The Adults Don't Exist

Cure yourself of adult syndrome

Mozart overspent his income, lived in mountains of debt and regularly wrote letters to his friends begging for money. He died penniless at 35 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Steve Jobs delayed nine months of medical treatment of Pancreatic cancer for a carrot juice diet and acupuncture.

Charles Darwin spent seven months ruminating on whether to get married. His pro’s and con’s list included: Pro’s - Children, friend in old age, better than a dog anyhow. Con’s - Terrible loss of time, fatness & idleness, forced to visit relatives.

Friedrich Nietzsche proposed to a women he was obsessed with three times. He was rejected three times.

Coco Chanel was the undercover agent F-7124 for the Nazi party and tried to use Nazi laws to remove her Jewish business partners.

Benjamin Franklin would start each morning with an “air bath”. He would sit stark naked in front of a window, for up to an hour. Franklin continued the life long practice into his eighties.

Nikola Tesla became emotionally attached to a white pigeon, confessing: “I love that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loves me.” Tesla lived his final years on a diet of milk and crackers, before dying in a hotel room alone.

Napoleon only let three people know about his secret whilst alive: Crippling haemorrhoids. To drain the pain before battles, twenty leeches were applied to Napoleon’s backside.

And Isaac Newton, one of the greatest minds ever to live, lost his entire life fortune at 58 years old investing in the South Sea Bubble.

Does it make them less impressive?

No.

It makes them more impressive.

Let me explain why.

Adult Syndrome

In the 1980’s, Japanese psychiatrist Hiroaki Ota, published a paper describing an acute psychological condition amongst Japanese tourists: (パリ症候群) — Paris Syndrome. It’s the shock of discovering that the reality of Paris, the city of love, isn’t as perfect as they built in their imagination beforehand.

Symptoms of Paris Syndrome include nausea, hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, dizziness, sweating, increased heart rate, acute anxiety and vomiting. In extreme cases of Paris Syndrome, over sixty tourists have been hospitalised.

A waiter sets down your €9 espresso without eye contact, walks off mid-sentence, and never returns to take the food order. Paris syndrome.

Or, take a photo of the Eiffel tower to send your sister in Tokyo, as you hit send, a teenager on a scooter drives past and snatches your phone from your hand. Paris syndrome.

A similar psychological phenomenon is what I call Adult Syndrome. It’s the shock at discovering the adults you admire aren’t as perfect as you imagined. And that they’re just like you, flawed former children figuring out life for the first time.

You see an old photo of your parents, and realise you are now the same age as them in the photo. Adult syndrome.

You ask your grandmother what the secret to life is, and she tells you she’s still waiting to figure it out. Adult syndrome.

Watch your invincible boss give a public presentation, and you notice their hands trembling. Adult syndrome.

Or you see your parents weep the death of their parents, and remember your father was a son and your mother was a daughter. Adult syndrome.

The most common mistake when facing adult syndrome is to try and find a new adult in the room — the politician, the CEO, the journalist, the guru — this is like the tourist shocked by Paris Syndrome, thinking that 214 miles north, London will be perfect.

No, no no.

Adult syndrome never ends.

Walk into the most important rooms in the world, if you squint and look closely enough, you’ll find it.

From 1985 to 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union held the most consequential negotiations on earth. President Ronald Reagan and President Mikhail Gorbachev sat across the table from each other with more than 60,000 nuclear warheads — the explosive equivalent of six thousand World War II’s.

After leaving office, President Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff, revealed what he called “probably the most closely guarded domestic secret of the White House”.

This secret helped influence decisions such as the departure and landing times of Air Force One, Reagan’s cancer surgery date, and most importantly, meeting times with Gorbachev.

The secret was… horoscopes.

Nancy Reagan, the president’s wife, had private phone lines installed in the White House to reach her astrologer, Joan Quigley, who she would call up to three times a day. Quigley claims she produced colour-coded calendars — green for safe days, yellow for caution, red for stay home. A horoscope traffic light system for negotiation dates between President Reagan, an Aquarius, and President Gorbachev, a Pisces.

Adult syndrome.

The Adults Don’t Exist

A useful vaccine to combat adult syndrome: The adults around you all started off as a sperm cell, fertilized an egg, came into this world screaming with no sense of self, downloaded patterns of information from those around them, got jacked up on hormones and now we call them “adults”.

These adults aren’t going to save you — they don’t even exist.

I want to make a specific distinction. Yes, some people are wiser, kinder and more experienced than others. But all of them, yes all of them, are flawed former children figuring out life for the first time. It’s not that biology isn’t real, it’s that the concept of what an adult is that we inherited from childhood is a delusion.

If only you could see the private thoughts inside everyone’s head or their internet search history — you’d never worship at the altar of another human being again.

Now, if the adults don’t exist, you no longer have to wait to be ready to do things because there’s no moment of transcendence, no moment of permission, no moment where the adults in the room will look over and say: “You’re now ready”.

The next time you feel unqualified to start a task, remember what Vincent Van Gogh wrote after his first failed attempt at a masterpiece: “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it”

High agency means starting afraid and flawed today, because you never become your older wiser self, you create your older wiser self.

So, meet your heroes or read their biographies. Discover Superman is actually Clark Kent.

Some are great. Some are terrible. None are gods. They all sleep, cry and visit the bathroom.

Seeing the greatest classical musician ever to live in mountains of debt begging friends for money, the man who discovered the laws of motion losing his life’s fortune on the stock market, or the most feared military general Europe has ever seen, bent over applying leeches to his backside — doesn’t make them less impressive, it makes them more impressive.

When you see the humanity in your heroes, you begin to see your heroes in the mirror.

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P.S. Life is too short to read bad books. So I’ve put together the list of my favourite rare books, from an 18th century Russian novel about a man who can’t get out of bed until page 50, to the book on writing I wish I read 10 years ago. Get the list here —> highagency.com/books