Things I’ve Learnt by 30
Things I’ve Learnt by 30
The Illusion of Having It Figured Out
When I was a child, I had my entire life meticulously mapped out with the kind of confidence only achievable employing complete ignorance of reality. My plan was simple: finish school, waltz into university, and obtain a PhD. In what? Anything, really—indeed, that is but a trivial detail, of course. Then, I’ll work at something suitably impressive, start a business, and become a multimillionaire. Easy-peasy. My career options were similarly well-defined. I would be a forensic scientist (the American TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation was really popular at the time). No, wait—an author. Actually, a coroner. Or perhaps an electrical engineer? Sound engineer? Psychologist? Teacher? Lawyer? No, definitely a doctor. Maybe a neurosurgeon? Game developer? An artist? Music producer? Chef? Roboticist? The list kept growing with the same energy as a child spinning in circles until they fall over, dizzy. I actually managed to tick “artist” off the list for a while (though “starving” was an unspoken prefix). Nearly became a chef too (this one I really did love) and got a diploma in teaching English. Technically, I started a business—had some online stores, freelanced for a while—and I did start a game design degree (twice). So I suppose child me would be somewhat impressed? If also confused about why I kept doing handbrake turns each year.
Now I’m thirty, and I still don’t really know what I want to do. Maybe I would rather not do anything, at least not in the hustle-culture sense that demands we monetise every semblance of a skill or Passion™ until we’ve drained every iota of joy from them. What I do know is that I want to raise children, and I do genuinely love managing a household (a sentence that would have made seventeen-year-old me stage a one-person protest), which is a sort of taboo in certain circles. But I also feel like there’s something more I’m supposed to be doing. Not in the vain, grandiose way I felt as a kid, when I just assumed I was super special like everyone told me and destined for something important (though I’m too aloof to allow crowds to applaud my brilliance). Now I realise I’m a tiny, insignificant speck in an incomprehensibly vast universe, no more cosmically important than the dust mite currently inhabiting my doormat. When I say “supposed to be doing,” I mean that nowadays I sort of think there’s a higher calling given to all of us—something that allows us to use our natural-born gifts for good, whatever those happen to be.
Here’s what I’ve figured out: nobody has anything figured out. The older I get, the more I look around and realise that we’re all just bumbling along, trying things or not, thinking about things or not—some of us under the confident delusion that we have control over our lives (we don’t). The people who seem to have it together are often just better at hiding their confusion, or too busy to notice it.
Now, I don’t really believe in calling “not becoming a multimillionaire forensic roboticist author” a personal failing. This is about the wisdom that comes from dismantling illusions: the illusions of control, performance, and self-sufficiency that keep us trapped in exhausting, ego-driven patterns, ploughing forward with determination to do something Successful™ all the while allowing others to define what that is (and they almost always miss the mark). It’s about the journey that goes from asking “what can I get?” to “whom can I love?”. And yes, I’m fully aware that this sounds insufferably wholesome, but I promise to undercut it with enough self-deprecation to keep things mildly tolerable.
Part I: Learning to Love Authentically
Friendship is About Depth, Not Breadth
Let’s start with my least strong topic: relating to others. An introverted child naturally, I preferred fewer but closer relationships, wherein I could open up my genuine silly self. Everyone was a bit different at that age, so kids broke off in pairs of “best friends forever”, as they are wont to do, and my best friend was the complete opposite of me, but that was mostly okay. Then middle school happened. I went to a rural school where conformity was expected to an oppressive degree. There was a precise mould that everyone was supposed to fit, and I didn’t. Or rather, couldn’t. I didn’t listen to the right music, didn’t play the correct sport, didn’t style my hair the right way, and my idiolect got me labelled as the “posh” outsider who thought they were better than everyone else (despite my ostensibly incredible ego, I didn’t). Standing out in that environment was a liability, and I was too naïve to notice until a teenage Machiavelli already had me irrevocably excluded.
So when I got a fresh start in high school in another country, I had inadvertently built an invisible wall around myself. I wanted to be around others, but despite the yearning for connection, I couldn’t let them get close to me; I didn’t know it at the time, but the previous rejection had left a painful impression on my psyche. Here’s what’s interesting: I see in hindsight that people in high school genuinely liked me. They wanted to connect with me, get to know me, and be my friend, but I was so convinced they hated me or wanted to make me the butt of their jokes, that my impenetrable bubble maintained “social distancing” before it was cool. So, I’d act friendly and talk to anyone from almost any group, and just about managed to create a simulacrum of being social and well-adjusted. I maintained this carefully calibrated distance: humorous enough that people wouldn’t think I was hostile, distant enough that they could never really know me. Looking back now, I can clearly see there were people who really wanted to befriend me, who were reaching out genuinely, who would have been good friends if I’d let them. But I kept up this hard-to-get facade, convinced I was protecting myself, when I was actually just isolating myself. And this continued into my early twenties. (The most shocking thing I realised upon reading old messages from that time is that I was inadvertently, yet ineluctably, cold, dismissive, blunt, and even aggressive; natheless people would persist in trying to get to know me and warm me up—like I was some kind of stray cat).
