Why 30 Will Be The Best Year Yet
Thirty, Flirty and Thriving Indeed
Something seems to click with everyone at the thought of turning thirty. Maybe it’s the social implication of it, the external pressure of agencies like ’30 under 30' that make us feel like 30 is the end, that if one hasn’t achieved everything there is to achieve before turning thirty, one’s life is a failure and that the rest of it will amount to nothing as well. Not married before thirty? May as well give up the search for a partner. Haven’t been wildly successful in your career before thirty? Shame. Perhaps in another life.
Don’t even get me started on what it means to be a woman hoping to procreate who turns thirty. The world will not cease to remind her that her eggs will soon be old and frail- just like her.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to turning 30 and they can be viewed simply as a group of people who are terrified of turning 30, associating it with the end of the seemingly brief window where any sizeable achievements can be made, and the second group of people who subscribe to the Thirty-Flirty-and-Thriving Theory. I have found myself subscribing to neither of these, but I do still believe that this year when I turn thirty, I am going to plunge into the best year yet. Let’s figure out why.
- “Werk”
By the age of thirty, most of us will have either had enough experience in one field to help us progress in it, or we will have had enough experience in multiple fields to help us decide which one we like and which we don’t. Either way, at age thirty, we have seen plenty to help us move in a direction that can help us achieve what we want to. And here’s the best part- we can always change what we want as well. Whoever said that life should have one straight path clearly did not have the best life.
2. Emotional Maturity
By the age of thirty, we will all have had our fair share of emotional trials and tribulations in varying degrees. Family drama starts at birth and continues to progress as we grow older. By the age of thirty (or even earlier, in some cases), we reach a point of either not caring what others think of us- i.e., total zen- or we reach a point of having open and honest conversations with our friends and family about how they can best leave us the fuck alone to get on with our lives and how they can get on with theirs too- i.e., total emotional maturity. At age thirty, we reach a point where we can have successful relationships.
If we’re achieving a state of zen, we’re leaving behind toxic relationships, and if we’re going through the path of total emotional maturity, we might be nurturing toxic relationships of out of their toxicity to find a way to coexist with them. If anything, thirty is a great time to be working on emotional intelligence.
3. Romantic Relationships
If there’s one thing I’m looking forward to for the age of thirty, it’s being able to expand my age filter to include the age of forty. If thirty brings about emotional maturity, imagine the kind of EQ we can expect for a forty-year-old. Sure, they might be a bit more broken and the likelihood of finding someone who hasn’t had one or two traumatic experiences in their lives is practically non-existent, but imagine what we can explore. It’s a whole new world for you when you turn thirty.
I don’t know who decided that thirty is going to be a big one. It doesn’t have to be a big one at all. It can be whatever you decide it will be. Just make of it what you can with what you have, be a decent person and get on with your life as you leave behind the haters.