How Do You Feel About Your Age?

So bang! Here I am 28. another stick-it on the clipboard that is my life. And you, don�t think that your any more different than I am. No, you are measured up against other people. When someone says to me, how does it feel to be 28, they are not asking me �how do YOU feel to be 28�, they are saying, I know a certain amount of people that are 28, and now you Donal are 28, I am comparing you to all the other people I know to be able to make an assessment on how you feel to be that age.

But this is how people work, when it comes to opinions then our ideas are all stick-its. We all buy the same brand, we all use the same labels to brand each other with. So what is in our bag of stick-its? Our bag of stick-its is full of labels like �do you have a job � what is it?�, �where do you live?�, �how often do you go out?� and so on. But then the way we use these stupid labels are very interesting. You see ask a kid any of these questions and the kid will say, homework is my job, I live with mom and dad (if that is the case), I go out and play with Bobby every day.

But wait, you reader, what age are you�. Are you 28? What have you achieved? Are my labels sticking on you, and if my labels are not sticking on you then there must be something wrong with you! After all, everyone else has a good job like an office job or their own business, they have their own homes, and they party hard at least once a week. So bang, you know that you are under the spotlight by everyone� beads perspiration form on your forehead� what have I achieved? What have I achieved for God�s sake!

There is a solution to nearly every problem, and there certainly is to this one anyway. Either everyone is correct in labelling you a failure or a success, or everyone is incorrect? To you, the reader, it is a matter of choice. You see some deadbeats live a life of glee unknown to the most successful people in business or most intelligent of academics to hold chairs in universities across the globe. Happiness is purely relative� I am telling you that it is. Happiness is when you say, this is where I am in my life and I accept myself.

What is holding you back from being totally happy? Are you totally happy with yourself? Really? Who is labelling you and saying that you should be some way or another? I think that if you look at your situation that you will find out that in most cases that you are the person that is not accepting who you are. How can you see where you want to go in life if you are living your life through other peoples eyes? Now is a good time to reflect�

Please e-mail me at

[email protected]

Mart wrote this in reply...

Donal,

OK I am giving you my full critical review, I hope you don�t mind my criticizing but I interpret your question �tell me what you think� to be asking for the critical review.

Other than that I think the site is good, and I especially like the idea of it. Now on to the meat of the issue. First thing I have to say is that while I do get the idea of what you are trying to say, I don�t follow you all along your way of saying it (I presume the message of your site is self-acceptance and making peace with ones self etc?). Thing is, you go at it in a round-about way, and talking about stick-its makes it more confusing (something I am not entirely sure what you mean, are you referring to those yellow post-it notes? http://www.3m.com/market/office/postit/com_prod/psnotes/ )

Also, in a more argumentative element of critique, where you try to say that some people who would commonly be regarded as having failed to achieve have in fact reached a level of success more valuable if more difficult to measure that those who might be commonly perceived as being successful. What you did do is call them deadbeats, I think this is kind of self defeating in your argument in that even while saying �hey maybe they have a success you don�t know of� you are still labeling them yourself and calling them a failure in your own eyes by using this term (you could have used the term if you pre-fixed it with something like �commonly seen as deadbeats�, but you didn�t). do you follow? I know my way of saying it is a lot more long winded but you have to be specific to avoid the pit-fall you fell into.

So, that�s all the critique I can muster for now. Don�t get me wrong, as I say I like the site and I especially like the idea of it. I agree with you that �Happiness is when you say, this is where I am in my life and I accept myself.� I think it is a good insight that you �think that if you look at your situation that you will find out that in most cases that you are the person that is not accepting who you are�. It is a good idea and a good message and something that is good to say out and point out to people.

Good one Donal.

On 24/11/05 Alan Potter wrote this in reply...

Donal,

I like your site and it�s a really good idea. It is a good way of finding out what way your friends feel about a subject and thus get to know them better.

Wasn�t sure either what you meant by Stick it. I guessed that you meant the yellow post-its.