Being the detached acquaintance of everybody is ultimately and profoundly unfulfilling, and not a particularly vindicable social strategy. It wasn’t the armour I had subconsciously expected, but a social stave, and the more I relied upon it, the more isolated and loathed I felt. There were people who took advantage of this diffuse relationship style, somehow seeing past the fortress walls and into the naïveté I was protecting. What I couldn’t see at the time was that they weren’t real friendships—how could they be when I wasn’t a real person, but instead a walking blast door? They were the kind of people who would never be there for you if you actually needed them (and you will need friends at some point, Past Me, despite what your fiercely independent streak insists). They wouldn’t support you when you fall; they wouldn’t know the real you because you’ve never shown them the real you—only the performance you’ve curated for minimum vulnerability—and they certainly wouldn’t care when you disappear because you were never a person to them, just a pleasant accessory to their social landscape. Likewise, they’ll vanish the moment you’re no longer useful or entertaining or whatever else it was they kept you around for (even you might not know what that was because the relationship never had enough substance to define it).
The important thing to learn here is that emotional repression as a coping mechanism is very healthy, and I highly recommend it. Nothing is better for loneliness than everyone else getting hypothermia from your emotional permafrost. No, not really. What’s important is that to have real friendships, there needs to be real intimacy. That means no guarding yourself and laboriously controlling the narrative about who you are. Building real friendships means being vulnerable, silly, stupid, courageous, and real—the things typically found naturally in childhood. Yes, you will face rejection, and yes, it will hurt. But you’ll also open yourself to people who can really love you. And you should love them. Love unconditionally—though I should clarify that this doesn’t mean letting people trample your boundaries or push you around, nor does it mean enabling their bad behaviour while calling it “support.” It means to actually love them. Have compassion, mercy, and forgiveness, even when they’re being intensely annoying.
On Learning to Love
There was someone in my life I desperately wanted to love, but by whom I felt constantly torn apart. Someone I wanted to love me, but I couldn’t feel it even when they said they did. For years, I spent enormous amounts of energy blaming them for our turbulent relationship. It’s not my fault. They should have known better. They were older than me; I was just a kid. They never understood me. Never loved me. Only wanted to dump their emotions on me while stifling mine. I had an entire narrative constructed where I was the blameless child, and they were the villain, and this narrative was airtight, unassailable, and perfectly logical. If they hurt me, I would lash out and hurt them back (justice, I called it). If they blamed me, I’d defend myself from the blatant injustice with the righteous fury of someone who truly believes they’re right. It devolved into two voices competing to see who could scream louder or give in last. A competition neither of us could win, but persevered with impressive dedication.
I grew up physically, but I wasn’t able to mentally mature in that relationship for a long time. Distance made it more manageable—easier to maintain the illusion that they were the problem when we weren’t actually interacting, and we really did get along better when we weren’t in proximity. But the same patterns would emerge the moment that distance closed. We’d achieved a perfect stalemate of mutual misunderstanding. I never realised how much resentment I’d built up, how little forgiveness, compassion, and mercy I’d come to have for this person. I’d become so hardened and calloused against them that I only ever saw them as an aggressor. Every interaction was filtered through years of accumulated hurt and anger, which meant that even neutral statements felt like attacks.
Eventually, physical distance arose again due to life circumstances, which I greeted with relief thinly disguised as indifference. As usual, I swung wildly between loving the person and resenting them, from wanting a relationship to considering just cutting it off completely (the emotional equivalent of a pendulum operated by someone who’s had far too much caffeine). And you know what? For the first few months of this distance between us, I noticed they didn’t call me even once to see how I was. Well, that just proves it, then. The tears were a performance; the words were neatly packaged lies. I was right all along that this person clearly doesn’t love me. I had reached the conclusion with the confidence of a stalwart detective who’s just solved the case (except they did it by ignoring the mountain of contradictory evidence because it didn’t fit their narrative). Case closed.
Until several months later, when they found out, I’d got a somewhat serious illness and called me. We talked. Eventually, they asked why I never called. I said they were always busy (true, but also a convenient excuse), and they said they’d always take my call. I felt something crack in my carefully constructed wall of resentment. Then I asked why they never called. And you know what they said? They were afraid I was too busy to take their calls and didn’t want to be disturbed. I sat with that for a moment, my brain struggling to process this information that directly contradicted my entire worldview. It was… fair. Annoyingly fair. I was always putting people at a distance and acting aloof (see earlier section on my impressive capacity for self-delusion). They said they thought I would rather not talk to them and became afraid to call me. They were afraid of calling me. Of bothering me. Of being rejected by me.
