It’s been a common meme for a while now, especially among millenials, that adulthood is suffering. ¹.

“Adulting” is a uniquely difficult act, we are told, and cruel to push on mere mortals. People tend to pine for the supposed joy and innocence of childhood, as if puberty is a type of expulsion from Eden.

I remember my mom telling me a version of this when I was young. “You should be so happy you’re in school,” she scolded. “You get to do something different every day, you don’t have a boss harassing you, and you don’t have to worry about getting fired. Being an adult is so much more stressful than being a kid. Enjoy it while you still can.”

Having since reached adulthood, I’ve happily realized this is wrong. Adulthood is objectively better than childhood, as I’ll show. This article is for anyone who’s ever wanted to return to childhood. This is my apology for adulthood-- this is why I believe adults should embrace their age, not just because of “duty” or social obligation or whatever, but because adulthood is a wonderful thing.

I. Freedom

Everything boils down to this, the golden gift of adulthood.

I don’t think the average person realizes their own freedom. Most adults in the United States could at any time, if they really wanted to, cut all ties to their home country and move to India, and transform overnight into a rich person. The day after that, they could start a business. The months before that, they could learn any skill they choose, from a myriad of resources online and otherwise. Before that, they could travel extensively ².

I’ve often felt a little thrill on Friday nights, when I realize I could drive miles to the Wyoming-Colorado border right at that moment just for fun. No one and nothing would stop me. No one and nothing! Isn’t that so cool? I am utterly free to adventure.

While many people are willing to admit that their freedom as a kid is limited, I think a more accurate term would be nonexistent. If they were transported back to one of their scenes of childhood and made to watch it, as if it were a movie, what would leap out most at them is the overt dominance of their parents. Children live under a dictatorship, however benevolent. The child has very little choice about what they do. Because they’re so ignorant, they have little choice over their interests and usually just absorb them from parents and peers. They have no choice over where they go to school, over where they live, or the shape of their daily lives. Children are incubated in an environment they have no control over. While for many of us this environment was a source of comfort and joy (and of course that’s wonderful), for many others it was a source of scars.

If you had a good home life, put yourself in the shoes of someone who didn’t. Imagine the utter terror and horror of living as a child under a malevolent dictator. Imagine being abused by your parents or sibling and being so weak and so stupid and so utterly helpless that you can do nothing about it except cry. This happens every day. It is one of the blackest marks of existence.

Thankfully even this darkest night eventually breaks into day. The charming thing about childhood, however bad, is that it’s temporary. You’re liberated in the end.

II. Responsibility

Many argue against adulthood by saying that its freedom comes with extra responsibility, and this weighs down the joy of adulthood enough to make it net-negative. The implication is that responsibility is such a great evil that the argument is pretty much self-evident. “When you’re a child, you have no responsibilities!” That alone is enough to call childhood a golden age.

I’m confused. It’s good to be responsible and bad to be irresponsible! I can’t imagine wanting to be irresponsible! To have obligation and duties makes you better because it urges you on to perform, and action is the forge where souls are made.

It’s like this. Your inner self is an untamed ox. It moves around wildly all the time. But it can’t do any productive work on its own: it is the yoke that makes the ox productive! The soul must combine with a yoke to be good! It is to the yoke’s own glory that it restricts us!

The great thing about responsibilities is they force us to make contact with the world and to change it. You get, for the first time, a true vision of the world. Even the smallest chore is a chance to touch the fractal granularity of the universe. In everything you do, there’s something to be improved.

For example, consider cleaning, a chore many hate. You can learn a lot from cleaning. I’ve learned recently, for example, that you should clean from top to bottom so that dust and trash can fall down and you can clean it later. If you move from upward, dust and trash that falls down from the upper parts won’t be cleaned at all. I’ve had a lot of fun learning something new every time I clean, and I’m still only at best a level 3 housekeeper. You could live a whole life specializing, exploring, and striving to be a great cleaner. Many do. And this is a very mundane task! Think of everything you can do with your more interesting responsibilities!

To round out my point I’d like to draw one more picture. Consider the NEET, one who is Not in Education, Employment, or Training. This is the archetypical basement dweller, the kind of person who hangs out at home 24/7 and spends their days playing video games. You probably know one or at least know of one.

I humbly submit that NEETs are the richest people in the world. Their wealth is measured not in wealth or prestige but in the sacred currency: time.

Time can be converted into literally anything else: friendships, prestige, buildings, money, experiences, whatever you like. But it’s a one-way conversion. You will spend, spend, and spend your time, but you will never buy a second. Most of us have to spend more time than we’d like at work, school, or with annoying people. But NEETs have no such debt! They have nothing but time!

Think for a moment of the power of NEETs. They are the best-positioned people in the world to:

1. Learn foreign languages
2. Learn anything, really
3. Start businesses
4. Maintain anything whatsoever on the internet
5. Forge new online relationships
6. Become experts in niche or obscure or non-renumerative subjects
7. Produce independent media (videos, blogs, games, music)
8. Master open-source tools and contribute to projects
9. Conduct long-term, self-directed research outside institutions

The NEET is rich because they are utterly free of responsibility. For my opponents, they have all the charm of childhood and none of the drawbacks! They have no debts, no obligations, no yoke! The NEET lives a life of pure potential! So those who think responsibility is bad must think the NEET happy. By this measure they should be the happiest people in the world. But are they? Of course not.

