EPISODE III: UNCOVERING ADULTS

 

ORIGINAL SERIES

A curious young lady uncovering the truth/Credit/Noelle Otto

EPISODE III: UNCOVERING ADULTS

I was committed. I wanted to understand everything. Especially, that part where irresponsibility came across as the biggest challenge among adults. I wanted to know why adults were struggling to get it right. After all, adults have created an image in the eyes of their children that depicts them as strong, responsible, and focused. An adult knows it all in the eyes of a child. In fact, not many children understand that their parents or normal adults have challenges. They see these perfect beings and many children admire their parents. That is how I also saw things until I initiated my project. As a child, I would not even know that my parents could be irresponsible. Life was busy. I loved playing. And that left very little room to look around. By, the way, why would I look around? No one had given me any reason to look around. And that is how most irresponsible adults get away with it because no one is looking.    

My project was a big success. It brought out the truth. It uncovered adults. Since my thesis focused on why adults err, there is no way I could miss investigating cases of irresponsibility. My focus with the project was to find answers to some of my stubborn questions. I had observed some things. And I was not going to ask an adult to answer them for me. I was going to find out by myself. I wanted the truth. And I knew the right way to the truth. In fact, no one knew that I was running a side project in addition to the many things that I was doing. It was my personal project. I was doing it under cover. And under cover created a perfect setting to understand everything. I had seen life. I had been around people. And I saw what was going on. Some people were moving from one mistake to the other. In worsts cases, I observed an impasse. And I could not get it. I could not figure out what was so hard that adults were struggling so badly.

Then I found out the truth. The truth was that; adults are not super humans. They are normal human beings. And sometimes, normal people struggle. They struggle because they do not have answers to some of their questions. So they end up in a difficult place. A difficult place where they don’t know what to do. Some adults struggle because they discover too late that what they were prepared for might not be in existence. As a result, they are forced to adjust. And some people don’t like change. Therefore, when they face the unexpected, they struggle to admit that they are having a rough time. Adults find it difficult to accept that they could be making a mistake. And that perhaps, they need to change their course and find the right way. Some have travelled to far to turn back. So they find ways to cover their struggles or mistakes.

Further, I also learned that some adults also struggle with  cases of irresponsibility because no one taught them better. No one taught them responsibility because from where they came from, no one knew how to be responsible.  As a result, irresponsibility was normalized and no one saw anything wrong with it. Because that is how people live around here. Some adults had disastrous upbringings. They came from backgrounds, which had no leadership and structure. And there is no way they will grow up as responsible people. For some, responsibility was a new concept. A concept that they only came across as adults themselves. So they did not know how to be responsible. That is why they were struggling with getting it right. One angle of my findings informed me so. I could now understand the source of the struggle.   

But I was not done. I wanted to learn more. And I ended up with the second layer of the truth. I would call the second layer of truth a tragedy. It is a tragedy because adults failed to grow up. My findings revealed that some of the adults I was seeing and interacting with in the big city could actually be not adults. They were just covered in adult bodies. Yet, in reality, they could be five-year-olds or two-year-olds in their brains. And you don’t expect a five or two-year-old to know what to do. A five-year-old is a child. A child that still needs proper guidance and direction. In fact, a five-year-old needs effective early childhood education to turn out great. Most adults had not learned how to be effective adults. They were stuck somewhere in their heads. And that is how one group of adults came out as irresponsible.

A busy professional at work/Credit/Andrea Piacquadio 

It was hard for me to accept these truths. Life for sure has surprises. Society could be hosting a lot of child-adults. Yet these individuals, have gone ahead to get involved in circumstances that demand responsibility out of them. I discovered a lot of mess on the subject of adults and responsibility. I don’t know whether the new discovery helped me to be more empathetic or not. All I know is that I was investigating adults and I found something I don’t like. Irresponsibility was posing a real problem to real people. It was threatening to brake people apart. Grown up men and women were struggling to have it together. I could not believe my eyes. I saw these adults in the big city. Real men and women struggling. They were doing a lot of things. Things like getting up early in the morning and going to work. They were working hard.

Adults were working hard not only to make money but also hide their mistakes. Adults in the big city were chasing dreams. They wanted to build something for themselves. They were looking for a good life. A good future for their families and perhaps, to build a good reputation among their peers. Adults were looking for progress. They wanted to build wealth. And no one can blame them for that. Everyone wants a good life. People want to do well in life and they are willing to pay the price. People travel and leave countries in search of better opportunities. The ideas of wealth creation and real-life progress pushed many adults to work hard in the city. You could easily confuse their hard work for being responsible human beings. However, that was not being responsible. Some adults were killing it because there was structure out there.