So wait. Let me get this straight. We both decided not to call, and we both decided the other one didn’t love us, and we both spent months nursing our wounds over a rejection that never actually happened? How utterly, profoundly, comically selfish. How completely self-involved. We were both sitting in our respective corners, totally oblivious to each other, blaming each other for something of which we were both guilty. It’s almost impressive, really—the Olympic-level mental gymnastics required to maintain that level of mutual misconstrual while both claiming the other person was the one who didn’t care enough.
It still took a few weeks for this realisation to actually sink in beyond the intellectual understanding thereof. I was indignant for a while because, of course I was—my ego wasn’t quite ready to release its death grip on being right. But the more it stewed in the back of my mind, the more guilt began to grow until I felt genuinely rotten and self-absorbed. Eventually, I called them, my pride having finally deflated enough to allow basic human decency. They sounded so happy to have received a call from me that I felt heat pricking the back of my eyes (the embarrassing kind of tears that you categorically refuse to let fall because then you’d have to acknowledge you’re crying during a phone call like some kind of emotionally healthy person). I properly realised then what a complete and utter donkey I’d been. Not just in this instance, but for years. The realisation hit with the force of a truck I should have seen coming, but was too busy looking in the other direction. So, I decided I’d call them every week from then on, without thinking it was unfair that I always had to be the one to initiate. No more scorekeeping. No more “Well, I called last time, so now it’s their turn.” Just… calling. And every call we had, the closer I started to feel to them again. The more I realised I missed them—genuinely missed them, not the theoretical version of missing someone where you think you should miss them but don’t actually feel it.
The climax of this realisation came when I brought up a health experience that had happened to me years ago in a conversation. The person, as usual, started saying how hard it was for them to see me that way, how painful the experience was for them. In the past, I would have felt quiet contempt rising like bile. I would have thought, it happened to me, not you. I would have catalogued this as yet another example of their self-centredness, reluctant to let them have even a little sympathy for their self-victimisation. But this time, when they said these same words again, I surprised myself. I found myself replying, “Yeah, it was. It must have been really difficult to see me that way.” And then—this is the truly shocking part—I thanked them for everything they did for me at that time. I didn’t have my usual thoughts like don’t give them credit they don’t deserve or don’t indulge their selfishness. Instead, I genuinely thought, “I’m really lucky I had someone like that who was there for me and spent every day with me while I was going through such a difficult time.” I felt grateful. Actual, genuine gratitude. At that moment, I matured to some extent—probably only a little, but it felt seismic. And I had a sudden, humbling realisation of just how much more maturing I have yet to do (a lot, it turns out).
My point here—and yes, I have one beneath all this rambling—is that even if you’re undoubtedly certain you’ve done no wrong in a situation, even if you’re sure they deserve your anger, even if every logical bone in your body insists you’re the injured party, try to forgive them. Try to love them. It’s possible—likely, even—that they’re seeing you the same way you see them. They think they’re the victim. They think you’re the one who doesn’t care. They think you’re the unreasonable one. And maybe they want to forgive and love you too, but they’re waiting for you to make the first move, just like you’re waiting for them.
I wrote the above section a long time before I’d completed this essay for publication, convinced I’d finally cracked the code on this particular relationship. And it’s true that the lesson I learnt was real. I genuinely did learn to step outside my own self-absorbed little bubble, to extend grace instead of keeping a mental tally of grievances, and to swallow my pride and practice patience and compassion. The growth did happen. But here’s what I didn’t quite figure out back then: you can learn to love someone better and still be fundamentally wrong about whether they’re capable of loving you back. Distance and some outside perspective (it turns out having someone who isn’t emotionally entangled in a situation can see things you’ve been diligently avoiding for years) helped me to recognise patterns I’d been excusing or ignoring for years: the competition for attention, the subtle undermining disguised as concern, the ‘love’ that only made appearances when there was an audience or something to gain. I had indeed learnt to be more compassionate, but what I’d mistaken that for was evidence the relationship itself was healthy or mutual.
I still believe in extending mercy and compassion—deeply. But I’ve had to learn the discomfiting truth that mercy doesn’t mean volunteering for harm, and compassion can include boundaries and space. Occasionally, the most loving thing you can do is create enough distance that you can continue to love someone without being slowly hollowed out by them.
*So the lesson stands: try to see beyond your own hurt, practice forgiveness, and extend grace, compassion, and mercy. But here’s the addition that only comes from getting it wrong the first time (or many times): discernment matters. Some relationships teach you how to love better, while others teach you when love requires distance, and both lessons are necessary, even if the second one stings more.
