Adulthood Be Unexpected

When did we start becoming adults? I didn’t get the memo, or maybe I am just a little slow with things.

When we were kids, we wanted nothing more than to grow up quickly , make our own decisions and have the adults stop telling us what to do, but this thing doesn’t come with a manual, because two day ago, I was on a phone call with my mum at 7am in the morning. Well, I knew she was going to be up anyway, cause the woman never sleeps, one of the most hardworking people I know.

I am slowly turning into my mother. And this is something that my siblings and I make fun of, when we do something and we just be like, oh, that is totally something Mum would do, or that’s totally something dad would do.

And recently it just struck me, the level with which I am actually turning into my mother.

It’s very apparent to every Yoruba person, or people who know about the Yoruba tribe, that sarcasm and the language goes hand in hand. And it is very natural for a Yoruba person to be sarcastic, because it is all we have ever known.

I was with my friend recently, and while walking, she accidentally hit her leg against the chair in the living room, and automatically, less than a second after it happened, my first comment was, “Are you drunk, or were your eyes in your pockets?” But then I said it in Yoruba, in the exact words my mom would say if that were to happen.

And the moment I said it, she rolled her eyes and we laughed it off, cause we are always teasing each other that way.

The straight up sarcastic response put me in a spiral and a rabbit hole of thinking of things that have been happening recently, and how I have been noticing subtle things about myself and how they are similar to my mom, and my parents in general. And it does make sense because we are extensions of them to begin with.

Even when babysitting my nephew, I tend to exhibit some African mother traits and it amuses me, because it really does put some things into perspective when I think about it. It made understanding my parents a bit easier as well even though I don’t have kids of my own, neither am I married…..yet.

And I guess that it is fine really. its not that bad. I love seeing bits and pieces of my parents in myself, because they are truly good people, one of the best there is, and to a large extent I will follow their blueprint in raising my kids because – look at me? I turned out phenomenal!

They have shaped my thinking, and I realize now more than ever that they are people whose mistake I can learn from. Becoming them doesn’t necessarily mean that I make the mistakes that they made, its that I make better choices than they did.

They say that adulthood doesn’t come with a manual, and I know that I did say this just a few paragraphs ago, but then again, , we are always evolving and growing. As I like to say, I am not the woman I was five seconds ago, believe it or not, so I do think that adulthood comes with a manual. It comes with a plethora of books that stares us right in the face if only we would just bother to open it.

The manual is the lives of those ahead of us. It is the lives our parents, aunt and uncle, older (younger even) siblings.

The directions are written in the scripts of their lives. In the poor decisions we watched them make and in the great decisions we saw before our very eyes. it is glaring in the people around us that we can get advice from. it is screaming at us in the lives of strangers, of whom we have no relationship, but we still hear about.

I truly doubt that there is much I can be going through that I can’t receive pointers about from people I know, friends and family included. There is rarely a decision that I need to make that I can’t get answers from either through the counsel of the holy Spirit and the word of God, or physically from the people in my circle.

So, i guess that this grown up thing does have a manual. It may not come with the most attractive cover, but it does exist.

Anyway, Remember to spread love and reach for the stars