Becoming an Adult

It’s been approximately one week since I graduated college. It seems that the view of the future presented to me by others has been rather pessimistic more than it has been optimistic.

I’ve been greeted with overwhelming negativity about what life in the "real world" will be. My parents hoped that I enjoyed my time as a student because, “the real world is all about work, no fun or free time.” My elder sisters tell me, “Congratulations, but it’s all downhill from here.” My already graduated friends warn me that, “The real world is not all that it is cut out to be, don’t have high expectations.” This is the overwhelming sentiment of those around me.

I guess people expect more from the world. They expect that the world will make them happy, some way and somehow. They think that if they play life according to the rules that they have been conditioned into believing, that they will be rewarded with a purposeful and fulfilling life. Many think that money will be the answer, and after struggling so desperately to get some, they see that more money only means more problems, more bills, more possessions to look after, more opportunity for things to go wrong.

I look around and see all those suffering around me: People working jobs they don’t want to be working; people finding themselves in situations which they resist with the greatest animosity; people experiencing problems and drama with relationships, friendships, and grudges with siblings, marriages on the cusp of falling apart. Though people are unhappy, they continue forth with what they’ve been doing, in the name of the false promises which they have been conditioned to believe. This leads me to really believe in what Jesus said on the cross all those years ago:

“Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

If these people could wake up from their present circumstances, from their unhappiness, insanity, and chronic suffering, they most certainly would. But that choice has not yet been presented to them yet. To judge these people, to scold these people, to renounce and resist these people, does nothing more than to fuel the fire of insanity that already burns so ferociously.

You cannot show someone love through the means of hate. Hate is the dirt that obscures love. Love is always present. Love is the very space that hosts hate.

I am the space that hosts all life. It is my decision as to what I would like to host. If I host hate for other people’s unconsciousness, I obscure love--myself--even more. I must find peace within my own heart. To show others that a life filled with love is possible, I must find love first.

Love transcends this dimension, I think that’s why most people are oblivious to it. Love cannot be found in the world, it is the very foundation of the world. That foundation can only be found by looking within, to a place that can’t be experienced “out here”.

I’m not an adult now, I’m hosting an adult. Just like I’ve hosted a baby, a toddler, a child, and a teenager. And one day, I will host an old man, who is ready to relinquish his identity as any form.

Maybe the “real world” isn’t all that it is cut out to be, but the love that I am is all that I could ever ask for.