Adulting Can Wait: Tinder’s New Film Is An Entire Generation IRL

Me when I was younger: I WANT to be an adult. It’ll be so cool to be independent, have the freedom to make my own choices. I would go see the northern lights. I will have a sea-facing apartment because of my super-vague but extremely high paying job. Obviously! I’ll just get it when I’m older.

Me as a 28-year-old: I spent the morning bargaining with my bank account. Then I went grocery shopping. And then inadvertently, I started looking around for an adult. Oh no wait, I HAVE to be one. Maybe I can find an adultier adult? Someone, please help!

As I was figuring out how to navigate this cryptic maze (and miserably failing btw), I saw something that you should see too. Trust me, this is 100% relatable and 100% refreshing.

That! It’s almost as if Tinder turned my life and my thoughts into a film. But it does raise some poignant questions. What if this obsession with being a grown up (or acting like one) is blindsiding us to what’s really important? What if doing everything RIGHT isn’t what we’re actually meant to do?

If you are also a 20-something like me or what the internet refers to as millennials or Gen Z, you empathise with me, right? You’ve also heard the ubiquitous ‘Beta, shaadi kab kar rahe ho?’ or ‘Naukri ka kya socha?’ or some variation of the same.

Sometimes I wonder, did I miss something? Was there a manual named Adulting 101 that I forgot to read? I got straight A’s in school but nothing prepared me for this. And now I’m suddenly supposed to pay my own taxes, do the dishes and create entire mini-humans inside of me? Umm..but I just want to eat chocolate ice cream in bed, look at memes the entire night and binge on Brooklyn Nine-Nine (because Jake Peralta is bae). Isn’t there a blue pill / red pill choice for me?

In this rat race to achieve and ‘settle’ in life, what we seemed to have forgotten is that life is about trial and error. About experiences – good, bad and ugly.

What this film has driven home is that the ‘journey’ is more important than the ‘destination’. We’re allowed to be spontaneous, we have to give ourselves permission to be confused, we have to stop feeling guilty and comparing our lives with that of our peers. It is perfectly fine to make mistakes, to feel overwhelmed and focus on the ‘now’ sometimes.

So, I’m signing up for that art class that I’ve been putting off because it doesn’t help with my career. I’m shedding my inhibitions and setting up a Tinder profile to meet new people. I promise that I will celebrate the small things like boiling eggs perfectly and finding a pair of jeans that fit me perfectly. I will open my mind to new possibilities and be grateful for the small mercies. I will not hesitate in swiping right first and allow myself to cry when a relationship doesn’t work out.

Will you guys do it with me too?