I’m not sure when you get to start calling yourself a grown-up. Is it after you hit a certain age or buy your first car? When you pay taxes or eat vegetables all on your own? What is it that classifies you as such?
The hubby and I were writing a song together recently about someone stuck in the Badlands and it made me stop to consider. The intensity and beauty and death in that land is unmistakeable. The summer before 5th grade, my family took a road trip through South Dakota and that trip has had a lasting impacts on me for whatever reason. The desolate wasteland, the beauty of the rock formations and massive bison roaming a land where battles were fought and forgotten lives lay buried.
Maybe being a grown-up means you realize when you are in the Badlands. When you survey the land and find it dead, with little prospects for growth. You look left and right only to find you’ve brought others with you to a dark and desolate place. You can’t continue on pretending you are surrounded by life and lush vegetation. You have a thirst for truth and seek it. When you say, there’s more to life than this waste and ruin I’ve grown accustomed to, and will do whatever it takes to flee from it. Even if it means asking for help and admitting failure.
That, to me, is a grown-up.