Ask any millennial about their childhood and they’ll most likely say that being a kid was awesome! Responsible, loving adults gave you all that you needed and you never had to worry about bills, meals, and all that grown-up stuff. Life was relatively more fun, easy and stress-free. Having said that, I for one believe that being an adult is so much better!
Freedom At Last! Your House, Your Rules
No matter how cool your parents are, I am sure they have all delivered some rendition of the annoying phrase ‘my house, my rules’ at one point. That’s probably one of the prime reasons you wanted a place of your own, right? Now even if you are staying in a tiny rental apartment that is nothing like the dream house you once envisioned, it is YOURS.
Consequently, you are the one who’s in charge, and you can make and flip off rules as you please! Eating whatever and whenever you want, sleeping at odd hours, ignoring the mess in front of you for as long as you like… isn’t this delicious freedom worth the burden of handling responsibilities like paying bills and grocery shopping
Distance Makes The Heart Grow Fonder
If you are ‘adulting’ and living away from your parents, chances are, your equation with them will change for the better. Our relationship with our parents is strange, isn’t it? When we stay with them we resent their rules and take them for granted (well sometimes, their judgmental talk and emotional blackmail are simply too much to handle!)
But we truly learn to value them only when we start living away from home. What’s more, even they realize that there is some good in you after all; you are not the spoiled and ungrateful kid they brought into this world! Both you and your parents are finally on better, if not good, terms. Speaking about how moving out strengthened her relationship with her folks, Redditor What_a_cat_astrophe says, “I rarely spent time with them before I moved out at 23 (I was just there way, way too long), and now I spend even less time with them. However, when I do meet them we have actual conversations and get along on a level we never did before because it’s no longer just an around-the-house obligation to talk to them.”
You Are Finally Equipped To Change The World
Close your eyes and think of all those things you wanted to do as a child, but couldn’t. Guess what? At last you have the power to make the world a better place! Saving the rainforests, fighting against human trafficking, donating blood, volunteering at animal shelters, choosing the right political candidates—there’s a laundry list of things you can do to reshape the world. You know who you are and you can go after what you want. And this time, your age is going to ensure that you are taken seriously.
Life’s Still Unfair, But There Are Some Adult-Only Perks
Remember how as a kid you would throw tantrums to get things done your way? Well, when they worked, life was sweet and how! But if you were like most kids, sometimes your tantrums did nothing for you. And that’s when you wondered why life was being unfair to you. Now that you are an adult, you know life is unfair to everybody.
You cannot control everything, but you are at least able to make some choices.
That overpriced outfit you just saw? It can be yours without any kicking or screaming (and if you go broke you’ll deal with it because well, you made a choice!). You even to get exercise your freedom for big decisions like how to invest your time and money, whom to be friends with (ugh, remember those awful forced “friendships”) and whom to date. Your life choices are pretty much yours to make.
Boutheïna Ben Sedrine, 24, sums it up perfectly, “Freedom. You get to choose what to do, where to go. Sit down at night, make a scheme of how you imagine your life and actually follow it if you want to. I suggest you listen to Who Says by John Mayer; it displays perfectly my vision of adulthood. Being an adult doesn’t necessarily mean losing your childhood or creativity. You still can be and do whatever you want, because it’s your damn life. And social norms are just man-made chains to control people. People who think adulthood sucks are those who don’t fit in, I think. I have moments when I hate it also, it’s just because I lose control over my life in these moments.” (via Quora)
So while childhood is largely magical and responsibility-free, being an adult gives us two very powerful things that we never had as kids—freedom and perspective. And at the end of the day, that’s what makes life worth living, right?
