What 35 Years Taught Me About Meaning
I turn 35 today, and it's wild ...
When I was a kid, everyone a step ahead of me looked grown. I remember being in elementary school, watching the high schoolers, sure they had it all figured out. I remember them riding by our bus mooning us, calling the HS for "bomb threat Friday" and being struck by how young, wild and free they were.
Step by step I got there too. I had my wild years, my serious finding-myself years in my 20s, a couple of short stints as a globetrotter, and it all led here. I boomeranged back to New Jersey after swearing I never would, I work off of computers that I swore off after Uni, I married a woman carrying every bit of the baggage I swore I'd avoid, and had a kid this past year.
That last one I always knew I wanted, but a lot of what I've learned is that growing up is mostly unlearning. It's letting go of who you thought you'd be while doing your level best to stay true to who you actually are.
I used to have a lot of high-falutin' notions about being "grown." In my late teens I figured I was the sharpest tool in the shed. Then I got to McGill and felt dumb as a rock by comparison. Took me a few years to learn the truth: the kids pulling ahead weren't all geniuses. Most of them were just putting in the work and learning to work smarter. I figured out that balance, finished carrying a solid GPA and actually enjoyed the back end of it. Working hard and working smart turn out to be the same lesson wearing two coats.
I came home with an engineering degree and no offers, sore at my parents and at a world that didn't roll out the carpet I'd been promised by movies. That was its own unlearning. Nobody comes to you. The extra work, the hard work, the stuff you can shirk when you're young, that's the whole difference between the people who pull ahead and the people who stay put and talk a lot about it.
I've got regrets, sure. I lost my grandfather in high school, a track and field man, and that season I ran I flourished. Then I told myself I wasn't a track kid and quit, even as the coach kept flagging me down in the halls. The same coach who sent kid after kid off on full rides. I never took the athletic shot, and I'd have liked to see where it went.
So here's what I've actually got, after losing some of the elder generation and chasing down more than a few different lives:
- Pick your mate like your whole life depends on it, because it does. You either land an adventure buddy you'll get flashes of growing old with, or you land a set of differences that turn irreconcilable in time. You don't need to love everything about each other. You do need a shared outlook, shared values, and a love of family and community.
- Family and community are more than just a backdrop. They give you people to live for, weekends to look forward to, something to come home to. It's a shame how many young people are late to this table or skip it entirely. Our elders were right about this one. Make time for the people you love, and let yourself be proven wrong.
- Be willing to reinvent yourself decade on decade. It's the lived experience that counts, more than anything you'll put on a résumé.
- Lean on routine and streamline. High-output people run on it almost without exception. With a newborn at home, mine barely looks like a routine some days, but it's what I've got. A few days a week I log off early to grab my daughter from daycare. It compresses the workday and forces better time management, and I keep asking myself the only two questions that matter: if this were my dream life, would I do it this way? Could I sustain this pace all year? I'm living more from a place of not burning out. I want to enjoy the ride.
- Save like it's a religion, but live a little now. Automate it. Pull the money before you ever see it. I dabbled in my 20s, but it's the last few years where I got intentional, and the results already beat what I expected. We're saving for freedom 5, 10, 15 years out. We're saving for time, with the people and the work that mean something.
- Don't count on being "safe" as somebody's employee. I've been laid off. It taught me that if you're not the one in the boardroom, if you're a number, you're not as secure as you think. Long term, the surest bet is owning the thing.
- Adventure on. Don't let aging or anybody's idea of normal slow you down. See the world, whether that's a new country every year or a fresh corner of your own town. Keep talking to new people and bumping into new perspectives. It keeps the whole thing fresh.
- Be careful who you tune in to. There's endless noise out there, and listen to the wrong voices long enough and they'll bend you out of shape. I've watched good friends turn jaded year by year, mostly the ones who let the news and politics do their thinking. Let your own life and the people you actually meet inform you. It's a realer way to live.
- Stay true to what makes you you. I know my immutables by now. I'm impatient. I need room to breathe, regular movement, time in nature, time with the people I love, and interesting problems to chew on. My life isn't perfect, but it's got room for all of that, and I'd argue I'm living truer to myself now than I was five years ago.
Turns out the truest version of me showed up right alongside the two people I'd build my whole life around. My wife, who somehow signed up for the long haul with me. And my daughter, who doesn't know yet that she rearranged my entire heart the day she got here. They're my forcing function, sure, but mostly they're just my reasons.
Life is never going to slow down. There will be hard stretches, and that's a guarantee, not a maybe. But I get to walk through all of it with the two of them, and that makes even the hard parts feel like a gift.
What you do with this life is the only part that's up to you. So I'm choosing them, every single day.
In 35 years, that's a bit of what I've learned.