The phrase "I am already 30": does it make sense?

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The midlife crisis does not seem to be so urgent anymore.

The midlife crisis has been replaced by the “crisis of 30s”: this is when the phrase “I’m already 30, and I…” begins various regrets and bouts of self-pity. “I’m already 30, but my career hasn’t worked out”, “I’m already 30 - and still have no children”, “I’m already 30 - and the salary is not higher than the market average” - such thoughts come to mind (why hide), including readers "Lifehacker".

Infinitely caring relatives or equally caring “friends” bring something to your ears (in quotes - because if your friends are concerned about your lack of career growth, a credit Ford Focus and three screaming offspring, take a closer look at them: maybe, you are friends with the wrong people); and something subconsciously arises “in the days of doubt, in the days of painful thoughts” (when even the “great and mighty language” to which the classic of Russian literature referred us in general does not help at all). Phrases starting with "after all, I'm already 30 …" - do they make sense? Let's try to figure it out together.

When you are 20, you have a feeling that it will always be this way. You are 25-28 - this feeling remains: "I will always be a little more than 20", you can not take a steam bath and make plans. And then after 28, the world suddenly starts to accelerate, and things start happening much faster than you would like. You suddenly notice that you have not managed to do much and will not be able to “rewind” the time back in order to “catch up”, have time, do, “love”, finish your studies, watch, finish reading - this has already passed by and will not return.

At first, something like a slight panic sets in: what to do now with your life, what do you want any further ?! After a certain period of time, instead of rushing about and feeling that “the world is crumbling” and “everything is gone”, you become calm and decide to observe what will happen next. It comes to the understanding that 30 is not the end of the world and not a turning point in your life (even if your mom, grandmother and best friend with a mournful expression on their face assured you otherwise). It is just a date on the calendar, and some next year that you have to live. The question here is how you will meet this new year of life and how you will live it.

A common stereotype, partly coming to us from the outside, is that the period from 20 to 29 is just "training". You kind of let yourself "swing", try, live without worrying about anything; but "real life" will begin after 30. And therein lies a problem much greater than the simple absence of your children, career, your own business or a car in the garage by the age of 30. For 10 years, while you “finish off” college, university and a short period after receiving higher education, you live as if “on the machine”, considering all the opportunities passing by you, expecting something and carelessly staying in the confidence that everything is “by itself will come. " And it doesn't come "by itself."

If 20-30 years ago 20-year-olds were more serious about what they would do with themselves and their lives, now the verandas of cafes and restaurants are filled with young blooming bums and bums, eternal "startups" who have not built a single project. and "students" who don't know what other degree to get, which Coursera course to take, and which party to go to.

After a year or two, half of them in their bags or on the psychoanalyst's couch begin to "dig deep into themselves" to find those terrible and terrible reasons why by the age of 30 they have essentially nothing "for heart", and all must be started anew (even friends, except for “hello-how-you”, are not found in such “maturing” characters in difficult moments of life).

“Twenty-year-olds have nothing to worry about” - this is like a mantra that instead of peace and harmony leads to a nervous breakdown at 30. “Jump the dragonfly sang red summer” - and at 30 I discovered that I had to start “doing something”. And then there are two roads: either you continue to ride a longboard, become a professional "extreme" and earn a living - or you take up some significant business in your life, in addition to tears of affection over festival films and endless discussion of TED videos.

By "get down to business," we, of course, do not mean that you have to "surrender to slavery" by some high-paid office boss, put on a suit and tie (most people still do not know how to wear it, and piggy-colored shirts are appropriate only in advertising for bank loans) and abandon the dream of becoming a pastry chef or knitting hats for snowboarders. It's just that maybe it's time to finally become a pastry chef and bake cakes, open a workshop and knit hats, make “custom vels” and sell them, and not just ride them, drinking “Dr. Pepper” in anticipation of “some miracle "? Get down to business, damn it!

Now a lot of young people aged 22 to 28 "write off" their moral, material problems and personal "disorder" on the economic crisis (already, if I'm not mistaken, the second in a row in the past 5 years), on a bad environment, on the pressure of authoritarian parents or the wilderness in which they live. I think it is unnecessary to remind the readers of Lifehacker that you are not a tree, and therefore you can always change your location, environment and lifestyle.

Even if your "20s" fell on a period of total economic and political "chaos" (mine, by the way, too) - this does not mean that you are branded a loser, "eternal student" or a person unable to make money on your idea, on your hobby, on what makes your eyes shine (unless, of course, you are doing something illegal). Even if you do not want or cannot radically change your environment or move from a small town to a metropolis, you can change your body, your thinking, your occupation. While you're between 20 and 29, it's just easier to do. But even at 30, and even at 40, you still have the power to radically change a lot, you just have to work a little more for this than at 20 or 25.

Get started today. After all, you are already 30, which means that you can start anything in the same way as you did at 20, you just now have a little more life experience. Don't be so nervous about being "in your 30s." You have one life, and "2" or "3" + the numbers in your passport do not matter.