When you're a kid, life can be really hard, can't it? You have to go to school. You have to do homework. You have to eat what your parents tell you. You have to go to bed early. The list goes on and on!

Meanwhile, all those adults have it made! They don't have to go to school. They don't have homework. They can eat whatever they want. They can even stay up as late as they want. It seems like adults can do whatever they want!

Of course, if you ask the adults in your life, they'll probably tell you that they can't really do whatever they want. Although they arguably have much more freedom than the average kid, most adults can quickly identify many different boundaries that keep them from doing anything and everything they want.

Eleanor Roosevelt is famous for her quote, “With freedom comes responsibility." If you don't understand this quote now, you'll certainly understand it when you get older. The gist of this saying, however, is that the freedom you attain as you get older and become an adult carries with it the responsibility to care for yourself and make your own way in the world.

Do adults have to go to school? No, once they graduate from high school, adults don't have to go to school every day. But guess where they have to go? If you guessed work, you're right! When you're an adult, your freedom comes with the obligation to provide for yourself in many areas, including food, shelter, clothing, and the like. To afford these things, adults work to make money to pay for them.

Even though adults aren't given homework by a teacher, many adults have jobs that require them to work outside of normal business hours. Many adults regularly take their work home with them. In addition, there's plenty of work to do at home! Making dinner, cleaning the house, doing laundry, maintaining a car and a house…all these things take time and energy!

So what about those dinners? Adults can eat pizza every single night if they want, right? That may or may not be true. What adults choose to eat will depend upon what they can afford to eat, as well as how healthy they want to feel. As you grow older, you'll find that it's more important than ever to make good food choices to maintain a healthy body.

One of the choices you'll also have to make to maintain good health is how much sleep you need. While kids might yearn to stay up later and later, adults know that choosing to stay up all night has consequences. If you work all day and then come home to make dinner, clean house, and do laundry, you'll probably gladly choose to get to bed at a reasonable hour. If you don't, you'll pay for it the next day by being exhausted at work.

Some of you may be thinking that all that freedom isn't necessarily as enticing as it once was! Don't worry, though. Freedom does have its benefits, but it also has its limits and it carries with it a certain set of responsibilities.

If you thought about all the places you'd like to go one day and all the things you'd like to do, we're sure your list would contain more things than you could ever accomplish in an entire lifetime. Given that every human being faces limits in terms of physical capabilities, financial means, and the limited number of hours in a day, every day ends up being a series of choices.

The choices you make shape who you are and what you become. So it's important to prioritize and choose wisely how you spend your time and money. Every person makes different choices with regard to how they meet their responsibilities based upon what's important to them. While it may seem like adults can do anything they want, they usually are only able to do a portion of what they want, given their financial and time constraints.

Wonder What's Next?

After reading tomorrow’s Wonder of the Day, you may find that you’re a poet and didn’t even know it!