we have the capacity to recognize how much we have and will change over time. That seems like an adult thing to do, if you ask me.