Welcome to Adulting

Probably there are some people who know what they want to do when they grow up, know what they want to be when they grow up, but I’m not one of them.  Funny thing though, I’ve never heard anybody say that they want to grow up to be an adult. People want to be a fireman, a millionaire, an actor, a pharmacist, or married with kids. But no one wants to get old, (other than be old enough to do (or buy) any number of things that do require you be of a certain age).

                But who wants to be an adult, with all that adulting entails? Often we don’t know what it means to be an adult. We’re not taught the basics in school, and in a lot of families, the parents haven’t learned enough about being an adult to teach their kids. Our youth need help.

                Jonathan “JP” Pokluda (with Kevin McConaghy) has written a guide for the next generation of adults, and for some of the previous generations who didn’t learn the lesson the first time through.  Welcome to Adulting: Navigating Faith, Friendships, Finances, and the Future (Baker Books, 2018) offers a series of lessons on what it means to be an adult. The readers is asked to explore issues like “Why am I here?” or “What is a good employee?” And of course there is a discussion about managing money, and learning that there are things more important than amassing a large amount of money that you can’t take with you.

                And learning to be an adult means learning to get along with people, and possibly marriage, so a chapter is dedicated to dating—what it is, and how to be successful. Of course as we get older we are also faced with our own immortality, and people with a strong faith background seem to deal better with the inevitable losses.

                JP isn’t afraid to share his own experiences on his way to adulthood, and many of the choices he made were perhaps not the wisest ones he could have made.  I appreciated his openness since it makes the lessons he talks about more believable. Because he has made some of the bad choices, he has a frame of reference that others might not have.

                Sex, drugs and rock &roll may seem like an enviable lifestyle, but in the end they lead us away from the life that God has planned for each of us.

                Welcome to adulting.

                4/5

                I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a review. There was no requirement that I write a positive review.