What Real Love Actually Looks Like
Regarding romantic relationships—and I promise this isn’t just going to be me waxing poetic—you can’t jump in with one foot out the door. You can’t approach a relationship like you’re test-driving a car, ready to return it if it doesn’t meet your exacting specifications. It’s important to treat every relationship like it has the potential to be the one. Love, care for, and respect the person. Try to understand them, and let them understand you, which requires the terrifying act of being known. Relationships are not clothing to try on and then discard if they don’t fit perfectly, and they’re not meant to be effortless and comfortable from day one—that’s not how human connection works, in spite whereof romantic comedies have tried to convince us otherwise. Be devoted (but not obsessive—there’s a line, and crossing it helps no one). On the other hand, don’t try to fully commit to massive, life-altering decisions too quickly. Don’t rush. Don’t scare them with intensity for which they’re not ready, and don’t push them into things before they’re prepared, no matter how certain you are about the relationship. And critically: don’t double down when it simply isn’t working (unless you’re married). Some relationships aren’t meant to last forever, and refusing to acknowledge that reality helps precisely no one.
Be honest with yourself about on what you can (and should) compromise and on what you categorically cannot. Don’t make threats to leave that you won’t fulfil—say what you mean, mean what you say, and for the love of all that’s good in the world, don’t use ultimatums as manipulation tactics (they don’t often work, break trust, and make you look unhinged). Don’t keep a relationship scoreboard where you’re totting up who did what and who owes whom. Don’t hold grudges like you’re collecting stamps. Don’t make justifications like “Well, you did this first” or “You made me do that” as if you’re five years old fighting over toys.
In all relationships—romantic, familial, platonic, whatever—try to come first from the point of view of understanding someone and listening to them. Actually listening, not just waiting for them to stop talking so you can say your piece. Let them speak. Don’t interrupt. Don’t defend yourself mid-sentence. Don’t rush them. Just… listen. It’s harder than it sounds, especially when they’re saying things that make you feel defensive, but it’s essential. And address only the parts that need addressing because not everything requires a response or a defence.
In a relationship, especially a committed one, love is a choice, not just a feeling (and I don’t mean that in the saccharine way that makes single people want to throw things). In marriage, love each other no matter what. Even when we make mistakes (frequently). Even if we change in appearance (inevitable). Even if we do something wrong (also frequent—we’re human, not “inspo” posts on Instagram). Love is choosing someone day after day, especially on the days when you don’t particularly like them very much.
And here’s where I’m going to say something potentially controversial that will make certain corners of the internet furious: I don’t believe in this modern “learn to love yourself” thing. At least not the way it’s typically presented. Insecurity is a form of ‘loving’ oneself—but in a self-centred, ultimately destructive sort of way. It comes from thinking too much about yourself: how you’re perceived, whether you’re good enough, whether people like you, whether you measure up. It’s exhausting, and it’s narcissistic—just in an anxious rather than grandiose way. The key is thinking about others more. Obviously, don’t neglect your basic needs (eat food, sleep, shower, the fundamentals of being a functional human), but try to think about others more than yourself and how to genuinely love them—even when they make it difficult. Especially when they’re being difficult. Particularly when you’d rather not. (Repeat: loving them doesn’t mean enabling them or coddling them or doing things for them that they should do themselves).
During difficult times these days, I try to pull my head out of my own behind (a grand and perpetual effort, to be honest). The answer isn’t endless journaling about feelings or more self-reflection or another self-help book about radical self-acceptance or intentional living or morning gratitude. It’s getting out of your own head and focusing on other people.
Part II: Releasing the Burden of Expectations
How Praise Can Become a Prison
When I was a child, I was told I was gifted. I say this not to brag, but to establish context for the specific kind of ‘psychological damage’ that followed. I was constantly informed on what an outstanding adult I would be, how I would do something special (unspecified), and that I had the brains to do something important (undefined). Not only that, but I would be successful (they meant materially, of course—what else would they mean in a culture that equates monetary net worth with human value?). This was all very flattering and, indeed, completely suffocating. When I made mistakes—usually socially because I was awkward and shy in that specific way that bookish children often are—I was humiliated for them. The message was clear: you’re so smart, so special, so responsible, so you should know better. You’re wise and mature beyond your years, so you shouldn’t make these childish mistakes. I became terrified of letting others down, and that has verily been a fantastic foundation whereon to build an entire personality.
