Adulting. That is what men and women in their twenties call this miserable business of taking on the obligations that come after your childhood, when you no longer have the option to go crying to mummy because people were mean to you, or because you want chocolate or because the world is not treating you as if you are the special and precious butterfly you think you are. They call it adulting. The rest of us call it success, because if you are 40 and have not died yet, you are just plain and simply winning. But this is not another article mocking the young ones. There are only three times older people bother with young people: to mock them, to lie to them, or to advise them. This is, generously, number three. Get a good partner: A good wife is one who will share your celebrations when things are good and have your back when things are tough. A good wife will manage the household and keep it running smoothly. A good wife will steer the finances, no matter how scant, steadily away from starvation. A good wife will keep you and your children healthy and strong. So, if you are a man and want to have a successful adult life, marry a good woman. If you are a woman and want to have a successful adult life, make sure your husband is a good one. Get kids: You probably wonder how you are going to look after another immature, needy, whiny person if you can barely manage it with yourself, but the fertility rates in Rwanda suggest that you are going to have 4.026 kids so just get ready to deal. But children are an effective adulting hack — when you find your life is unfulfilled and empty, lacking purpose and meaning, and you wish you had some adventure to give you a reason to keep going, and you are not a white Liberal Arts degree graduate in Sacramento so you can’t just pack a rucksack and fly to Africa to be a peace corps volunteer, get yourself a kid. It will do all those things, trust me. You will have purpose and meaning and fulfillment and all that good stuff. But you will also have stress and anxiety and a whole lot of panic, so here is another valuable adulting tip. Space your children: Keep them at least five years apart. That way it is easier to divide and conquer. If they are too close together, they can form alliances and present united fronts against you, the enemy. But if you keep their ages far apart each one will always think the others are uncool. Ten year olds don’t ally with five year olds and fifteen year olds don’t ally with them either. Work and employment: When we lie to youth we tell you that you should get a job doing something you love. The truth is please, please don’t do that. If God had meant for us to love our jobs, He would not have called them “jobs”; He would have called them ice cream. You are meant to love ice cream, but you are always going to hate your job. Jobs are hard, annoying, frustrating, and are nothing but a series of annoyances and nuisances lined up one after the other, each one more exhausting than the last, and you have to run this gamut every month just so you can afford to do it again the next month. You will hate it. Do you really want to come to hate something that you loved once? Do you want to take something that was a precious source of joy and turn it into a pernicious source of drudgery? Fred is an Uber driver. He used to love stealing his dad’s car when he was younger. He would underage-drive it up and down the hood and hoot at the girls while wearing sunglasses and chewing a toothpick. He loved it. But ask him now what he does to relax. No, the answer is not drive around the hood acting like a rapper in a video. What he does is play football with his kids. This not only relaxes him, but also helps him keep an eye on them to make sure they are not stealing his car. Don’t even mention steering wheels to him on his days off. Speaking of relaxing, naps: As a child you hated it when they would tell you to get off the mud patch where you and the other kids were kicking the ball around and go in for a nap. But as an adult you will appreciate naps so much, you will start daydreaming of your Saturday nap on Wednesday. You should, however, understand that an adult nap is not like a college nap or a childhood nap. An adult nap is a very deliberately planned, very meticulously executed endeavor — one that takes skill to master. First you need to have a proper venue. The sofa in the sitting room is highly-rated, as long as you have your spouse’s word that the children will be kept outside a 100m radius the whole time. A measure of alcohol is not necessary, and tea can often substitute, but a heavy, sumptuous meal is a valuable contributor to the nap. Nap attire also counts. Get something ugly, oversized, grey and just repugnant because clothes that look like that are the most comfortable. Finally, the most important tip for successful adulting: Look after your health. No jokes there even. Just live healthy.
