When did you begin seeing yourself as an adult? Was it graduation? Getting a driver’s license? Buying your first beer? It seems as though nowadays the passage from adolescence (itself a relatively newly defined phenomenon) to adulthood is no longer as strictly defined, earned or proven as it once was. The process of maturation for most young Americans is a vague, drawn-out series of steps. Relatively small, easily marketable, and questionably significant steps go well in scrapbooks but, quite frankly, don’t go that far as far as survival goes.

These instances that we use to prove our age (e.g. the first shave, the first summer job, turning 21) seem rather commercialized. Companies with products to serve these moments of maturation also turn mad profits by pitching these moments as truly pivotal and formative. And if we’re not talking products, we’re talking massively institutionalized milestones, like graduation, prom and marriage. You went through some if not all of these. So you tell me — what was it like to walk the footsteps of so many Americans before you? Did you feel a clear transition point?

Once, we used to go walkabout. “Walkabout” is the term for an aboriginal Australian coming-of-age ritual that consists of a solo venture out into the vicious wild. In the course of their journeys, young boys have to find ancient tribal trails called “songlines” and make it across the country or die trying. A similar rite of passage in Native American cultures is called a “vision quest.” Each young boy subject to this rite goes off to wander the wilderness and find his life’s calling; if he is successful, he returns as a man. Coming-of-age rituals across many cultures often include separation from society, solitude in the wilderness and a basic physical fight for survival. These conditions allow young men to prove themselves mature.

Spiritual rites of passage like Christian confirmation, bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs are still common. But walking up the aisle of a temple or church, all dressed up in front of your camera-toting family is just not the same as getting totally lost in the woods. Not the same as being totally alone with yourself and trying to survive until you’ve felt the change within yourself. I’m not speaking from personal experience here, but coming of age seems to have once been a totally unique, individual experience. You went out on your own so you could change yourself and come back to society as a fully formed individual.

I guess one could argue that there’s not that much wilderness left anymore, so it’s not as easy to just wander off. So maybe going walkabout in modern Midwestern America isn’t as “easy” as it might have been for other indigenous cultures. Some might also say that wandering off to rough it is trying too hard to find or prove something. But both these arguments seem pretty much just lazy. When was the last time you proved yourself to yourself and changed your own perspective?

If we think that it’s “trying too hard” to challenge ourselves with a little solitude and survival — if we choose instead to identify as adults because of the age on our driver’s license and the products we surround ourselves with — then we sacrifice some hefty perspective. We ignore the glaring fact that maybe we’re not as mature, not as downright able, as we see ourselves when we’re driving, working or on a date.

If we went walkabout then maybe we might have something to hold onto: some individual revelation or some spiritual or moral foundation. At the very least, we’d have a week’s worth of terrible memories of being alone, lost and scared that would make the rest of living seem like a piece of cake. Because making it out of that ordeal would convince us that we could definitely take minor challenges like heavy traffic, an important interview or a blind date.