Everything I Thought About Adulthood

When I was a kid, I thought adults knew everything. Teachers had the answers. Parents had the answers. Doctors, police officers, politicians, bosses. I figured somewhere along the way you reached a certain age, unlocked some secret level of adulthood, and suddenly knew exactly what you were doing. Honestly, it made the world feel a little safer.

Then I became an adult.

I’m forty-five years old now, and if life has taught me anything, it’s that most of us are just trying to make the best decision we can with whatever information we have at the time. Some people are really good at it. Others make you wonder how they found their car keys that morning. But very few of us actually have life figured out. We’re all just winging it more than we care to admit.

That realization got me thinking about all the things I was so sure of when I was younger. I had parenting figured out before I ever had a kid. I knew what success would feel like before I ever chased it. I thought growing older meant becoming wiser, more confident, and somehow having the answers to questions I didn’t even know existed.

As it turns out, life had other plans.

Over the years, I’ve been wrong about almost everything that really mattered. And strangely enough, I’m grateful for it. Because some of the best parts of my life didn’t happen after I found the answers. They happened after life showed me I was asking the wrong questions all along.

 

I Was Promised the Most Beautiful Moment of My Life

If you asked a hundred parents to describe watching their first child be born, I’d bet ninety-nine of them would tell you it was the most beautiful moment of their lives. That’s exactly what everyone had been telling me for months.

“You’ll cry.”

“Nothing will ever compare to it.”

“It’ll change you forever.”

These weren’t random people giving me advice. They were people I respected and looked up to. My stepdad was one of them. He talked about it like I was about to witness the greatest thing a human being could ever see.

So when the day finally came, I was ready.

Our regular doctor happened to be on vacation that week, so in walked someone I’d never met before. Before I could even wonder who she was, every nurse within earshot assured me she was wonderful and told me not to worry. This was 2015. Medical technology had come a long way. I figured at that point my dog could probably deliver a baby if he had to, so I wasn’t any more worried than any other first-time father in the delivery room.

I stood next to my wife while she was in labor, feeling about as prepared as a first-time father could feel. I was ready for all the joy, all the responsibility, and all the challenges that came with becoming a dad. As I watched the doctor coaching my beautiful, albeit sweaty and slightly crazy-looking wife through each push, the first thing I noticed wasn’t a baby.

It was… a gray point.

That gray point slowly started making its way into the world. The doctor reached for him and, unless my memory has become a little more dramatic over the years, immediately developed a serious case of butterfingers. For one horrifying second, I was convinced this “wonderful” doctor had just dropped my son.

As I was trying to process Dr. Dropsalot fumbling the most beautiful thing I’d supposedly ever been promised, I couldn’t help but notice something else. He was gray, and he had the biggest conehead I had ever seen. I’m telling you, he looked like every alien I’d ever watched on television rolled into one tiny little person. At that point I’d completely forgotten about the doctor. My mind went somewhere much more reasonable.

My wife must have been abducted by aliens about nine months earlier.

When the color finally returned to my own face, I started looking around the room waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out from behind a curtain and tell me I’d been Punk’d. He never did.

Thankfully, over the next few days, and maybe a couple of weeks, my son started looking a whole lot more like a human being. Better yet, he started looking a little more like me.

For years afterward, though, I quietly carried around something I never really admitted to anyone. Everyone had told me childbirth would instantly become the most beautiful moment of my life, and for me, it just… wasn’t. At least not in the way everyone described it.

For the longest time, I honestly wondered if that made me a terrible father.

The funny part is, deep down I already knew becoming a father was going to be one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. Nobody had to convince me of that. I just expected the actual birth to be a whole lot more beautiful like everyone had promised.

Don’t get me wrong. It didn’t take long for me to fall head over heels in love with that little boy. Honestly, I might have fallen in love with him before the gray color had completely drained from his body. Then the weeks turned into months, and the months turned into years, and somehow I found myself loving him more every single day.

Some of my favorite memories weren’t the big milestones people always talk about. They were the quiet ones. Every night before bed, I’d read to him. I can still picture those tiny little legs climbing up onto the couch so he could sit on my lap while we opened another book. Those moments became my happy place.

Before he was born, I’d read somewhere that one of the best ways to help your kids become good learners was to read to them every night. So we never missed one. By the time he was two years old, he knew more dinosaur names than just about every adult I’ve ever met, and that’s not an exaggeration. He had two or three dinosaur books that we’d read so many times he could pronounce every dinosaur in them without thinking.

Somewhere in those nights, between the dinosaur books and hearing his little voice ask for “just one more,” I realized something else.

I never felt an ounce of jealousy over how smart he was becoming. If anything, I wanted him to be better than me at everything. Smarter. Kinder. Happier. More successful. In my heart, I knew that had to be what real love felt like.

