What's the fuss about 30?

Why is thirty a pivotal age for everyone? What are you expected to know and do before thirty? Why you need to take your 20s more seriously.

I look forward to clocking thirty. Although I’ve been indifferent about birthday celebrations lately, I will throw a party when I turn thirty in the next few years.

But clocking thirty isn’t about celebrations alone. It’s the age you cross the bridge from youth to age advancement. It's the age you’re expected to be ‘a man’, which comes with a lot of expectations. This expectation births a pressure to deliver at all costs.  

The pressure heightens if you grew up in a family where resources are scarce. Here, the odds are not in your favour. And you’d do just about anything to survive, to ‘be a man’ - both legal and illegal. 

First, learn the right way to survival 

To survive, you must figure out what works in a world that naturally favours the privileged and outliers, and what doesn’t. It’s a long process, but you must learn. 

The willingness to learn, however, must be guided and predicated on time-tested principles. 

It behooves you to discover your primal inclinations (your life’s task or purpose), attain apprenticeship (to sharpen the task), gain mastery (a master at the task), and learn social intelligence to manage the task (diplomacy over cynicism). 

You must also learn how to win friends and influence people. Our ability to manage and respect people rather than use them is also key to survival. 

I used to think survival in life was up to my efforts and abilities. I grew up in an environment where I’d learned the skewed way to survive: attain university education, get the best grade so you’d land the best job, and work hard to get job security. These formed my worldview. 

But as I subjected myself to intellectual rigour, I viewed life and survival from a better perspective, which I’d like to describe as a game. I saw life as a game, and to win here, to survive, I must learn the rules to my advantage. I also discovered life has underlying principles, principles that have lingered for centuries, principles I must learn and apply. 

In the 1550s, before the Newtonian revolution, before humans learned the laws of nature, people thought God made specific decisions about everything around them. When their crops failed, they’d say it was an act of God. Whenever anything went wrong, they’d blame God. 

But in the 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton, a theologian and scientist, led a brand new concept of the universe as being governed by rational and understandable principles.

“No, don’t blame God,” the revolutionaries said “What God did was to put in place a universe with certain principles, and what we need to do is figure out how those principles work. God doesn’t make all the decisions. He set in place processes and principles that would carry on.” 

To survive, we must continually ask ourselves three questions: what are these life principles? How can we learn them effectively? How can we apply them to our own advantage? 

Second, get to work, in your 20s. 

When I left the University in 2016, I thought the best way to enjoy my youth was to chop life. 

Partial hedonism, I’d thought, would make up for the four years I’d spent as a responsible and diligent undergraduate. But in hindsight, I realized how faulty that mentality was.

The human life cycle is divided into Childhood, adolescence and adulthood. The most important cycle with an excessive amount of energy is the young adulthood stage; the 20s. It’s the stage you’re endowed with mental agility and creativity. 

It’s this stage Messi scored 92 goals in a season(25 yrs), Micheal Jordan scored a career high 69-point (27 yrs). It’s why football players in their 20s are highly sought after, and why Brazilian Soccer star, Neymar still holds the record of the most expensive player of all time, valued €222million at (25yrs). It’s why Nigerian banks prefer graduates below 25 years. 

Although there are a few exceptions where age does not determine productivity and mental creativity, 20s provide the best time for sowing seeds of knowledge by understanding and applying life’s principles that would guarantee survival. 

It’s the stage of trying everything, taking business and career risks, falling and rising. It’s the stage of sacrificing your youth on creating a mental path for your future through study and apprenticeship. You’re not expected to figure everything out. But you’re mandated to use your youthful exuberance accordingly.  

As we work on this, failure is inevitable. We must however learn to fail forward, picking up necessary lessons rather than wallow in self pity. 

We must also be willing to embrace the mental process involved in forging a beautiful path for our future. It won’t come easy, but it’s a process worth embracing. To purify gold to 24-karat, the most valuable grade, it takes a significant amount of heat, 1,948 degrees Fahrenheit (1,064°C). 

And to think we’re worth more than gold. 

That’s the end of this week’s newsletter. I’d love to hear your thoughts about what you’ve read in the comment section. Kindly share with your under-30s friends, too. See you next week. 

I’m reading this Insightful article.

I’m watching a new documentary on Bill Gates.

I’m listening to Burna Boy’s New Album.

PS: I’m adding a new series to the About 30 newsletter, Transcript Thursday — 8.00 A.M. every Thursday. I can’t wait to share with you guys 😍 🥳.