The Expected Act of Leveling Up

At every beginning; high school, college, or employment, there is always an expected notion of a transition, an upgrade in our ideologies, perspective and judgment. An alteration in how we view life and make decisions around it, perhaps, influenced by it.

Recently, witnessing an intimate friend get married, thankfully not via a screen, I could only ponder what they were experiencing during the build-up, and the moment the knot was tied. Having attended weddings passively, it was a first to feel something or the expectation to feel something, apart from genuine happiness, as we witness two individuals step into the next phase of life or whatever the world terms it to be. No observable differences were seen. From the person, they were yesterday or last year. So, is it an internal change?

A follow-up conversation with another friend, who accompanied me in attending the same, suggested that the union was more of two families than two individuals, and the notion of the next phase of life is only a very gradual change, getting kicked started at the event.

Yet again, is that how it is?

The generation of mindlessness

Every first, every metamorphosis; from pencil to pen, trouser shorts to pants, bicycles to motorcycles, COD and GTA shortcuts in the taskbar to spreadsheets and snipping tools, it would be difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when the transition occurred, but it could always ascertain that the cognisance ensued some point much later, perhaps a paradigm under the power of compounding, only to realise the change that was not felt when it transpired.

Do you remember your first day at work? I do. I was genuinely and effortfully trying to feel something, like from the movies I’ve seen or the books I’ve read. A formal shirt, chino, and borrowed shoes, along with wearing an assumed internal characterisation of what an adult face would be like. Nope, did not make the cut. It was later called a smug face.

I remember waiting to feel like an adult. Four years later, I still am.

How pretentious.

Oh wait, is that what it is?