Self-sufficiency, responsibility

When all your dreams are dead.

Apparently it depends on skin colour and the severity of the charges. /s

When you are legally considered that in your country’s law. Any other distinction is fuzzy and unlikely to be really useful.

When they start thinking about the consequences of their actions, and act accordingly instead of following pure impulse.

You get your adult trophy after a serious bout of cleaning

https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

When I was in college (so maybe 20 or 21 years old), I asked my mom when I would start feeling like an adult. Without missing a beat, she said “I dunno. If you find out, let me know!” <3

I guess I started feeling more like a “real” adult when I started working full-time and rented a house instead of an apartment, though now even that pales in comparison to when I finally purchased my own home. Each phase of life feels more “grown-up” than the last, with new perspectives, greater understanding of my relationships with God and people, and matured confidence going into the new phase’s challenges. And yet I’m still me at heart–as I like to call it, “a big kid with bills.” I am very blessed.

Well, in the legal sense, I suppose it has to do with contracts and contract law. Some time ago in the US, it was determined that 18 was the legal age for adulthood because by then a person would be old enough to understand the terms of a contract and hold to those terms. Marriage is a contract. Military service is a contract. Getting a loan/mortgage is a contract.

for me it was when I was responsible for more than just myself.

I’m responsible for my spouse, my kids, the team I managed, etc.

I have to say, it’s not worth it 🤣

Never. There is no line to cross, no milestone, nothing.

You will always be the same entity you are now. You should always work to improve yourself, but the stream of consciousness that is “you” is always going to be the same you.

Every day you wake up 1 day older and have 1 more day of accumulated experience. It’s that accumulated experience that makes people think you’re an “adult”.

If you really absolutely need to assign a binary “I’m an adult” label, I think it’s the day you realize that there is no such thing as an adult and all the people you thought were adults and therefore could handle adult responsibilities were actually just making it all up as they went, the same as you are doing right now.

June…

You become an adult when you wish you were young again

A child knows the adult drink is coffee.

A teenager knows the adult drink is alcohol.

An adult knows the adult drink is water.

Adult is essentially like age-based gender. Different cultures say adulthood starts at different ages, physical markers, or after some ritual transition, and assign adults a certain role in society. Some people identify as adult or not adult regardless of what their culture assigns to them. It’s all part of the arbitrary, usually unspoken rules each culture defines for itself.

Some never become adults, becoming an adult to me is self-realization. That you have the ability to think and make decisions with input on your own. That you are self-capable of change in your life. It’s accepting you have responsibilities outside of just yourself. I feel hat’s part of it.