There’s a lot I don’t understand about the world and I’m happy to admit my ignorance, with a willingness to understand… or at least not cast serious judgement.

As a writer, I understand language is mutable and the usage of its lexicon changes, adapts and evolves. Sometimes I can keep up and other times, I just sit back and hope what I’m missing is simply a trend that will go away.

I’ve already survived, “Gag me with a spoon,” and “All that and a bag of chips,” to name a few.

However, and pardon my quick step onto the old-person-ranting soapbox, there’s one word currently in use that strikes me as a failure of our culture:

“Adulting.”

Adulting: a verb to let the world know you are no longer a child because you did such strenuous adult things such as paying a bill or cleaning a stove all by yourself.

I’ve posted here before on the head-shaking reality that our expectations of society has become so low that mere competence is now seen as above-average. Even exceptional in some circumstances.

But I have to ask, and I hope there’s a historian out there who can share with me, at what point did we just give up on trying to raise children to be adults?

It scares me as a parent that I’m participating in this learned helplessness, understanding it was happening in my generation as well. However, if it took me until my twenties to figure out how to do a load of laundry, I wouldn’t be broadcasting this as an achievement—I’d actually be embarrassed.

Did we lose sight of timeless wisdom, with its accompanying practices and discipline, or are we witnessing a trending streak of online culture that presents the highest level of stagecraft for attention, “adulting” being one of them?

Maybe I’m just being crotchety?

I hope it’s not the latter as I do have high hopes for the future and see so much good in the young people today, but the question needs to be asked.