Five things they never told you about adulthood

I was looking at a display message of a contact of mine on a Blackberry recently; it was a picture of a lady with one hand over her eyes and the other raised over her head and it read: “Can anyone tell me how I can retrieve my childhood days?” I suppose it is an unrealistic question, at best a silly one but it left me with things to ponder on. Specifically, I thought about what no one ever tells you regarding adulthood. Yes adulthood, the very one you couldn’t wait to get to- the one you counted every birthday till you were ‘free of your parents’. Below are things I do think everyone forgets to say:

Don’t be in a hurry to become an adult

I don’t think I’m entirely correct on this one, as I do think we were warned on this one ( at least my parents did warn me repeatedly about how you’d be tired of doing adult things and how you’d be tired of even the freedom you so sought from them. It’s interesting that in spite of all your machinations to leave your parents, once you become an adult (or at least a mummy adult) you begin to find the littlest excuse to have them over at yours.

Taking decisions is one of the trickiest things as an adult

Not because of it is difficult to say a yea or a nay, but because as an adult you embrace the consequences of your decisions. Unfortunately, it is no longer ‘what your mum or dad asked you to’ or even ‘made you to do’. It becomes your decision and you simply live with it.

Age twenty-two isn’t young!

Now this is a personal peeve of a Mr. Olumide. I know it is the norm, since most people in Nigeria graduate at twenty two years (averagely), you hear conversations like ‘leave him alone he is young’;  he’s just starting out.

He’s convinced that this kind of mindset fools many youths into wasting their time instead of settling down quickly into life. I believe this is changing as most private universities churn out graduates earlier. Hopefully by twenty-two, many have embraced adulthood.

Hunt down opportunities, seek them out, they won’t always ‘just come’

With 7billion people in the world, it is indeed better to be ready for opportunities as we were told; but even best to seek them out, hunt them down.

Seekers always find!

That you can start again. Given how long they wound our ears about taking the right decisions, they definitely forgot to tell us that no matter how far gone you are taking the wrong direction, you can find your way back. Sometimes with difficulty, you may also never fully recover lost opportunities; but find your way back, you can.

I’d bet they thought we’d go anyway if they gave us this life’s nugget; so they didn’t.

Nkiru Olumide-Ojo