For the entirety of my life until quite recently I was utterly convinced of the idea that all “grown-ups”, by nature of their grownupness, had the whole world figured out. It seemed to me essentially up until the week of my eighteenth birthday that there was some intrinsic difference between so-called “children” and these “adults”, where the latter categorically knew something the former didn’t and never the other way around.
I was never quite positive what it was that gave adults this intrinsic knowledge of how the world worked. I assumed it was something covered in a particular school class, or perhaps the secret was contained within those late night broadcasts only over-eighteens were permitted to watch. Whatever it was, I was confident that by the time I reached that mystical age of eighteen, I too would have the world figured out. After all, how else would I be able to consider myself qualified for such important duties as voting, paying taxes, and jury duty.
While I am still open to the fact that one of these days I shall wake up in bed and find myself suddenly equipped with all the knowledge and skills necessary to make my way in the world, I am becoming increasingly convinced that this is, in fact, not how it works. Rather the growing body of evidence is pointing towards the conclusion that all of my intrinsic abilities, which in truth I do not feel have grown significantly since about six years old, are the only toolset with which I will ever be equipped to deal with the world.
This quite terrifying conclusion has been cemented by the relative ease (compared with what I might have imagined) of registering to vote. There was no IQ test, barely any cross-examination of my identity papers, and most shockingly, no SWAT team descending from the heavens to inform me that, no, sorry, there must’ve been some mistake because I can’t possibly be qualified to genuinely help decide the future of our country and the world at large.
Despite being nominally an adult, I still have this habit of basically assuming that every other adult still knows something I don’t. So when, for example, my brother gets into the car to drive to Florida without sunglasses and wearing wool clothing, I broadly assume that he is aware of all these issues, and has some plan to combat them. It is then frustrating when he realizes later that he left his sunglasses on the counter and asks to borrow my backup pair.
This habit also makes it annoyingly easy to believe that anyone acting with confidence must have some grounds for acting so. While I have come to accept that I am merely faking this whole adulthood thing, it is a whole other matter entirely to convince myself that not only am I flying by the seat of my pants, but so is everyone else.
There has been one minor silver lining in this otherwise terrifying revelation. Namely, it is the realization that, with no intrinsic confidence to distinguish those who genuinely know what they’re doing from those who haven’t the foggiest clue, nine times out of ten one can get away with whatever one desires provided one can act sufficiently confident while doing so. That is to say that with few exceptions, it is fairly easy to convince others that you know better than they do what needs to be done.
Overall, while I wish it were true that adulthood brought with it some intrinsic wisdom of how to make it in the world, I also recognize that, this not being the case, I should at least try to work on my ability to look like I know what I’m doing. Because that is the secret of adulthood. It is all an act, and how you act determines whether people treat you as a know-nothing little boy or a wise young man.
