Coping With Adulting

I dream of escaping my reality. I try to find solace within the cracks of reality and fantasy, fiction. Through books, shows, and movies. But I know that I need to face the real world somehow. One of my friends asked me how I could endure and cope with my loneliness and focus on myself during this tumultuous phase of our early twenties. I myself find it scary and isolated too. We are too preoccupied with our own thoughts and worries about the future. Not really caring how we are in the present.

I know I’m not that old yet to acquire some wisdom of life, but from what I gathered here and there, I may have a few ‘tips’ to cope with this feeling. Here they are.

Try new things.

I used to think this tip applied only to big gestures kind of new things. Like, learning how to play guitar, take a vocal lesson, write a book, move to another city, or be famous. But no, I understand now that trying new things shouldn’t be another burden on our already heavy shoulders. It may mean as simple as trying that new menu you always overlook at your favorite restaurant the next time you go there or try listening to different genres of music you always skip before.

When we get older, time passes by so fast. I read somewhere there is a scientific study mentioned the way we perceive the speed of time is affected by how fast our neurons capture the stimulus, especially our eyes. When we were children, time seemed to stretch longer than how we are feeling it today. Even though it is still the same 24 hours. This is because our mind didn’t catch frames as quickly as it is right now. In that case, time becomes shorter in our brains. I think by trying new things, we can counterattack this perception of time.

I tell myself to do something I’ve never done or haven’t done in a long time. I used to like to draw, paint, play piano, or dance. But I put all these things aside because of my formal education. I want to reconnect again with those activities. Just me, my craft, and my thoughts. To absorb the feeling of being here, in the present, with joy.

Nowadays, I’ve been doing something that I have never done before, like building an online shop or selling my old books. The dopamine that come from trying new things are amazing.

Understand that sometimes your happiness is indeed linked to how our society is today.

All this time, until the pre-modern era, society had relied their fortunes on divine beings and higher forces. But in modern times, our civilization ceases the belief in power beyond humankind as technology cultivates and the understanding of nature increases.

Everybody agrees everyone has equal opportunity regardless of their origin and social identity, as believed in a meritocratic society. Therefore, if one fails to become exceptional against mediocrity -as most of us dream since a young age and statistically most of us become- that is one’s own action to blame. We get depressed and obtain self-hatred.

There is also the paradox of choice. The theory basically states that when given many or overly number of options, people tend to be more stressed and have more anxiety, leading to a lack of decision quality. In a modern world where a human has the right to decide their own career, education, job, or any other in these endless possibilities, it is normal to feel lost and agitated.

When I understand these arguments, I can breathe a little easier because I believe these notions make our society, especially us young people, become more and more perfectionist. We blame ourselves if we do not meet our ideal self and ideal life by now, not really wanting to accept the fact that there are so many factors at play that we can not control.

Focus your energy on things that really matter.

There is this book I recently read called The Mountain Is You. The author mentioned that the human brain is wired to face challenges. When there is none, it tries to search for any challenge it can catch. This may explain why we tend to overthink and worry so much about mundane things because they are served right in front of us. So instead of searching for conflict that isn’t really within our control, such as our uncertain position in the future or how we can be more like our friends (because we are prone to compare ourselves), we can shift our energy into our own journey within aspects we can control. Or much more bigger than that; focus on matters that interest us or we care about, like climate change or gender equality.

Those are three things that I could share on how I cope with this whirlwind emotion I get from adulting. I guess what I’m trying to say is sometimes we can get so immersed in our own mental conflicts and problems that we often fail to observe our place in a bigger scheme, which is this universe. We are just one dust of particles floating in this sphere called Earth. We are just a clog of this giant machine called life. Every one of us is important and can easily get affected by the larger shift of matters in society, such as political schemes, collective beliefs, or structural systems. We can overcome this by being more gentle and having more faith in ourselves and God.