I was 32 and I hated my job. I hated it so much that I would drive to work in the mornings and wish that a bus would drive into me. Hard. I wanted to be injured seriously enough to end up in hospital for a few days but not so seriously that there’d be any lasting damage.
And I knew exactly what part of the job I didn’t like. It was the work. I loved the people I worked with and admired many of them. I felt accepted and supported by my bosses and my peers. And I was doing well. I had a clear career path, a couple of promotions under my belt and was working on important projects.
But the work itself was killing me. What I was doing was inane and brain numbingly boring. And in a strange twist of irony, the details of the work stressed me out. I found I couldn’t switch off, and as much as I didn’t care for what I was doing, I cared too much about doing it well. I worked every weekend, took work calls while I was on holidays and worked late most nights. And I slept poorly, drank too much and despite having good friends, I was lonely and miserable all the time.
And one day I handed in my resignation. I’d had enough. The MD of the company asked me if there was anything that would make me stay. I told him there wasn’t and for good measure let him know that it wasn’t personal. A month later I got rid of most of my belongings and a month after that I got onto a flight to Peru with one goal, to change the trajectory of my life.
I changed my life
On that trip, I bumped into a friend whom I hadn’t seen in years while hiking in the middle of nowhere in Patagonia. I stayed on an avocado farm in the middle of the Amazon and worked on another farm in Chile overlooking one of the most beautiful lakes I’ve ever seen. I chased down a man trying to hold up a group of travellers (me included) at a hostel I was staying at in Argentina. Turns out the gun under his hoodie was only a finger. And, most importantly, while on a bus to Machu Pichu, the woman I would end up marrying came and sat down next to me.
I will remember that period as one of the best of my life. Every day was new. I worked hard when I had to, I travelled light, and despite being dirty and poor, I was happy. Leaving that job was the best thing I’d ever done.
Good for me, so what?
A few years back I was working with a young guy. He was smart, ambitious, and driven. He was considered ‘talent’ by senior people in the business and had the world at his feet. About six months after he joined the business, he asked me if I would have a coffee with him. I agreed, thinking it would only be a catch-up and that we’d talk about sport and some trivial work matters.
What we ended talking about was his strategy for advancing his career, his plans to marry his girlfriend and how he was borrowing money from his family to buy a house. He was 24 and had his life planned out all the way through to retirement. He was determined to make it big, and felt he might be falling behind and wanted to know if I thought going to another company so soon after joining the one he was in with me would help accelerate or hurt his career.
I tried to be supportive, tried to show him how he might find the answer himself, but inside I was stunned. For me 18 and 24 weren’t all the different. Shit, 15 and 24 weren’t all the different. I did dumb things, got into trouble, avoided anything that limited my options or committed me to anything resembling responsibility. I made enough money to survive and lived with the soul purpose of enjoying my youth. I’ll admit, it wasn’t the most fulfilling life, but it was an integral part of me getting to know who I am.
But something’s changed
I look at young people now, people in their 20’s and all they want to do is make money, climb the corporate ladder or start businesses. And, while there’s nothing wrong with that, I ask myself, when are you going to make time to find out what kind of adult you are? When are you going to have the space in your life to experiment with your identity? When are you going to find the freedom to make stupid mistakes while the stakes are still reasonably low?
Here’s a tweet I came across in my feed earlier this evening:
In your 20s?
Then focus your time and effort on:
- Investing
- Working out
- Giving less fucks
- Building discipline
- Improving 1% every day
- Controlling your emotions
- Consuming less, creating more
1 year of dedication will put you 10 years ahead of people your age
And he’s right, it will put you ahead of other people your age, but only in some aspects of your life. His list is all about restraint, control, and discipline. There is no room for experimentation, adventure and finding out what you love.
Success and hustle culture are forcing young people to make decisions based on fear
Being poor has become a disease. The vaccine to poverty is hustle, discipline, and focus. Start your own business early, work ridiculous hours, suffer for your start-up. If it goes bust, do it again, failure just makes success that much sweeter and gives you more credibility amongst other start-up founders.
And that’s the problem. Not being a millionaire by the time you’re in your 30’s is deemed a failed life. That young guy I worked with who sought my advice is now married, owns a house that he can barely afford and has changed jobs three times since we had that coffee catch-up. He’s probably on track for his retirement goals, and I don’t think he realises that he’s not happy.
Every time I make a life changing decision, I ask myself if my choice was based on me running from the darkness or towards the light? Was my decision based on fear, or was it motivated by hope. My hypothesis is that the younger you are the more your decisions should be based on hope. When you’re young you should always be running towards the light. In the light is where adventure lies, there is always more possibility in hope. The older you get, the more you’re allowed to make decision based on fear. With more responsibilities it is okay to avoid risk, to make a few decisions because you’re avoiding the darkness.
And then there’s being reckless with your life
What I did traveling to South America wasn’t running towards the light and I wasn’t running from the darkness. It was a third option; it was throwing everything up in the air and hoping that when the pieces land there is something completely new which I could use to build a new life.
You play the reckless card when you’re deeply unhappy in your life or when you’re so stuck that you don’t see a way out. Reckless will always deliver the biggest surprises, the richest experiences, but you must be willing to pay the price for getting it wrong. If you get reckless wrong, you could lose everything. There is every chance you might have to start from scratch – with nothing. But then, there is nothing wrong with being poor. It makes life harder, but if you believe life is about experiencing as much of the world as you can while you’re alive, then tossing the reckless card onto the table might be the only sane thing left to do.
And to all those you people who are investing, going to the gym, and building discipline, maybe get another perspective from the philosopher and chef, Anthony Bourdain,
“If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.”