Adulthood

So I recently moved back in with my parents, sorta a stop-gap measure while I look for a place.  Now it hasn't been bad, they don't keep tabs on me every two seconds like they use to, I can come and go as I please.  But the one thing that gets to me is how negative the environment.  NOTHING EVER GOES RIGHT!  Now that's an exaggeration, more often than not things usually do go right, but living at my parents place you wouldn't know that.  You would think the world was ending with every little thing.  It's not and more generally the world always goes on.  As I was growing up, I really didn't notice it, the rampant fatalism, but now that I'm back from college, there is marketable difference.  Don't get me wrong, I love my parents, they make some of the best decisions, and are virtually never wrong on people's character, money, and/or general wisdom. It's just their perspective on life is colored way more negatively then mine. I think one thing my parents could change, is learning to let go off the past, I ultimately think that is what keeps them from truly enjoying life.  I'm trying to nudge them gently to see the truth in that, but I guess I'll have to get more firm.

This is a separate thought, but somehow connected.  I've been thinking lately about what makes an adult, is it being self-sufficient? Nope I know a lot of people that live on there own, work, even have a significant other,but I wouldn't classify them as adult.  Based on a variety of factors (main one being selfishness).  To make a long thought short.  I think when a person turns into an adult, is when they finally see their parents as people.  All the faults, failures, insecurities, skills, and qualities. Through adolescence, I always saw my parents, as invincible warriors, parents that have always come to my defense, stalwart and resolute, never wrong in there judgements, impeccably smart whose intelligence far surpassed my own.  My parents have many great qualities, but of course like any person they have their faults.  But every child knows this, it takes an adult to see it.  To realize that your parents need just as much love and support as you do.  That when your away, they miss you just as much as a best friend, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, or wife.  And like any person, they once had dreams and aspirations, pains and sufferings, their past lives with them.  To be an adult is to switch from the receiving mode you do as a child, receiving from your parents, relatives, and friends.  And flip it to giving mode, poring out to help the people around you.

Some people never make the flip, and really, making a prediction, most people from my generation will never make that flip.  And nowadays that flip is becoming rarer and rarer, you can point to so many statistics, divorce over 50%, psychologists creating a new category for life stages "emergent adulthood", 55% of American's saying they are dissatisfied with their relationships.  And 45% of young people polled across colleges saying Sex was the number 1 priority in their relationship.  These statistics paint a picture of a community that is changing, changing to devaluing your fellow man and an increasing in selfishness.  So why is it important?  Because it marks a de-evolution, a regression away from a more Godly society.  And it makes me sad, for as ursula would put it those "poor unfortunate souls" don't know what there missing out on.