I definitely feel this at the moment. As a parent, your kids mostly follow what you do rather than what you say, which confers quite a bit of a responsibility about how you choose to live your life…

Young woman with lights

For many, adulthood means trading a life entirely devoted to learning for one in which you only read (maybe) two books a year. It means swapping a full schedule of sports, clubs, and music lessons for having exactly zero hobbies (unless watching Netflix counts). It means going from hanging out with peers for the bulk of each day to (maybe) seeing friends a few hours a month. It means shifting from experiencing plenty of firsts to being stuck in a hamster wheel of thousandths.

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Adulthood means taking on more responsibilities, and in turn, receiving more privileges. Unless we do something worthwhile — fun, interesting, desirable — with those privileges, young people won’t want to apply to the society of grown-ups, and adults won’t be able to wholeheartedly encourage them to join its ranks.

Source: Sunday Firesides: We Need to Make Adulthood More Desirable | The Art of Manliness

Image: Henri Pham