On Turning 30, Marrying Age and Balancing Career Choices With Happiness

Another hiatus ended

I have recently returned to action after yet another decent publishing hiatus.

Today I will discuss themes aired in a conversation between myself and my long-term friend-turned-sporadic podcast co-host, Luke Smith.

Luke’s been with me through the thick and thin of this ‘podcasting and writing’ life chapter, as an early supporter of the pod, turned active contributor. We’ve explored everything from Nassim Taleb and education, to Alan Watts, Aburdism, ambition and the hidden significance in Harry Potter.

This is how the relationship tends to go… I go on long-winded, overthought, philosophical rambles, then Luke responds in a way that extracts the point, but with simplicity, coherence and relevance.

The fellas, two years ago.

In the lead-up to today’s episode, he asked me what I wanted to talk about. I gave him a list of topics, then suggested we also make a bit of a shift to talk a bit more directly about ‘what’s going on’ for us, personally. And what’s going on just at the minute is a very fascinating life stage—entering our thirties, which coincides with our friends getting married and ‘settling down’.

So we talked about that, then I inevitably dragged the conversation onto some big philosophical points, somehow managing to link modern young adults to Brave New World—Aldous Huxley’s 1932 masterpiece dystopian book about a utopian future. In Brave New World, babies are exclusively bred in test tubes, no one gets married, and everyone is hooked on a side-effect free drug called ‘soma’. Given I have a mammoth video/episode coming soon for you all dedicated to this book, I couldn’t help seeing the parallels.

This classic will be subject of a major WJW breakdown real soon. I’m sure Aldous Huxley is tickled pink about that.

When you zoom out and ask where the world is headed, things are often gloomy. Wars, missile strikes, nuclear weapons, AI… and on the everyday level, unaffordable living, marrying and child-rearing later in life, aging populations (in Australia). Funnily enough, when you look back at history, you have to say a lot of things have improved. Human rights, technology, access to information, health, knowledge…

In the two part Bullsh*t Manifesto I published earlier this year, we discussed this tension. Society’s development is not straightforward, there’s a lot of X steps forward, Y steps back with any change. There are always challenges. What’s interesting is how we deal with them.

So, are we headed for a Brave New World reality? This is something I’ll keep stewing on. But I’ll say for now, despite any parallels to a dystopian novel, and while we deliberate between pessimism or optimism for the future, I personally find myself having faith in our world’s future, as well as faith in my own.

One wonders whether faith sits on this optimism-pessimism spectrum, or somewhere else.

Extraordinary chats between ordinary people

What was the world like, a hundred years ago, in 1925? The time when Huxley would have been hatching Brave New World. We can read Great Gatsby or historian tales but it will never compare to a direct account from the people of that time. Wouldn’t it be great, for example, if we could listen to a podcast of two thirty year-olds talking about their lives in the year 1925?

That’s what’s really interesting about the internet and content era. If I ever get my act together and have kids of my own, they’ll be able to look back at my material, and probably social media, and see what their dad was like at their age. What he thought about, what he worried about, what occupied him, and what outlandish outfits he wore to dress-up parties… you know, all the important stuff.

‘Those who hear not the music, think the dancers are crazy’ — Chinese Proverb. Only, there was no music playing when this photo was taken.

Make no mistake—I suffer not from the delusion that there are countless people out there hanging to listen to two relatively ordinary young fellows discussing a very standard life stage. All the same, I love capturing conversations like this. It’s part of my disdain for formal expertise, and preference instead for the rawness of pure, non-performative stories of people’s experiences—fancy speak for, people just talking about how it is—for themselves.

In this latest episode, we talked through a few modern dilemmas—latening marriage ages, and certain career conundrums around balancing family support with enjoyment and passions—as usual, and unlike a proper expert, no answers were offered.

Avoiding Preoccupation With Answers

As I figured out somewhere along the way, that’s where it’s at—avoiding preoccupation with answers. The recurrence of struggle, tension, anxiety, and general obstacles in our lives, is a real necessity of this journey we undertake. We discuss this in the episode, which is relevant to Brave New World, too—while the focus of a struggle or dilemma is looking for the solution, the big picture reality is that the bumps on the path make the journey—they are what bind you together—assuming, if you’re fortunate as I am, to have people around you along the way.

A simple, but important reminder.

So, as always, remember my dear friends to keep opening Doors for each other.

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The number one form of support for me and my work is to check out my books. Thank you, fellow Doorpersons.

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Full Episode