Throughout school, we’ve always looked up to grown-ups for guidance. Needed help with your ABCs? You called your grown-up teacher. Fell off your bike? You cried for your grown-up parents. Every time assistance was needed, we looked for grown-ups because we’ve been taught that grown-ups know everything. I’m here to tell you all something so mind blowing that you might not believe me at first.

Grown-ups are a myth. They’re not real. They are figments of our imagination. I struggled with this idea for quite some time until I started talking with friends that had recently bought their own car, gotten married, had kids, or paid taxes, etc. They were doing grown-up stuff. It was like I was in the Twilight Zone hearing about all of my friends doing things that I was taught only grown-ups could do.

But if you really think about it, the myth of grown-ups becomes much more believable. Remember when you were in middle school and you looked at high schoolers and thought those people were adults? Then when you were in high school you looked at college kids and thought “Nope, I was wrong. Those are adults.” Well, here we all are, college students. Let me ask, do you feel like a grown-up? I for one don’t. I pretend to be an adult, but I’m really not. I still make couch forts, I still sleep with stuffed animals to keep the monsters away, and I never fail to marvel at the toy section when I go shopping.

Grown-ups have been characterized as people that have everything figured out and have been granted access to the “all grown-up” club. We all wondered when the day would come when we could finally be worthy of such membership. It wasn’t until the end of this semester that I realized that most of us are only a few short years away from “the real world.” We’re only a few short years away from when we’re actually supposed to be grown-ups. We’re all still holding onto that little piece of childhood telling us that an overnight transformation will suddenly change us into these adults that we’ve painted in our heads.

But I’m here to shatter that image and let you in on a secret. No one has everything figured out and there’s no “all grown-up” club. We shield young kids from the struggles of real life, so to them being a grown-up means everything is in place. Little do they know that we’re all just like them. We’re all still so confused as far as our future goes, we all still look to adults for guidance, and every once in a while we’ll pout when we don’t get what we want.

We really are just running around in this huge playground of life. I hate to break it to you, but none of us will reach adulthood, not really anyways, because no matter how old we get, no matter how many grown-up things we do, we honestly are just a bunch of kids playing a game of dress up. I have to tell you, I can’t say I’m not relieved. Being a kid is probably the best thing that anybody can hold on to, so don’t think of this myth as an end to your “grown-up” mindset, but a reincarnation of the kid you’ve always been.