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Your late thirties is a funny time of life, as I’m fast discovering. It’s this time that - if you have not already done so - you are supposed to nail your colors to the wall and say “this is who I am.”
And if you listen to What You Do, there are only be a few identities to choose from. You’re reduced to whatever activitity you do the most.
Ah there goes Rich, he’s such a parent.
Say hi to Stephanie over there, she’s obsessive over her career.
Doug is super into his houses and cars these days.
There is little room for, y’know, personality or preference because it’s easier for the world to deal with people who are reduced into singular identities (it makes them easier to sell to, for a start). So the pressure is on. Who are you? What do you stand for? Be careful choosing now, this moniker is going to follow you around for a loooong time. There’ll be no changing it.
I was reminded of this pressure to conform twice this week. Once when watching Master of None on Netflix and once when I was spending some quality time watching one of my favorite YouTubers, Matt D’Avella.
In Master of None, Dev and his date Rachel chat about how changing up your life becomes harder as you get older:
Dev: I feel like once you get to our age, that window to do big moves like that starts to close. And it doesn't even close slowly. You just look up, and it's closed.
Rachel: At some point, I would love to do something crazy, like quit my job, change my hair, move to Tokyo, but I'll probably just pull a Jennifer and wake up with a kid in my lap and be like, "Shit, forgot to do it."
Dev: Well, you could always pull the Eat, Pray, Love move. You know, the window opens back up again when you turn 50 and you realize you fucked up your life. So you can just travel then.
Rachel: Very depressing.
In a video of Matt’s - one where he and his wife Natalie are selling everything for a new life abroad - his wife Natalie voices her concerns over the move:
I turn thirty this year…you put pressure on yourself to feel like you’re moving forward in life. I have to work against that kind of pressure and remind myself that I have a choice and there’s freedom in living lighter … I’m kind of resisting the self judgement of being like you don’t have a home address.
Both of these quotes feed into that idea that the older you get, the harder it is to make real changes, especially if they don’t fit into who the world thinks you are.
Much like Natalie, I feel the pressure to “act my age” every single day. I feel like everything I do has to be in the pursuit of moving forward (or more to the point, upward). If you do anything that stands in the way of that progression - like long-term travel or downsizing or embracing #vanlife for instance - people can easily make it out like you’re frivolous or stupid or naive.
And as you age, change becomes harder to execute - or at least it feels like it does. You’re more tired and the thought of hauling your kids out of school seems hellish. You’ve worked hard to get where you are - if you do something different, doesn’t that diminish that hard work? Like it was all for nothing?
So you don’t change. You had your chance in your twenties, when you were figuring out your identity. If you didn’t do it then, it’s too late.
Yeah…I’m calling BS.
***
The second anniversary of my Big Life Move is coming up next month. It’s nearly 24 months since I sold everything I owned, grabbed a suitcase and headed for the sunsets of continental Europe.
This was a big change to make at 35. It was actually made easier by the pandemic (I wasn’t the only one crafting a shiny new life in late 2020) but it was still met with a huge amount of (a) resistance and (b) the assumption that it would only be a temporary move. A “Charlie’s gone mad, she’ll see the error of her ways and return to real life soon enough” kind of deal.
The reality is that I didn’t find this change all that hard. Call it a personality thing - I get off on pushing the envelope. If there is something I can do to shock the pearl clutchers, you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be up for it. And that includes dramatically quitting a predictable British life for a step into the unknown.
Don’t get me wrong - it wasn’t all easy. I had a lot of doubt and I worried and stressed to the extreme on more than one occasion.
But one of the reasons I stuck to the guns of change is that I know too many people who believe change can’t happen the minute you hit thirty. Instead, they do what they think they should do with their life, and often become miserable with it.
Being miserable - for essentially no reason other than conforming to a weird societal standard - like that is§ a far scarier prospect than making a change. So I choose to make the change.
And the more you make changes - be they big or small - the more change becomes a habit.
***
One of the unexpected side effects of developing a “making a change” habit is that the older I get, the easier I find it to make those changes, which flies in the face of convention somewhat.
Surely it should be harder to make change as we get older? I mean, that’s what we’re all told.
My discovery that change is becoming easier for me has led me to believe that our ability to embrace change has less to do with our age and more to do with how used to making changes we are. If we’re in the habit of questioning convention and making changes - be they big or small - then the less scary change becomes.
That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Which is good news for any of you. It’s comforting I think, to know that change is not just the domain of the young, that it can be made any time in life.
You’ve just gotta exercise that change muscle a little bit.
***
The way I see it, embracing or even seeking change is another word for being curious. And curiosity is probably the most important trait a person can have to grow as a human. To become more intelligent, to become better acquainted with the world and how it works.
To be content. Happy, even.
Our mate Ben Franklin once said:
Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five
Those sorts of people are not the curious ones.
The curious ones want to know what’s behind that door. They want to know what their life would be like if they embraced this habit or that. They want to know if it’s possible to do what they are told is not.
Curious people who embrace change, swap their mindset from “that will never work” to “how could that work?”
“Simple living will never work for me” becomes “how could simple living work for me?”
“Moving to a smaller home would never work for me” becomes “how could moving to a smaller home work for me?”
“Working in a job I love would never happen for me” becomes “how can I make working in a job happen for me?”
You get the idea.
Once this question becomes a habit, a whole world of change can open up.
And once that happens, you’re in for a fun ride, my friends.
Setting up your weekend
2 articles from my collection (paywall free)
3 of the best pieces of content I’ve consumed this week
Video - Why your habits never stick by Matt D’Avella
Article - You Are Way Too Busy; It's Hampering Your Ability To Think And Be Productive - Forbes
Article - The loss of the Queen will test a divided Britain - The Guardian
Why Do We Assume We Can't Change as We Age?
I wish more people talked about this. The attitude is that you do certain things and experience certain things at certain ages and that’s that. There aren’t enough people asking why that is though. For example, everyone says your eyesight gets worse as you get older. Is it possible that it does go back one day because you’ve been expecting it to for 20 years? I don’t know. But I do know that it’s a good thing to challenge what people just assume you will do if it does not align with what you hope to be doing. Thanks for creating a space to talk about this!
What does help... a lot... is that, as you mature, you give a lot fewer fucks about what other people think. Also, you've made sufficient cock-ups in life to realise that many of the things you once thought mattered, actually don't.
I remember when I was a teenager, getting good GCSEs was "the" thing that would determine whether you would live a life of greatness or mediocrity.
Then came the A-Levels which apparently had even more gravity. Then uni.
With hindsight, none of these things mattered much at all. When I did poorly at uni after doing well in school, I thought this would be it - I would be a social pariah. Well, society grumbled for a while, and forgot about the whole matter.
These days, I'm keenly aware that society really cares not a jot about me. Thus, I'd be crazy if I did things purely because I seek societal approval.