Winging Adulthood… feeling half empty or half full?
The weekend of the Queen’s death I visited London and as a souvenir I bought myself Edward Enninful’s book “A visible man”. This is significant because with all the talk of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, UK TV channels were obligated to run documentaries and news reports about her and her accomplishments. Despite having left London I only decided to open “A visible man” a month later. In the memoir I discovered the story of Edward’s struggle along the way of “a boy from Ghana making his way in a racist, classist industry”. However others perception of his life is that he is a successful black man surrounded by glamour, swagger and amazing women. How the Queen may have viewed her life versus the public perception of her are different stories, as Elizabeth was only fulfilling her duty post the death of her father King George VI. Many things can also be said about the choices she made concerning colonisation and the atrocities that came with it. Where as Edward clearly made a path for himself through hard work, dedication and a little parental defiance. RIP queeny tho.
In conversation, having read the book “the defining decade” a friend of a friend broke down the consensus that as young adolescents our sense of worth came from educational validation. We could measure our success much easier than as young adults. Ideally everyone has their own idea of what success is because it’s subjective, yet people seemed kind of stunned when I posed them this question. “What do you consider success and happiness in your adult life? In between the time we retire and or die there’s no exact test or exam for this phase of adulthood. Some (religious) would argue life is the ultimate test with the reward at the end of this all being Heaven. However you can try keep faith and still feel lost in this world as Kanye once said.
I believe we are in this post ‘girl boss era’ and the idea of setting goals just gives major capitalist vibes. Despite that, it turns out setting mini goals to achieve throughout your day/ week/year proves for a gratifying frame of mind. I had to ask a few people around me what their personal definition of success was, being that we are stuck on this planet with individual purposes.
Many of the people I asked, like minded, claim it’s the little things that get them by. I have noticed that the people that want the big things in life tend to seclude themselves from the world in order to figure out how to attain it all. It bothers me that some people that end up incredibly successful reach their goals by screwing others over. They sacrifice happiness for success (a debate in itself), Yet those moments of personal failures and retrials are a part of some man’s success story. Personally having to deal with humans that believe they’re half empty is frustrating. We can’t all be granted specific opportunities that will allow us to learn or fail in certain areas of life. Just as equally it bothers me that people who possess prodigious potential in this life don’t strive, settle and pretend to be content.
Growing from a situation can be considered as a form of success. The continuous learning of your craft and practicing of your self-care routine ensure the latter of this think piece’s title.
