I spend quite a bit of my downtime looking at a meme site called 9gag that is pretty fantastic for a laugh and it actually keeps you pretty informed on current affairs as well. The comments section is where you are going to get more truthful information about what is going on in the world than you are going to get from any news outlet so that is a nice by-product. The main reason I look at it is to laugh or to get inspired though and people will frequently post things that technically are not memes but still make you think a bit and this one that I read the other day hit close to home about how I feel about myself as well as almost everyone that I know.
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this isn't the meme that reminded me of myself, it's the next one
This topic isn't something I really thought about in my life a great deal until after I turned 40, which was a few years ago now. As a child I always thought that adults lived this grand, serious life and they only let loose to be fun and a bit silly whenever children were around. I think a lot of us grow up thinking the same thing as well because if you had a good upbringing, your parents were serious and strict towards you to a certain degree but also upheld an air of adulty-ness whenever they were in public.
I am now older than my parents ever were at any point that I lived in the same house as them and I am almost NEVER serious and stoic about anything so when I read this post that probably comes from reddit on 9gag, it hit close to home.
I think that especially if you don't have children, and I don't, that being serious and being "adult" is something that just doesn't really work for me. All of the people that I know, even the ones that do have kids, rarely seem to act how I envisioned adults would behave when I was a child myself. I don't think I would be able to maintain a relationship with a person that was serious all the time and I tend to surround myself with people that are childish or at least as childish as I am.
I'm thinking that maybe my impression of adults when I was a child and even as a legal adult myself when I was just starting out my career might have been really terribly wrong. I think that this seriousness is just a facade that people put on in their professional lives but as soon as they are just around the boys, so to speak, that they let loose as well.
Now don't get the wrong idea here. I am not a useless man in his 40's, I can get things done when I have to. I just feel like the level of dedication that my own parents put into being adults is heaps and bounds above the amount of responsibility that I ever face in my life. I tend to look at almost every appointment, even the ones that are mandatory or will benefit me are just a pain in the ass. My most treasured moments of every week come from our weekly bowling outings where we all go and get drunk afterwards.
I think that "roguebelle" in the Tolkien conversation above kind of hit the nail on the head as far as most of my life has been concerned. I agree with Toys 'R Us when I say "I don't wanna grow up." I haven't done so yet and it has worked out for me. I just kind of wonder if all of you out there are the same and live most of their lives in a comical way. Sometimes I look at my life and general lack of dedication that I have to almost anything and wonder how it is that I managed to be successful? I think it must be that most people, even those in charge of hiring other people, are not so serious all the time as well.