I was always told I was good-looking, funny, and logical (claim classification: unverified due to insubstantial evidence). And while I know some people reading this will roll their eyes (I would too), that placed additional enormous pressure on me that I didn’t have the tools to handle. I started to equate beauty with getting love, which meant that love was conditional on maintaining something I had no real control over, and responsibility became “never bothering others or having any needs”. I was petrified of being compared to others, as if my value as a person was tied to these superficial and impermanent, subjective traits—which, given the messages I’d received, wasn’t an unreasonable conclusion for a child to draw. So, I became withdrawn. Neither seen nor heard. The fear immobilised me in many aspects, leading to me becoming afraid to even try, especially in front of an audience. (Ah, remembering the day I was nine years old, had started well in a race, but then realised immediately I wasn’t going to be first, so started walking instead). The contradiction was maddening: I was supposedly brilliant, destined for great things. But my self-esteem was really, truly poor. I had imposter syndrome so severe it’s shocking my picture isn’t used as an example in the diagnostic manuals. I thought people would realise I wasn’t as intelligent or funny as they thought if they got close enough to see me clearly, so I doubled down on keeping them away, fearing I’d be lectured on wasting my “potential” or criticised for not being the person they expected.
Now, I still struggle with some parts of this—conditioning doesn’t just evaporate because you’ve had a few insights. Seeing myself get older, reading that cognitive skills begin declining after 25, and having people from the past ask me what I’m doing with my life… well, it’s uncomfortable. But I’ve mostly started to understand how shallow these standards are. My worth isn’t contingent on performance or appearance or meeting someone else’s expectations of what “special” looks like. I’m just a person. A flawed, normal person who’s (usually) trying their best and frequently failing. Sometimes things turn out badly—frequently, even. But you can’t sit and wallow in failure and complain about how unfair it is. Well, you can, but it’s unproductive and makes you insufferable. You need to face it, move on, and learn something from the experience. Be grateful for the challenge, which I realise sounds like the kind of thing embroidered on a decorative pillow, but I mean it sincerely. Life has given me challenges (and opportunities), and it’s my duty to grow from them, not shrink away. The relief of accepting ordinariness is profound in a way (though it may take some time for me to fully get there).
Money as Security Blanket
Back in the day (I’m now officially old enough to use that phrase, right?), I used to be miserly with money in a way that would have impressed Scrooge. I would save every penny and never discuss money or let anyone know how much or little I had, scared it would be stripped away from me at any given moment through some mechanism I couldn’t control. Denying myself real needs just to save money—I’m talking actual necessities, even food—I would go hungry to watch my bank account number go up, which is objectively insane behaviour but felt perfectly rational at the time. It always felt like it wasn’t enough, and it was running out, no matter how much I had. Even as a child, if someone gave me money, it immediately went into the piggy bank and never came back out. If you listened attentively back then, you could hear the creaking of my wallet as the cobwebs fell away. The money went one direction only: inward, where I could protect it from the hostile forces constantly trying to take it away, like a dragon guarding its (meagre) hoard.
When I started working, I’d set savings goals: “I’ll save this much, and then I’ll feel secure.” I’d achieve the goal through obsessive frugality and extreme self-denial. And then… I still wouldn’t feel secure. The goalpost would move. “Actually, I need to save THIS much to feel safe.” The amount would climb, my standards for satisfaction would shift, and the feeling of scarcity never disappeared, no matter how much I accumulated. (Except when it came to others, and then I’d spend every last penny I had—even going hungry for them). The reality is that there were people who needed a lot more than I did and had a lot less—and they were often more content than I was. Money isn’t everything, which sounds trite but is actually true. There’s only so high that number in your bank account can climb before it stops bringing you any satisfaction or improving your quality of life. Past a certain point, you’re just accumulating numbers on a screen, digits that represent nothing real in your actual lived experience.
Material goods can’t come with you to the next life, so there’s no good in worshipping them in this one—and I say “worshipping” deliberately because that’s what it was. Money had become my idol, my source of security, my measure of worth. More important than money is time, and that time should be spent on things that actually matter. You can make more money, but you can’t make more time. You can replace money, but you can’t replace people.
Ikigai Doesn’t Mean “Monetise Your Hobbies Until You Hate Them”
I don’t understand why the modern world has become so obsessed with the idea that our jobs are our reasons for existing or our purposes in life. It’s genuinely bizarre when you step back and look at it objectively. The idea that your career defines your worth, that you should “find your passion” and monetise it, that work-life balance is about finding meaningful work rather than having a life separate from work—it’s all relatively recent, historically speaking, and it’s making everyone miserable.
It’s really strange to me that Westerners took the concept of ikigai—a Japanese idea about finding meaning through everyday experiences and small joys—and completely malformed it to be specific only to career and money somehow. The original concept encompasses duty, community contribution, family, spirituality, and yes, work, but work as one component among many, yet it’s been stripped down into “find your dream job” and called wisdom. True ikigai can be the joy found in tending a small garden, belonging to a community, or dedicating yourself to a hobby. Along comes the West with their pretty Venn diagram and says, “Can we monetise it, though?” Talk about completely missing the point.
