how to become an aka

What Does It Mean to Be an Adult and How to Become One

by Alexander Laryanovskiy, Managing Partner at Skyeng

Childhood is over whenever a person starts treating everything too seriously or can't feel carefree anymore. They can't even allow a thought of this to appear, not to mention actually doing this. Not even for a night and without alcohol.

Many happy grown-ups still feel like children on the inside. Some stop being children in middle school.

Feeling like a child doesn't mean acting like one. It means that one can awaken their inner child and be sincerely surprised with a beautiful sunset. Or — happy with an unexpected gift. Give all of themselves to their friends, be wholeheartedly sad or carried away. Of course, all of this should be controlled, or such a childlike state may turn quite nasty. In the best case scenario, a person becomes a freak that everybody tries to avoid, in the worst — they are sent to a madhouse.

Being a child and being an adult should not be considered mutually exclusive. These two can coexist.

What criteria can help us distinguish an adult from a 'non-adult? I don't use the word 'child' because many 10-year-olds are more grown-up than some students in their 20s. Here's my answer.

1. Responsibility. The word has been overused, and usually it means paying for what you've done whereas it actually means understanding the consequences of your actions, assessing these consequences, being willing to accept them and pay the price. All of these words are important: understanding, assessment, willingness to accept and pay. This is responsibility. Non-adults complain about life and injustice, saying 'I just couldn't do it,' 'I didn't want to,' 'I was hoping for the best.' Adults accept the results as the price for their actions (or the lack of those if they failed to do something).

If a brick falls on my head, it's my fault. This is my life and my responsibility. I didn't look around, I didn't think about it. Yes, technically someone else is to blame. But actually it's my fault.

2. Self-sufficiency. This should be understood literally: this is an ability to live without any sort of help from anybody — parents, government, God, magic. A person dependent on someone is definitely a non-adult. An adult can receive help and support, but will survive without it.

3. Maturity. It includes several skills:

having an opinion. An ability to form an independent opinion about something and have a critical point of view on received information. Most grown-ups are immature due to the lack of this, they adopt opinions borrowed from TV (YouTube is TV, too). They don't have their own opinion — whatever they hear on TV is true.
ability to reflect, to speculate on current events, ability to formulate your thoughts about the external things as well as your feelings. It's important, one should be able to reflect on both events and feelings.
variety of behavior patterns. It's very uncommon, by the way. A lot of people easily fall into the routine that they created (or somebody else created for them). If someone's life is 'wake up — go to work — work — have lunch — work — go home — watch a TV show — go to sleep — spend the weekend on the sofa,' the person is immature. A mature person has a lot of behavior patterns. Their evenings and weekends are not the same, they have hobbies, don't live monotonously, as if in a trance. They change their behavior creating new patterns.
emotional maturity, or emotional intelligence. An ability to experience feelings and understand other people's emotions. To some extent, it depends on the genetic background, character, but this skill can be acquired. The the range of feelings that a particular person is capable of experiencing is their emotional maturity. So, for example, an indifferent (not phlegmatic — indifferent) person is emotionally immature.

Now let's see.

Someone graduates from school. What's next? They go to a university. What percentage of school graduates choose university thinking about their interests and preferences? They go where adults tell them to go, or follow their friends, or just find a place that's easier to enter, or where their mum and dad will help to study. At university, people don't acquire knowledge or skills, they learn how to pass exams. Then they work wherever they can find a vacancy, not where they want to work. Of course, they might get lucky. Sure, you and me are not like that. But just in general, what percentage of people work in the field they were trained in and don't wait impatiently for Friday and the end of working hours?

This is an example of mass dependence. There's no understanding that at any age you should aim to get what you want. This is what being non-adult means.

I once asked myself why I'm not interested in gossips about stars or people I know. Then I realized that my life is more interesting to me. The life of my loved ones, the life of those who are dear to me, is interesting. But some people on the screen? No.

Adults live their own life. Sometimes it's happy, sometimes it's not. Adults take responsibility for their life and understand what is happening to them.

Adults teach their neural networks what they need instead of wasting years watching TV shows.

Adults know how to set goals because these are their real goals, not because everyone thinks it's important to have your own apartment or a college degree.

Growing up is cool. Living as an adult is unreal. 'It's better than sex, it's almost like having lunch.'