That’s very different to saying that relationships, moving out of home, etc, suck.
Why?
Not when you consider the price to be paid. Outside of a certain self-defined intellectual maturity, adulthood and its privileges pretty much require debasing yourself to whatever degree satisfies your betters.
I’m not sure these are all that new. I was a college freshman in 1999 and the dry campus policy/freshman orientation courses were a well-established part of the school’s rules.
Life, in general, sucks.
Living is not peaches and cream. For anyone.
We all enter this word cold, naked, and screaming our heads off. From then on, it’s just a string of disorienting, irritating, painful, and worrisome experiences interspersed by periods of calm and contentment.
You don’t have to have high character of high level of suggestibility, whatever that means, to get through these things. You just have to have a will to live. Things really have to move beyond the realm of “suck” for a person just to give up on their instinct to survive.
I’d say one thing that probably differs from adults of today and adults of perhaps two or three generations ago. There was probably less complaining about things. I speculate, of course, but I really can’t see my great grandmother saying, “You know what? I’ve got a real bad headache right now. Fuck the fields. I’m going to bed!” No, because the difference between working 12 hours a day and retiring to bed was the difference between having food for the family or not, as unfortunate as that was. And if you gave into a headache, you’d give into menstrual cramps or stomach problems or arthritis or a head cold. And well, if you did that the whole family wouldn’t make it.
Today, I think nothing about taking a “mental health” day off from work, just 'cuz I can. I’ve grown accustomed to thinking I “need” such privileges, but the truth is I don’t. Because other people work a billion times harder than I do and yet carry even more suffering than I do. We just don’t have the same work benefits.
So in that way, I’m a wuss…a baby. But conditions ARE better. Our forebearers of the past saw to it that things would be better. This is what they wanted for their children and grand-children and great-grand children. They fought, sometimes died, for this progress. I can show my gratitude by working hard the rest of the days of the week, getting the most out of f the free time I do have, and not complaining so much. Or at least save the complaining for things I can follow up with action.
Getting your own place and a long-term relationship and kids all require debasing yourself? That doesn’t make any sense at all.
I do this too; my gaming buddies have been my friends longer than we’ve had the internet and headsets, etc… We used to get together in the same room, but now that one of us lives in Dallas, 2 in Houston, 1 at Fort Hood, and one in Oakland, we get together via the internet and chat while we play games and drink/smoke various things.
I don’t really see the difference between this and adults of a different age playing bridge, canasta or poker- it’s 60% conversation, 10% intoxicants, and 30% game.
After reading the thread, I’m starting to think that there are two different definitions of childish and immature in play within the thread.
There’s the first definition, which is the more simplistic one, where people are judged as childish based on people’s opinion of what they do in their spare time.
And then the second definition, which is where people are judged as immature/childish based on their unwillingness to take up certain responsibilities and behaviors commonly seen as marking a mature person.
I think that there’s a lot of overlap between definition 2 and 1, in that most people who don’t do the things in definition 2, also do a lot of the ones in definition 1.
However, just because a person’s doing things in definition 1 doesn’t mean that they’re also in definition 2.
I mean, I play video games, but in all other respects, I’m fully mature and someone you’d introduce to your grandparents as a responsible adult.
Exactly. And all your nieces and nephews think you’re the coolest person in the world. It’s actually kind of fun at family gatherings.
I think they’re actually slightly baffled by me, but yeah, my nephew was super-excited to play Call of Duty with me. My niece has nothing to do with video games- she’s off being super-girly with my wife.
It does when you check his recent post history.