Meaningful relationships, faith, community, connection, doing good—these all give life real meaning. Your job is how you pay bills. It can be fulfilling, sure. It can align with your values and utilise your skills. But that’s not mandatory, and it’s not who you are. It’s what you do for eight hours a day (or more, if you’ve bought into the hustle culture lie that working seventy hours a week makes you ‘virtuous’ instead of ‘exploited’—thank you, Industrial Revolution).
Even at thirty, I don’t know what I want to do for work, but I’ve stopped seeing this as a personal failing or a sign that something’s wrong with me. Maybe not knowing is fine. Perhaps the desperate search for the “perfect career” is itself the problem. Could be most of us are just supposed to do something reasonably useful that pays adequately while we focus our real energy on the things that actually matter—relationships, family, faith, community, or the small acts of good we can do in the world. The people with impressive job titles and LinkedIn profiles full of achievements are also sometimes confused, questioning, wondering if there’s something more, and the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can stop using career as a proxy for purpose and actually figure out what gives our lives meaning.
Part III: Accepting Life’s Structure
Ageing and Physical Limitations
Limitation was scary for me when I started experiencing it, which happened earlier than it does for many due to medical circumstances. I always had a fear of not being capable, of not being able to do things—partially because of the high standards I’d internalised, and partially because independence had become central to my identity. I had surgeries that have limited me a fair deal in what I can and can’t do, which for someone whose entire self-concept was built around being capable and self-sufficient felt like a fundamental betrayal by my own body. At first, I would push through recklessly and ignore all medical advice because listening to limitations felt like admitting defeat, and I’ve always had a mildly defiant streak. I was going to be invincible through sheer force of will: physics and biology be damned. This went about as well as you’d expect.
Nowadays, I (somewhat) try to listen to the people who are smarter than me—medical professionals who actually understand how bodies work, unlike my brain, which apparently thought it could bully the rest of my body into cooperating. I’m supposed to learn what these challenges are meant to teach me, not rage against them like they’re personal insults, and I recognise now that I’m blessed in many ways I didn’t appreciate until some of my abilities were taken away, so now I accept that limitations, and by extension ageing, are a part of life. (Mostly. I’m still working on it.)
Your health is part of your true wealth—and yes, this is another thing that sounds like a motivational poster, but that doesn’t make it false. You can have all the money in the world, but it won’t matter if you can’t cure yourself with it, or you’re never in the right physical or mental state to enjoy it, or you’re just plain miserable as a person. Having a healthy, strong body and mind allows a greater quality of life, enables you to be present for the people you love, and gives you the energy to pursue things that matter. When you treat your body like junk—eating poorly, sleeping inadequately, never moving, constantly being stressed—it’ll feel like junk. And when it feels like junk, everything you do feels like an arduous and Herculean task, if you even have the motivation and energy to attempt it at all. A healthy body creates a clear mind that’s focused, sharp, and ready for challenges instead of just trying to survive the day.
Authority and Rules
As a teen, I had little respect for authority or rules because I was a teenager and therefore knew everything. I did rebel, though somewhat meaninglessly—only against things that didn’t “make sense” to me, which was a conveniently self-serving standard. I was generally a good kid by most objective measures, besides having a temper, but I usually did what I wanted to do and ignored everything else (coincidentally, what I wanted to do often aligned suspiciously well with whatever was expected of me). If I couldn’t see the logic or purpose of a rule, I deemed it unnecessary and opted out. I was very confident about this approach, and also very wrong about most of my assessments.
As I’ve grown—through a process that involved working actual jobs and seeing what happens when there’s no structure—I’ve come to understand the necessity of strong and wise leadership. Not tyranny, not arbitrary control, but actual leadership: at home, in work environments, and in governance. Leadership that takes responsibility, provides direction, protects those under its care, and makes decisions when decisions need to be made. Rules are necessary for cohesion and stability. Not infinite rules, not rules for the sake of rules, but the foundational structures that allow groups of humans to function without descending into chaos. An authority that isn’t respected cannot function—it becomes either toothless and ignored, or it becomes tyrannical, trying to force compliance it hasn’t earned. But this doesn’t mean blind obedience or abuse of power. It means being strong, unflappable, calm, strategic, and firm but fair. You can still be kind, benevolent, and generous while maintaining necessary boundaries. You can lead without being cruel, enforce rules without being arbitrary, can have authority without being a control freak.
