The Thousand Steps to Adulthood

'Cause it's never just one step, is it? You don't become an adult over night. You know how to tell if you're an adult? You say 'adult', instead of 'grown-up'. It seems a small difference, but it's very big, if you think about it, if you consider the two words and what each entails. A grown-up is something else, from a different world up, and often that something is boring. An adult is someone responsible, capable, not one to dabble in silly humor. A real stand-up guy.

Fear not, adults, this is not one of those articles criticizing you that you've forgotten how to be kids, how to laugh at yourselves and so on. Though I may do one of those someday, today is not to be.
No, this is rather an observation. I'm standing on the edge of that defining line between child and adult, I'm not sure yet on which side. But this didn't come from me.

Today, I saw my cousin, whom I hadn't seen in a year, because she's a student in Austria and visits rarely. She's two years older than me, so that makes her twenty-one. And for most of the afternoon, I listened to her tell me about her new boyfriend (new in the sense she hadn't yet told me much about him). And she told me how they had just taken a short vacation together and how happy she was, and what a sweet, great guy he is. Nothing special, you know, the usual chat....about love, about life, what it means to be alive and so on. And although I was very happy to see her so in love, so dreamy, I couldn't stop the surprise that swept over me. This is someone I've known for as long as I can remember. This is my childhood hero, my once best friend. This is the girl I used to do magazine quizzes with on sleepovers. And here she stood, not a child anymore. And it seemed sudden, in my mind, because somewhere I still held the image of her as a kid.
But she most certainly wasn't a kid this afternoon. Here was this beautiful young woman, talking about what's important in life, about studying, about relationships. Suddenly, she was a grownup. How did this happen?!

But what was most shocking wasn't the change in her, how she talked and acted, but the fact that I recognized that same behavior in myself. I found myself nodding along and agreeing, not out of an empty desire to talk, but because they were things that I agree with. For example, I agree that it's important to live and love, and I don't think we should love someone only if we think they are the one, because you can't know that. You don't get a guarantee and you should trust and dare and love.
And I realized these aren't kid thoughts anymore, they're grown-up thoughts. And then, my cousin wasn't a grown-up, but an adult, because I looked at her from the same level.

I, too, have changed in this past year, I realized. Or maybe realize isn't the right word, it's not as if I wasn't aware of this before. I was, but it was an interesting thing to compare the person I'd been in relation to my cousin and the person I am now.

There is a saying that it's important to go back to things from your past, just to see how much you've changed.

I think that's what happened here. I came face to face with someone I had a clearly-defined relationship (that of kid to kid, teens at best) that turned out to be a completely different relationship (adult to adult).
And today, it occurred to me that my worries and thoughts and hopes no longer concern childish things. I have the same thoughts about love, about relationships, about how to be fair with another person, about living life to the fullest, and all that comes with it.
When I ask myself how we got here – what happened? - the answer is clear. Through experience.
Life happened.
We met new people. Fellow adults, or people becoming adults, we made relationships, we had to deal with that scary moment when Mom isn't around to deal with it, and you have to think for yourself. And in that moment, you're faced with a choice. Don't do anything, keep waiting for Mommy to solve it for you – though that'll never happen... – or think for yourself.

In the end, we thought for ourselves.