Then a few years later, his younger brother was born.

I remember thinking, “Alright… now I’m finally going to witness the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Instead, I watched my beautiful wife give birth to our second son together, nearly passed out, and had the doctor asking if I was alright.

“No,” I wanted to tell her. “I’m not alright. I just watched a living human being ejected out of the love of my life, and I’m about three seconds away from needing my own hospital bed.”

That’s when I became convinced everyone else was full of it.

Apparently I was the only honest father in the whole damn world.

 

What Adulthood Actually Looks Like

When I was younger, I really believed adulthood came with answers. I figured that somewhere along the way you reached a certain age and life finally started making sense. Looking back, I don’t think I was alone. Most kids probably believe their parents know exactly what they’re doing.

Mine certainly convinced me they did.

As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve started looking back at some of the decisions my parents made through the eyes of an adult instead of a kid. Some of them were great decisions. Some of them… probably wouldn’t make the list today. What I’ve realized is they weren’t following some secret instruction manual the rest of us never got.

They were winging it too.

The difference is they never let us see it.

As kids, we looked at them like they had all the answers, and they never tipped their hand. They got up, went to work, paid the bills, solved problems, and somehow made it all look like they knew exactly what they were doing.

Those damn liars.

Now I’m the parent.

Half of my life feels like trial and error. The other half is pretending I know a whole lot more than I actually do. My boys ask me questions all the time, and sometimes I answer them with complete confidence while a little voice in the back of my head is saying, “I sure hope that’s right.”

The funny thing is, I think that’s given me a whole new appreciation for my parents.

Not because they had all the answers.

Because they loved us enough to make us believe they did.

 

I Thought I’d Be Funny

When I was younger and realized my sports career wasn’t going to last forever, I’d occasionally catch myself thinking about writing a book someday. Even back then I loved telling stories. I could usually keep people’s attention, and most of the time it was because I was trying to make them laugh. If you’d asked twenty-year-old me what kind of book I’d write one day, I would’ve told you it would probably be something funny.

Life had other plans.

As I got older, I found myself drawn to a completely different kind of writing. Drama. Fiction. The heavier stuff. I’m not sure if it’s because I can still vividly remember so much from when I was younger, or because it’s easier for me to tap into the darker corners of my mind than it is to write cheerful stories. Whatever the reason, that’s the kind of writing that just pours out of me now.

Whether it’s any good is still up for debate.

After all, I was the kid who probably averaged a D on his report cards from about fifth grade on. I certainly never pictured myself writing something people would actually want to read, let alone finding anything worthwhile in it. Then I started letting a few people read my work, and something unexpected happened.

They liked it.

At least they said they did.

Of course, it took me years to decide whether they were being honest or just being nice. Every time someone told me they enjoyed something I’d written, I’d wonder if they actually meant it or if they were just trying to spare my feelings. But little by little, more people read it. More people encouraged me. Somewhere along the way, I started thinking, “Maybe they’re actually telling me the truth.”

Now here I am, only a week or two away from publishing my first novel.

So if this whole thing crashes and burns, I’m holding every damn one of those people accountable for telling me I could write.

 

If I Could Talk to Twenty-Year-Old Me About Adulthood

If twenty-year-old me could sit down with forty-five-year-old me for five minutes, I think he’d be surprised by a lot of things. He’d probably be shocked that life turned out as well as it did. Back then, the trajectory wasn’t exactly pointing in this direction. Somehow I ended up with an amazing wife, incredible kids, a home I’m proud of, a career that’s provided for my family, and now, somehow, I’m about to publish my first novel.

I know exactly what he’d ask me too.

“So… you’ve got life figured out now?”

I’d laugh.

“Not even close.”

I’d tell him I still worry. I still second-guess myself. I still wonder if I’m making the right decisions. The difference is, those thoughts don’t scare me the way they used to. I think every generation just gets a little better at hiding them from their kids.

That’s probably the biggest thing I was wrong about. I spent years believing adulthood meant finally having all the answers. It doesn’t. It just means loving the people around you enough to keep showing up while you figure things out together.

I guess my parents weren’t so different from me after all. They never tipped their hand. They did their best, protected us from worries we were too young to carry, and somehow made us believe they had everything under control. Looking back, I admire them even more for that now.

Twenty-year-old me would’ve wanted a shortcut. He always did. I’d have to disappoint him because I don’t think there are many. At least not the kind we hope for. If you want a good life, you don’t build it in a weekend. You build it by showing up again tomorrow.

Reading one more bedtime story. Going to work when you’d rather stay home. Writing one more page. Loving your family one ordinary day at a time.

None of those moments feel like they’re changing your life.

But somewhere along the way, those ordinary days become the life you were hoping to build all along.

 

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