Avoiding All Pain Means Avoiding All Growth
Here’s what I’ve learnt about suffering: it’s there for a reason. We’re supposed to learn and grow from it, to be shaped by it into something stronger and wiser than we were before. And that’s true whether you believe that reason is evolutionary biology or a higher power, or both. It might be hard—impossible, even—to see that purpose while you’re in the middle of suffering, when you’re overwhelmed and everything hurts, and you just want it to stop, but that doesn’t mean the purpose isn’t there. Without suffering, we stay as babies—soft, fragile, and unable to cope without constant care and guardianship. We’re refusing responsibility and duty, refusing the call to become adults, refusing to actually live our lives, and we stay stunted, immature, and unable to handle the basic difficulties that come with being human. To me, that’s sorrowful. Not sad as in pitiful, but sad in the sense of potential wasted, growth refused, life half-lived. Like all humans, I’m still learning to cope with suffering, and I’m starting to suspect we’re all still learning to cope for the rest of our lives. It’s not something you master and then check off the list, but rather, it’s ongoing and iterative—a skill you keep developing as new challenges arise.
Emotions are there to motivate us toward or away from things—fear teaches us to avoid danger or to become strong enough to face it. Joy teaches us that something is rewarding and encourages us to continue. The problem is that our civilisation has evolved faster than our brains, so we’re dealing with modern problems using ancient emotional equipment. We react to social situations as though there’s a bear trying to eat us (anxiety), or we can’t control our impulses to overindulge on food that our bodies are programmed to find rewarding (sugar, fats, salt). And our emotions aren’t exactly lying to us, but they’re just sometimes working with outdated information about what actually constitutes a threat or reward.
Part IV: Finding Real Meaning
Truth is Both Objective and Subjective
There are two kinds of truth, subjective and objective, and confusing them causes enormous difficulties. Truth can be relative, depending on what type of truth we’re discussing. My truth is different from your truth when we’re talking about subjective experience, values, and interpretation. Objectively, atoms have a nucleus—that’s demonstrable, testable, and universal. Subjectively, family is the most important thing in life—that’s a value judgement, a personal belief, not a scientific fact but a personal truth. I try to listen to all sides I can find, weigh the empirical and anecdotal evidence, and synthesise everything into a moving average to get an idea of what truth looks like right now, both objectively and subjectively. But I try not to be rigid in this because everything can change, and our understanding evolves: we split the atom and realise it wasn’t the smallest thing, as we once thought. What seems objectively true today may be refined or overturned tomorrow as we learn more.
Moreover, and this might be the most important thing I’ve learnt about truth regarding arguments and debates: being loving is more important than being right. Read that again because it runs counter to everything post-Enlightenment culture tells us about the value of winning arguments and destroying opponents with Facts and Logic™. Being loving is more important than being right. You can win an argument and lose a person, prove your point and destroy a relationship. You can be technically correct and leave wreckage in your wake. Honestly speaking, what’s the point of being right if you’ve obliterated a good relationship in the process? What have you actually won? The satisfaction of being correct is cold comfort when you’re alone because you insisted on winning every argument. And like self-victimisation, it makes one insufferable. Sometimes—often, actually—it’s better to be kind than to be right. To let something go instead of proving your point, to prioritise the relationship over your ego’s need to be acknowledged, but this doesn’t mean never disagreeing or always capitulating to avoid conflict. What it actually means is picking your battles carefully. Some hills aren’t worth dying on.
Happiness
As a kid, I thought lots of money and knowledge would bring me happiness—unconsciously, of course because explicitly thinking that would have sounded shallow even to my younger self. I imagined some cool and interesting career, all my material needs met without worry, and financial security that would finally allow me to relax. I thought happiness was something you achieved through accumulation: more money, more knowledge, more skills, more accomplishments. Nice to have, certainly. Useful. But not the source of happiness, and not the thing that makes life worth living.
What makes me happy—genuinely, sustainably happy—is good relationships and having people to love. That’s it. That’s the secret that self-help books are desperately trying to complicate into 300 pages of drivel content. Good relationships. People to love. Community. Connection. Belonging. Everything else is bonus material, extra features, and nice additions. But the foundation is already there. We’re born with access to the only thing that truly matters: the capacity to love and be loved. This sounds unbearably cheesy, I know, and I’m sort of self-aware enough to at least recognise that. But it’s true. The older I get, and the more I’ve stripped away the things I thought would make me happy, the clearer this becomes. Money helps. Knowledge is valuable. Achievements feel good. Nevertheless, none of them fill the void that only relationships can fill. None of them provide the meaning that only love provides.
