My adult life seems to be mirroring that of the lead character in Bref, a French comedy about growing up and the things that hold us back
When I was little I imagined, as most children probably do, that the grownups had things all worked out and someday I would find myself on the other side of a clear boundary. Adolescence on one side; maturity, responsibility, self-assuredness, composition on the other.
A few weeks ago I turned 35. As the day ticked closer, I found that old childhood suspicion creeping in again; if any birthday should serve as a demarcator of that boundary, it should be this one, shouldn’t it? And now, as the days tick further from that imagined inflection point, it has become a reinforcement of probably the single biggest lesson I have taken away from “adulthood”: that most of us are simply winging it most of the time, through a process of becoming that never quite reaches become.
Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist