I just turned 18, Now what?

 I just turned 18 years old. In my nation, as in many others, turning 18 means becoming legally accepted as an adult. So, the Tanzanian legal system now considers me to be an adult, whoopy doo! But something doesn't feel right; it feels anticlimactic. Nothing appears to have changed, and I continue to feel the same. I just turned 18 years old, now what?

Growing up was always something I looked up to when I was little. I thought growing up meant knowing everything about life; that nothing would be a mystery and that everything would make sense, but that does not appear to be the case. Things made more sense when I was younger when I was in a bubble when I depended solely on my faith and my parents to make sense of the world, but as I grew older and met people of different faiths, everything changed. The world was not so simple; it had nuance and was not black and white. There’s colour in this world, lots of it in fact.

Younger versions of myself would be disappointed that I am more disoriented at 18 years old than at any other time in my life. The more I learn, the more I realise I don't know. It feels like a vicious loop; I gain some and recognise I know very little. What scares me the most is that we've embraced our ignorance as grownups and go about our lives as if we know everything. It appears that we have abandoned our childhood curiosity in favour of ignorance, as though ignorance is preferable.

Ignorance appears to keep us on track. It brings us together and tells us to keep going. Ignorance ensures that we work, pay our bills, vote, and otherwise function as members of society. We appear to lose interest in the complexities of reality as adults, and instead settle for the quickest remedy and move on. We accept the simplest explanations, even if they do not satisfy our curiosity. We don't care why we do things; we simply do them. We don't care where we're going; all we worry about is the here and now. We don't strive to rediscover ourselves; we just go about our daily lives. Is this what it means to be 18?  Drowning in ignorance because it’s comforting.

Maybe as we get older, we realise that it's pointless to be curious if you can't obtain the answers, so we just make do with what we have and try to enjoy our brief time here. Maybe I'm still thinking like a child and haven't really realised the value of letting go and settling down. I'm making it seem tragic, but it's how billions of men and women spend their lives, and those billions appear to be fine with it, so I assume I should accept it as well.

Turning 18 is more than just becoming an adult; it is accepting that you will not understand everything but that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying your existence. I don’t have to know where I’m from, where I’m heading, why I’m here or why everything is here? I just have to enjoy all this before it passes me by.

Some day I might read this essay again and realise I’m wrong and there is more to life but until then I just have to live my life and see.