Growing Up

The other day, I had a voice mail from State Farm saying that their records show I'll be 25 on September 9th and they needed to ask me some questions to ensure that I was correctly reclassified blah blah blah. I hardly listened past the beginning of the message.

25?! How did this happen? I know it isn't, but it just sounds so old. Not so much old as grown, grounded, fixed, established.

When do you know you've "grown up"? I just finished a plate of frozen vegetarian "chik'n nuggets" and thought maybe I would feel like a grown up if I cooked myself real meals. Did I actually become an adult when I graduated college? Perhaps a grown person receives no financial help from his or her parents. Or, as so many people I know seem to be doing, are you an adult when you buy a house? get married? have children of your own? Am I an adult now because I no longer have a tedious retail job and am trying to pursue something much closer to my heart? Maybe you can be a single, child-less renter with a menial job, but you know you're a "real" grown up when people stop asking you to do things like house/dog/baby sit because they know you have far too many obligations of your own.

Likely, it's something closer to what wise older brother Gus says to the title character in Lars and the Real Girl:

"Well it's not like you're one or the other, ok? There's still a kid inside you but you grow up when you decide to do right, ok, and not what's right for you, what's right for everybody, even when it hurts."

This comes nowhere near fully answering the question for me because what the heck is "what's right for everybody"? Although I suppose the particulars are less important the bigger picture perspective shift me from me to other - as Rick Warren concisely states, "It's not about you."

That's as far as I've gotten. Suggestions and comments are welcomed.

Below is a photo having nothing to do with becoming an adult, but a preview of my Wyoming trip recap that I hopefully will post soon.