I've managed to distill the essence of the transition to adulthood into a simple idea:
When we first arrive on earth and for the following couple of decades we spend our time like a kitten or a child inncoently playing with the ball of string that is life. As we mature and the the ball unravels we leave a trail of tangled mess through the cities, forests, dreamscapes etc. Then one day we wake up at the end of the ball and we look around and see what mess we've made, and we have hopefully learned the skills and patience to then go about mindfully gathering the string from its end, tracing back through all the knots and entanglements and weaving it into something beautiful.