The difference between “adulting” and “being an adult”

Merriam-Webster defines “adulting” as “behaving like an adult: to attend to the ordinary tasks required of a responsible adult” and an adult is someone who is “fully developed and mature”. It implies then, that someone who is adulting is not necessarily, in fact, a responsible adult.

When do we become adults?

As children, there are clear phases for how we develop.

First, as babies, we have a “feeling soul” — we don’t know the world, we feel it, and intuition guides us. We know without being aware that we know. We are connected to the world in a way that is impossible to describe.

Then as we grow, as we learn how to talk and develop our brain, we gradually distance ourselves from this “feeling soul” and we replace it with reason, we enter the “age of reason” — around age 7. By gaining the ability to speak of the world, we put a distance between it and ourselves, and disconnect ourselves from that intuitive link.

We then go through the awkward teenage years, where we learn boundaries, get acquainted with our evolving bodies and adjust towards independence.

We turn 18, or 21, depending on where we live, and suddenly, we’re officially an adult.