Making Commitments When You Feel Like a Child

Lately I've been thinking about the always increasing number of serious, long-term commitments you're expected to make as you become an adult. You decide you're going to college, you decide you're getting married, you decide you're going to take a job, and so on.

I'm no stranger to commitments. Heck, I devoted a decade of my life to one sport. On top of that, you literally make hundreds of commitments every day during gymnastics training. When you decide to do a skill that scares you, or your hardest tumbling pass, you have to 100% commit to it from the very beginning. Otherwise, you hesitate (what the gymnastics world calls "bail") and you get injured. Seriously.

But frankly, I'm scared of making really serious commitments. Like possibly life-changing commitments. I haven't really had to make any yet, but I know they're coming, and even the thought of that scares me.

This brings me to my next point: how on earth can you make a long-term commitment when you feel like a child? I may be an "adult", but I still feel incredibly young, vulnerable, and wholly ignorant about so, so many things. Yet, I'm going to be expected to decide for myself the routes I want to take in life.

Also, I usually don't really spend time thinking about the decisions others make, but lately, some of my friends my age or younger have decided to get married. Uh, yeah. Get freaking married. I don't know how they feel, and it really shouldn't concern me, but it honestly seems terrifying. To think that you are just 18 years old and already completely committed to someone else, forever. I imagine other people don't see it as terrifying as I do, but then again, they're probably not as paranoid as I am.

I guess it's normal to be scared of intense commitments because of all the unknowns involved. What will happen? What could I lose? What could I gain? What if I took another path--what would be different? Everything is out of our control, and it all just really reminds us who we really are: powerless, defenseless human beings. That's ironic considering how much we think we have control and how much we actually have control. We can't be certain of anything. We can't truly decide anything for ourselves. It is all in other hands.

Knowing that, the idea of our being relatively powerless sort of undermines "decision making" if we can't really do anything about it. But is this what ultimately transforms you into a real adult--being able to competently make difficult, long-term commitments, acknowledging that making the decision itself is probably the only control we have in it? Because if it is, that would explain why I'm afraid of making them--it all circles back to not wanting to grow up!