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You Will Finally Understand Your Parents
Remember how your parents never let you do anything? "No eating in the living room." "Get your feet off the coffee table." "Stop getting the dog high."
Once you're paying the mortgage and making the rules, there will be a brief period of rebellion. No parents, no landlord ... loud punk music at 4 a.m.? Check. Feet on the coffee table? Done and doner. Not putting down a coaster before you set your drink down? I bet that'll leave a ring ... a sexy, sexy ring.
But before you know it, things will change. Now you and you alone have to deal with the repercussions of your actions. Those scuffs are staying on that table to shame you in front of guests until you clean it or replace it. Loud music might make the neighbors call the cops, who would then find your stash of illegally imported leopard skin rugs. You don't want to have to talk about those, nor the skeleton that's buried in the backyard that would explain who you got the rugs from.
And so, using the logic of "Well, I don't want to have to deal with THAT mess," you not only understand your parents, but you also unconsciously become them. Everything in that house represents potential stress -- the stress of lost time cleaning or fixing, the stress of lost money, the stress of lost status when your palace shows signs of neglect. The house is an extension of you. It's your symbolic adulthood. That means every juice stain on the sofa or scratch on the wall will hit you in the gut, like it's you that has been wounded. Soon you will literally be yelling at kids to get off your lawn.
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