I re-read a few great articles recently: How to Survive Your 40’s, and one of my all-time favorites, Men at 30, and it made me reflect on my own experience at thirty and what strategies I can use to get the most out of an exciting, threshold period in my life.
A Time of Heightened Consequences
Thirty is a time of heightened consequences relative to the twenties- you have more time and effort invested in your career, you might be thinking about buying a house instead of the next place to rent, you might have a boyfriend or girlfriend who makes you start to wonder about kids and a future with. (And if you’re not wondering, other people will start to wonder for you.) Don’t get me wrong, these are great opportunities, but the decisions involved feel more consequential, more like “adult decisions”, than what you had to deal with in your twenties, or at least what I dealt with in my twenties.
I realize that this is a luxury I have, and maybe many in my generation are afforded, to not have to make “adult decision” until thirty. Call it growing up slowly if you like; I’m not complaining to have spent my childhood summers at a circus camp instead of in a factory, or in a war, or in an economic depression. I got lucky. That said, this period which for me is happening at thirty and for others might happen at other times, is a time where the choices feel weightier, even as paradoxically you have more freedom than ever: I’m lucky to still be healthy, financially I have plenty of savings with little obligations; I could just as easily settle down as uproot it all and backpack around South America for a year. Thirty is the time of the consumer’s dilemma, where more choice can actually make you less happy. The grass is green here, but hell it looks pretty green everywhere and there is a shitload of green grass available for viewing via facebook and instagram- friends’ grass, strangers’ grass, a cute cat playing in the grass! Maybe we should get a cat!
Thirty and Loss
Thirty is also a time by which for most people things will have happened that will never unhappen. I’ve lost two grandparents and a few good friends, and I feel extremely fortunate that it has been so few. Goddamn, a few is still too many. I don’t think many people make it to thirty without experiencing some form of irreversible loss, and it makes you think about who you are and what you value and what you’re doing with your time here.
Getting it “Right”
At thirty there is less right and wrong. Compromises, sacrifices, obligations and responsibilities come attached to every potential happiness-bringing choice. When considering big changes you feel the weight of time invested behind everything you’ve done so far like a ballast, making it hard to change course.
In my early twenties I was more sure of my convictions. Maybe the twenties is a time when you make choices before you’ve seen much of anything, before you start to realize how much you don’t know, how much you will never know. I think many of us assumed that in the future we would have been granted wisdom, we would become the all-powerful wizards we spent most of our lives assuming adults were. When we get there we’re disappointed to learn it’s just older versions of ourselves behind the curtain, doing our best to pull the right levers.
I still worry about making the “right choice,” always wanting to gather more information before taking action, but I’m coming to realize that everyone is winging it, we all have to make decisions based on imperfect information.
At thirty there are a lot of beautiful roads leading to a lot of beautiful places, and the difficulty comes from realizing you will only be allowed to see one of those places up close by never fully seeing the others. The irony lies in knowing you don’t yet have the wisdom to make these choices, but the only way you’ll get it is by making them anyways.
Right or wrong, decisions get you away from the crossroads. You can only stand at the signpost so long asking other travelers what they’ve seen and learned before you have to hitch up the wagon and get on with your own journey, see the road for yourself.
Learning to Love the Stir
Personally I have lot of big, long-term projects on the burners that I’m both excited and nervous about- immigrating to Canada, house shopping, starting a company, not to mention other non-urgent but important things that make me happy and whole- hobbies, family, friends. I often find myself longing for simple successes- finished projects that I can stop stirring and just leave in the oven to warm and feel content about. My 30 is about learning to love the stir, taking pleasure in the challenge and bustle of it all.
Discomfort is often a sign of change or growth, which is good, and the difference between enjoying growth or not is a mental one. With so much bubbling at once I don’t win that battle every day, so I’ve tried to reflect on how I can take more pleasure in the challenges I’m facing. One piece of advice I’ve heard is that problems don’t go away, you just trade them for new, hopefully preferable problems. From what I’ve read, the key to challenges being energizing instead of overwhelming is progress; appreciating and celebrating the small victories.
“The progress principle: Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.” –The Power of Small Wins
Mindset is also key- there are a lot of different types of happiness (The book Positivity talks about the different shades of positivity that exist: joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, etc…), and they are all useful to recognize the occasionally subtle process of growth.
A Small Step in my Own Journey
One of my current personal goals is to post on this blog more frequently, and to share it more widely, which scares me. A quote from The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck sums it up nicely:
“Despite dreaming about making a living through his art, the real potential of becoming An Artist Nobody Likes was far, far scarier than remaining An Artist Nobody’s Heard Of.”
Thirty is a time to do things that scare you before it’s too late to regret not having done them.
Actually, every age is that time.
I get a lot of inspiration from other blogs’ writing (www.63.mph is my current favorite), and I hope that by growing and improving Beautiful Problems someone will see something in my blog one day that will encourage them on their own journey. Alternatively, maybe I’ll be way off the mark about something, someone will tell me and I’ll have to think harder and grow as a person to improve myself and my writing. Either way I stand to grow more by sharing my writing than by hiding it- by doing the scary, difficult thing rather than the safe, easy thing. I hope this post inspires you to do the same.
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Living something similar, or looking back on 30 and have some advice for me? I’d love to hear your thoughts either via email or in the comments section below. Thanks for reading.