Their workplaces laid out what was supposed to be done. And there were consequences for those who did not follow simple instructions. To prove their worth, adults worked hard to meet expectations and even surpass them. They were so good as professionals because someone trained them to be competent. However, as individuals doing their personal part, they were terrible. In fact, irresponsibility cropped out of the personal side. This side was unchecked. They were the only control measures. They needed to learn the best way to live as adults. They needed values and best ways to face or solve problems. However, when it came to fixing their own individual problems and challenges, adults were not working hard. Most of them were hiding behind their busy schedules. Yet, in reality, some could not initiate a successful activity.           

These adults were only responsible in the public eye. But behind the scenes a lot was happening. Homes were breaking and families were falling apart. Adults were coming up shot on small things. Things that involved keeping operations around their lives smooth. Some of them could not be responsible dads or moms. They were struggling with their own issues. Issues that they had not found time to think about or solve. Childhood traumas were affecting their adulthood. Everyone that needed something from some of these adults did not necessarily get it. It was tough. It was shocking. And if there is a secret that adults have kept or protected so well, is admitting the truth. Adults never tell that something is wrong. They just cannot bring themselves to correct or change some things.    

                                                                    

                          A man waiting for train/Credit/JESHOOTS

Even when irresponsibility spells out strikingly in their eyes. Very few people accept that they are struggling and need help. They will be in their typical adult element. Putting up a spirited demeanor. A face that depicts them as being in control. People who have it together. Children cannot know that dad is struggling. In fact, no one can play with dad or mom. Children in those houses must learn how to behave. They must learn how to do the right thing. Or else, they will know who is in charge. Children should take their education seriously. That is at least, what I saw amongst many adults. They were putting up a face and could not admit the truth. They had invented the worst coping mechanism. The coping mechanism came from a point of vulnerability. A point of embarrassment. People don’t like being found out.

And adults are no exception. They find ways to hide their flaws. However, adults did not do a good job with me. I found out. I saw them. I watched them struggle. And it was the most difficult lesson I ever learned under the sun. Irresponsibility can do so much damage to a person. It not only makes you appear as a bad ally but also untrustworthy. Irresponsibility makes people less favorable and attractive. These undesirable attributes come from the backdrop of people never learning how to get things right. And no one likes people who don’t get it right. The idea of not getting things right became so bad that some people normalized irresponsibility. They saw nothing wrong with it. They were just unconscious of it. And that is where it gets ugly and dangerous. People cannot just become careless. A typical irresponsible person is very unconscious of irresponsibility. He/she doesn't know what you are talking about. They are okay. And what a tragedy?

It is really bad for other people to worry about your behavior. It means that the behavior has worsened. That you are headed in the wrong direction. And I saw the effects of irresponsibility first hand. Families were no longer enjoying life. Because one of the adults was not doing his/her part. Peace was disrupted. The other adult who happened to be responsible felt overburdened. The burdens that one adult could shoulder pulled fun out of life. People became depressed. Families that had children no longer had happy kids. Things in the home changed and children could not understand why. That is how ugly irresponsible looked to me. I never wanted anything to do with it. I could not stand burdening. There is no way I could live my life like that. You cannot seat pretty watching one person carrying the burdens. 

Irresponsibility was everywhere I turned. Adults were messed up. And I could not understand how they ended up that way. I could not bring myself to understand the recklessness. I don’t know how those irresponsible adults dealt with it every day. It looked horrid to me.  I did not want to interact with it. In fact, seeing how adults struggled pushed me to learn the right way very early in my life. I began to take instructions very seriously. I listened carefully. And I learned to follow instructions to get things right. The whole experience taught me that adults who were struggling to get things right were not being honest with themselves. They knew something was wrong somewhere. Yet, they were doing nothing about it. They just kept going. Kept prevaricating from the right path and could not stop to think.

I hated that scene. And I swore to myself that I will not tolerate such behavior now or in the future. Adults were not making good choices. They were not correcting their mistakes. They were nurturing irresponsibility to an extent that it was festering in their lives. And that cost most of them a lot. Some families broke up. Some people ran out of love. And others lost respect for each other. They could not just put up with irresponsibility. Normal life was getting threatened. Irresponsibility was left to last longer than it was necessary. Adults should have not allowed themselves to travel that far. They should have applied restrain. However, real life was panning out. It was doing so in the most characteristic manner. It exposed adults in their worst elements. They were not on guard. And I saw their weakness. I understood the source of their weaknesses. 

There were difficult circumstances. Perhaps, people were doing their best. But there was no excuse for being irresponsible. My findings revealed that the different struggles that I witnessed among adults came from different motivations. There were complex underlying issues. Issues, which could be described as beyond control. However, in life, people have choices. There mere fact that people came from traumatized backgrounds does not necessarily mean that they should remain traumatized. Life offers people opportunities to change. I just wish that most of these adults could have chosen growth. They should have fought harder to overcome their challenges. They should have learned values along the way. They should have found suitable role models. They should have controlled this ugly scene before it escalated. Yet again, this is normal life. life runs its course. And normal people struggle. People get it right sometimes. And in certain occasions, they lose it altogether.  And that culminates to living. Being alive and experiencing raw life unfolding in front of you.