I know a few NEETs, and they are miserable. They are among the most wretched people in industrialized countries. They’re often skating on the brink of suicide. What makes NEETs so miserable is precisely what makes them so rich: irresponsibility. Without responsibility, even to themselves, they have no purpose. The point of responsibility is to divvy up time. It’s to keep ourselves from being a blank page. An object can only be defined by a border; there can be no action without restriction. A person who could be doing anything is actually doing nothing. A field with the same potential everywhere might as well be zero.

III. Jobs

Was my mom right in the end? Is school or work more pleasant?

The biggest difference between the two is that you pay for one and get paid for the other. Right away jobs have the other hand. Another big advantage of adult jobs is that you can quit at literally any time (this is actually amazing, when you think about it. Employers are taking a big risk whenever they employ anyone, because they could literally quit right in the middle of any task or project, which could be a disaster). With school you can’t quit at all.

Most people can also choose what they do for work and even where they work. This is a huge variety of choice compared to the single school your parents send you to.

My mom says that school is better because it has more variety. This is true in some way: there’s a lot of variety in subject. But it’s not all that true in a different way: what you actually do.

Most of what you do in grades 1-12 is sitting and listening to the teacher, going to recess, and doing homework. None of this is bad. But there’s arguably not that much variety. There may be variety in subject, but not in what the students actually do.

We could also question whether variety makes something intrinsically better. It’s probably better to do something you love every day than to do some things you like, some things you don’t like, every day.

I enjoy work more than school. Most people I know who are reasonably capable and choose their job well agree.

IV. Time

This is the best argument against adulthood. You have less of the sacred currency when you’re an adult, both biologically and societally.

It’s important not to ignore this. I highly encourage anyone reading this that know that you’re never too young to seize life by the throat, to do all the great things you want, starting right now. There really is no need to wait.

On the other hand however, it seems likely that many people who make this argument have forgotten about what being a kid is like. Realistically, most kids don’t know how to spend their time. If you give them free rein they are liable to just play video games or stare at a screen all day. You might have a lot of ideas for how you can spend the extra time, but your younger self didn’t.

Contrarily, most adults have more time than they think. You’ve proven you have time just by reading this far.

Let’s imagine you are an overworked office employee. You spend eight hours every weekday at work and you have a grueling hour-long commute both ways. You also need to spend two hours a day on necessary meals, errands, exercise, or maybe a second job. You need to spend an hour and a half at church every Sunday. Finally, you have to sleep eight hours a day without exception.

How much free time do you have every week? Let’s take a look…

$5 \cdot (24 \color{gray}{–8} \color{blue}{-8} \color{red}{-2} \color{green}{-2}\color{black}) = 20 \text{ hours}$

From weekends:

$2 \cdot (24 \color{blue}– 8 \color{green} – 2 \color{black}) \color{purple} – 1.5 \color{black} = \text{26.5 hours}$

You still have 46.5 hours every week of free time. Almost two whole days. And this is under pessimistic assumptions! With that much time, you could read 3.7 long books. Or write 2,650 lines of code.³ Or write this very essay... and then write seven more copies.

You have time. Use it.

V. Ability

Something people usually ignore in this debate is how much more capable adults are then kids. Obviously there’s a wide variety of capability among both of them, but the gulf even between, say, the average 21-year-old and the average 16-year-old is amazing.

I was recently reminded of this by an event that astounded me.

When I was about twelve, I rummaged through the ancient closets of the house and found a set of Flying Penguinis ⁴. These are cute little bean bags you can use to learn to juggle. I decided to give it a try.

I was terrible. It was hard for me to even toss a single bag from hand to hand. Juggling two penguinis at once in a circle was impossible. Forget three. I tried and tried for a few hours and made no progress. Eventually I got bored and moved onto something else, never touching the penguinis again.

Fast forward ten years or so to last week. I was given two oranges during a final exam. I held one in each hand and for some reason the urge came to me to juggle them. I tossed one into the air, passed the second from left to right, and caught the first in my left hand. Better than I expected!

I did it a second and a third time. I expected to fail any time now. Catch, catch… any moment now… catch, catch, catch…

I kept going and going and going… there was no sign of instability. As I looked at the oranges traveling from hand to hand, a shiver went down my spine. I could just… do it.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I hadn’t been practicing! I should not be able to do this! I don’t deserve it! All that separated this from my last failed attempts was the gulf of adulthood. Yet that was enough. I got this skill for free from background improvements in hand-eye coordination.

Being an adult increases your baseline awesomeness.

VI. Social Life

Many complain about how hard it is to make friends as an adult. I would find this more creditable if these people actually tried.

Sure, adults aren’t forced into friendship like kids are, but there are so many new vectors to make friends. The social events, bars, conventions of every kind, adult sports leagues, religions, travel, the workplace, internet, the YMCA… you name it, and there are friends waiting to be had. Not only that, but since both you and the friend are more mature, the depth of friendship is increased.

If every day you go to work and then go home and watch Netflix, then don’t be surprised that you don’t have friends. But please don’t blame that on adulthood.

Conclusion

Adulthood is awesome. It’s better than being a kid in pretty every imaginable way --- it is in fact the state we should be preparing kids for, the pinnacle of human life.

None of this is to disparage children. Childhood is great and children are great! But we don’t want childhood to last forever. Childhood is a good thing that prepares you for an even better thing.

I worry a little about those who tell their kids otherwise. Imagine telling a child that they’re slipping down the slope of life and that they only have more and more misery to look forward to. It shouldn’t surprise us that so many adults today want to extend childhood indefinitely.

When my kids ask me what being an adult is like, I’ll be sure to tell the truth. Being a kid has its charms, but the golden time of life is ahead of them.