Time and Seasons
Life has seasons, and these go in cycles and waves—highs and lows, activity and passivity, focus and distraction, discipline and contentedness, action and inaction, but always they loop back and start again. Life behaves this way on both minuscule scales and grand ones. The rhythm is constant even when the specifics change. People cycle through seasons in life, while societies cycle through cultures, and civilisations cycle through structures, nature cycles through evolutions, and the world cycles through universal states. On a human level, many of these fluctuations in seasons are controlled by how we use our time, whether we use it well or not, and whether we make the most thereof or not. Sometimes we have no control over our seasons; they simply ebb and flow naturally as the world turns on its axis. Phases are usually defined in our memory by events, people, or the overarching feeling or activity level of the time, but we will constantly move in and out of them, often without even realising. In the same way eras in history are only defined after they’ve passed, so too are our phases in life. It’s difficult to clearly see where you stand until you move.
People are too eager to jump in or out of phases instead of just accepting them and doing the best they can, given the cards they’re dealt. When they’re in a passive period, they can feel anxious to advance and attempt to force opportunities for which they’re not yet ready. In a dark period, they become blind to the fact it will pass, and a brighter season will begin. In a bright period, they might forget that all good things must give way. People are much too afraid of time, and so they waste enormous amounts of it trying to control it. They try to force outcomes. They attempt to rush progress. They endeavor to prevent change. But attempting to control the uncontrollable only—ironically, predictably—wastes time in the end. The time you spend fighting against the natural rhythm of life is time you’re not spending actually living. It’s better to accept time, do your best with it, and keep moving at a steady pace that suits your current season. Some seasons are for planting. Some are for growing. Some for harvesting and others for rest. Fighting against the season you’re in doesn’t change what season it is, but instead exhausts you.
Time itself is unavoidable, inescapable, and it’s the one resource of which we genuinely cannot create more, so we need to be realistic and use it wisely. In my life, this means I try to learn from the past but move on from it (dwelling helps nothing). I try to be mindful of the present and grateful for what I have, and I try to plan for the future without becoming so fixated on it that I miss what’s happening now. Of course, this is all easier said than done. People know that time is finite, yet still, they often don’t really know it—not in the way that changes behaviour, anyway. And so inevitably, they waste time without utilising it to its full potential, while others attempt to create an achievement-hunting game out of optimising it. They’ll be overly optimistic at times about having “all the time in the world,” only to be shocked when they blink and years have passed. Then they’ll swing to the opposite extreme and become overly anxious and focused on time’s finality, trying to squeeze in too many experiences and goals, only to discover they’ve also wasted their time—just on different things. Things that brought no real meaning or joy, just the illusion of productivity or the temporary relief of checking items off a list.
Balance. Temperance. Moderation. (If I say these words enough times, maybe I’ll actually achieve them.) Having a balanced relationship with time is the most beneficial because through moderation and self-awareness, you can let your feelings of anxiety nag you into taking action without paralysing you. You can let feelings of optimism allow you a sense of freedom and hope without becoming complacent. It’s best to surrender to time and flow with it. You can’t control it, can’t stop it, can’t reverse it. But you also can’t allow yourself to be stagnant, to regress to the past, or to live only for some imagined future that may never arrive. You have to move with time, adjusting as circumstances change, responding to what actually is rather than what you wish was true.
The Through Line
The thread connecting everything I’ve learnt—if there’s a coherent thesis beneath all this periphrastic meandering—is about maturing beyond the self-centred perspective that’s natural in youth but limiting in adulthood. Whether it’s moving from social performance to authentic friendship, from career grandiosity to accepting uncertainty, or from “learn to love yourself” to “learn to love others,” there’s a consistent pattern of expanding beyond the narrow focus of the ego; a pattern of recognising that you’re not the centre of the universe, and that’s actually liberating rather than diminishing. The shift is from “what can I get?” to “whom can I love?” I’m thirty now, and I don’t have my life figured out. I’m still learning, still making mistakes (frequently, creatively, sometimes spectacularly), still struggling with some of the same patterns that have plagued me for years—the aloofness, the fear, the tendency toward self-protection over vulnerability. Growth isn’t linear; we’re all works in progress, and I suspect we’ll remain so until we die. But I’m also more free than I’ve ever been. Free (-ish) from the burden of needing to be special, to prove my worth, to live up to someone else’s expectations of what my life should look like, from the fear of not being enough, from the exhausting performance of trying to control life. We’re all just sprauchling along, trying our best with imperfect information and limited wisdom. The wisdom isn’t in having all the answers—any mere mortal like the rest of us who claims to have all the answers is lying or delusional. The wisdom probably lies more in accepting that we don’t and won’t have all the answers and choosing to love people anyway, to show up even when it’s uncomfortable, be vulnerable even when it’s terrifying, and grow even when it hurts. There’s an old Japanese adage that goes something like, “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” That’s what I’m learning. That’s what I’m still learning. And I suspect—with the certainty of someone who’s finally figured out how little they actually know—I’ll be learning it for the rest of my life.
1: I’m using the term “middle school” for convenience here, as that’s not strictly accurate in what was my part of the globe at that time.