What it means to be an adult
2024-08-27 by Luca Dellanna
“The goal of adulthood is to let go of the other possible existences and to make the best of the one. A successful adult is one who understands that it doesn’t matter which life you ultimately pick, only that you live it well.”
Yesterday, I was asked about what it means to be an adult.
I answered that to be an adult means to take responsibility and have learned how to commit.
Taking responsibility means acknowledging that one’s actions (or lack thereof) greatly impact one’s self (and others).
And learning how to commit means acknowledging that committing creates more value than retaining optionality.
“Most of the freedom I had before kids, I never used. I paid for it in loneliness, but I never used it.”
But why is commitment so hard?
The answer is to be found in why many people have trouble arriving to meetings on time. Punctuality is hard if we see arriving early as something to minimize. Similarly, the trick to commitment is to stop seeing optionality as something to maximize.
Don't get me wrong. Optionality and selection are still important. You shouldn't rush and you shouldn't settle. But. It is also true that building anything that matters requires time, and committing to a good but not best option produces better results than committing to the best option but too late or not fully.
Adulthood is the realization of precisely this. That commitment is not something you reserve for the optimal option but how you make good options optimal.