Verity Johnson: The definition of adulthood

When you're in your 20s, it's time to get "the job". You know how you did your sensible degree so you would "get a job"? It is now time to get that job. Photo / Martin Sykes

I'm certain that the definition of adulthood is experiencing fridge-related trauma.

The other day, I was scraping ant corpses from my freezer. I realised, hands full of their frozen ligaments, that I would never have done this as a teenager.

Not two weeks before, I had a similar moment of realisation. I was bulk-buying ice when the checkout guy winked and said, "Big night, eh?" Oh. Once upon a time. But tonight my fridge had died, and I needed enough ice to transform my laundry basket into a temporary replacement. I had yet another adult moment when I had to disassemble my new fridge to get it in the door.

Some people say the definition of adulthood is when you have your first child. Some people say that it's when you move out of home. Some people say it's when you drink the tears of an arctic raven. For me, it's fridge-related.

It's hard to agree on - especially because there is no agreed time frame. In a recent article I read, the 31-year-old author described herself as just "adulting" (doing adult activities without being an adult). Even the rise of this phrase further blurs the lines of reaching adulthood by showing that we can do "adult things" without yet having become an adult.

However, since graduating, moving out of home, and extensive fridge trauma, I'm feeling like adulthood has certainly started. It's not in its full throes (I have yet to buy pasta jars) but I don't feel like a student anymore. And one of the more noticeable feelings about this new stage is the feeling that I should be "getting on". It's a hard feeling to describe. Partly because I've only become consciously aware of it recently, since graduation and the onslaught of friends getting real jobs. But also it's hard to describe because no one quite knows what it is. It's a deep-seated panic. A desperate need to achieve - and have everyone know that you're achieving. And it's not based on my own criteria for achievement. It's based on an abstract set of ideas of what "adult" achievement is.

It's summed up by my friend's response to my question of why she was working, not studying, more. "Because I just need to get out there and be something. I just don't know what that something is." While in school achievement was getting the grades, and in university it was about finding guys, now it feels like it's about getting a job, a salary and a future.

When you're in your 20s, it's time to get "the job". You know how you did your sensible degree so you would "get a job"? It is now time to get that job. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's respectable and pays reasonably well. It also should have a chance for stable career progression. This is because as you get older you still stay in the race - you just move to the second phase that involves having a clear map for the future. And also things like getting married, having a nice house, buying your first set of quality bathroom towels, etc.

But beyond these vague descriptors, I can't really pin it down. It's characterised by a feeling of the need to "win life" and a fear that you're not. It's complicated by the fact that we grow up with clear standards of success. As another girlfriend said, "I always knew how to win school and win uni." That gets us in the mindset that we need to "win life", except that life doesn't have those clear markers of success.

It's not even just about competing against abstract societal ideas of success. It's also about competing against your friends.

We all have an unnaturally successful friend who we are envious of, and a slightly hopeless friend who we love because they makes us feel better about ourselves. It's not just our friends - it's everyone our age. Why else do school reunions exist except to see who "won" the race to respectability.

This is what adulthood feels like. A race to an invisible, elusive finish line of "success". But why is it like this? All it does is make us so scared that we're falling behind, and then we never take the chance to ask whether we actually want this.

Do we want this? Do we even know what "this" is?

No wonder people talk about wanting to be young again. When you're young, you're guided by your desires. When you're old, it seems you're guided by fear.