Cosplaying adulthood

When I was about 10 or so, I used to dress up as a schoolteacher, with my mom’s dupatta (if I managed to get it), a stack of books and a red pen for marking my imaginary papers. I carried with me a bejeweled blue colored purse that my brother had gifted me on Rakhi. The lumpy purse filled with coins and 5–10-rupee notes, hung by my side as I swayed from my doorway to the table telling my ‘students’ to sit down quietly. 

I loved the idea of partly teaching someone, partly being a figure people could look up to who knew it all, and finally, being an adult. During our summer break from school, my elder sister and I (on my insistence) used to make a deep red sherbet in fancy glasses called Roohafza, pretended it was wine, and talked about our ‘adult life and its problems’. I had this fascination with growing up and being independent, knowledgeable, and most importantly, to look cool while doing it, dressed up in the best clothes, living my best life. 

A good 15 years later, I found out how much, or little, do we really know as adults. Whatever I thought I would have sorted - not only did I not, but I found I might never. True adulthood is accepting that growth is forever, no amount of knowledge is enough, and that it’s an ongoing process of finding out things. 

We all know it, right? (Cues imaginary adults in the audience. Some habits don’t die, huh?) Why then do we continue to pretend that we have it under control, with real wine glasses in hand, telling tales of how we know it all, or at least better than the person we are sitting in front of?

I think we start believing we would really have it all figured out as children, and the lie only builds upon itself as we grow older and are expected to follow the milestones associated with being an adult. We have all heard of ‘Fake it till you make it’. It rests on the idea that you act how you want to feel until you start feeling that way. It’s actually a very helpful strategy for someone who is scared of starting out due to possible harsh judgement and gets you out of your head into action mode. But as I have grown older, I have realized that in the process of acting like the person you want to be, you sometimes end up ignoring who you really are. Is your future identity’s foundation built on the ashes of your core needs? Do these 2 identities fit together or is one rooted in shame or regret over things that you never were, so it’s far easier to pretend that it doesn’t exist at all? 

Is the aspiration even built on your real desires or what you think successful adulthood should look like? Worse, what people around you think a successful adult looks like.

Aspiration does not need to come at the cost of our current self. We could accept we are who we are and can be better, because of course, we all can. But not acknowledging our current limitations and pretending to know it all, have it figured out, to protect that small part of ourselves that cannot stand to be told 'you're wrong, the decisions you've made might not be the best', can be straight up harmful.

I don't mean to blame us. It IS difficult in fact, in a world where the noise is so loud and constant, it’s hard to differentiate what applies to us and what doesn’t. Wanting to be accepted is human. So, we take the recipe for success in our circle, the model of adulthood our social group deems 'correct', and tell people that yes, we have achieved the outcome- as if being happy was a goal to be achieved that requires a fixed number of steps for everyone to reach.

The fact that we feel the need to keep up the act we are all collectively part of, is almost funny. We are both on stage and in the audience of this play of life. 

The danger is not in the lies we tell others, but the ones we, over time, start telling ourselves, until we cannot differentiate between them. We can no longer accept not knowing something, or being wrong, because we pretended that we had it right for far too long to back down now. Being truthful to ourselves would mean accepting that we really are just figuring it out and we don’t have it down, and it not being a bad thing at all. We don’t have to continue to play pretend - if there is one thing that did change from childhood, it’s that we know ourselves better. Which means we can change the goalposts based on who we are, what we really need, NOW.