I think when someone asks you how do you feel about being 28, you should not presume that you know why they are asking you that or what they mean by it. For example, I think if I asked you that question, I would be just interested in how you felt about being that age i.e. getting older and maybe how you feel about getting closer to 30. I think if I asked you that question, you would need to ask me what I mean in order that I could be more specific with my question and you with your answer.

I agree with you about what you say about Happiness being relative. You see all the time in the magazines, celebrities taking drugs and going into rehab. These are the people who have achieved their dreams but still are not happy. They wonder why they are not happy as everything seems to be there, money, lifestyle, friends. If you were to take away all these things from them though what kind of person would be left.

I have met people working in what some people may regard as lowly jobs who are very happy with their job and their life and don�t ask for much out of life and are quite content. Its how they feel about what they are doing and what pride they take in what they do. So what they do isn�t important but their attitude towards it and towards life.

I often wonder when I come across spoilt children, how they will turn out when they become adults. Do they expect to still always get their own way as adults or do they get depressed when they don�t or do they just grow up and realise that they can�t expect to get everything they want anymore and just deal with it. Of course it depends on the individual.

Our parents and society in general influence what we think about things and what our values should be. These values change from generation to generation also depending on the circumstances we find ourselves in. Being able to think for ourselves and question what we heard and see around us is probably our best weapon.

What I like about you Donal is that you don�t allow your circumstances in your life effect your happiness. For example I remember when you failed your exams in college and you just grinned at me with that Donal grin of yours and said �Sure Feck it!�

That is all I have to say at the moment as Its time to go home and get some dinner.

Slan,

Alan Potter

On 12/19/05 Finbar Murray wrote this in reply...

Donal,

Finally getting around to formulating a response to your message, although you scratch the surface of a lot of topics, in a fairly non-specific rant, so its difficult to put together a coherent response with so many questions to answer.

Your rant is titled "How do you feel about your age?", but from reading it and especially the last couple of paragraphs, what you really seem to be asking is "How do you feel about yourself?"

Firstly, to tackle the age/job/house/car/salary question. For the record, I think that anyone who asks me these types of questions is a moron. Most of the time its just small talk, a way of breaking the ice, maybe find something in common to build further conversation on. Other times it might just be almost rhetorical, like when someone asks "how are you?". If people answered this question truthfully, then the person asking the question would probably be quite shocked and regret asking it in the first place.

But I think there is also a more sinister side to this labelling. People like to feel superior to those less well off, & if they find that you dont make as much money as them, doing "menial" jobs, living in a dingy apartment, no car, no prospects, then they feel better about themselves.

As for the age thing, that really is not relevant. At any point in your life, you could look back & ask yourself the question, what have I done with my life? 28 is still pretty young, so i would not worry too much about it!

Having recently turned 30, I did have a dread of that milestone, where 2 digits change on the age-o-meter istead of 1, but its not so bad once you actually get there.

Now on to happiness. I guess you could split this in to 2 categories: the instant, here in the moment brief happiness that could come from any number of little things: eating chocolate, shopping, company of friends etc., the other category is the more long term feeling of contentment from being happy in your job, relationship, family, everything in its right place sort of thing.

Intersesting to see read your definition of happiness, and Mart picking up on your use of deadbeats in your example. Happiness is not so much relative as unique to each individual, what makes one person happy can drive someone else insane. You could call it the Celine Dion Principle.

What you seem to be saying is that for some, ignorance is bliss, but I am not sure if you agree with that. I know I dont.

To borrow a quote from that great sage of our time, Brad Pitt (in Fight Club)

I say, let me never be complete

I say, may I never be content

I think that to be happy and content is a stagnant state, where you stop learning about yourself and the world around you (unless you are a bit of a Buddha, and have reached some kind of enlightenment!). Happiness should be something that is constantly strived for.

I know that I am sounding like a miserable bastard, but thats not entirely true, I would like to think I am a bit more optimistic than that.

Everybody builds walls, to distance themselves from all the unpleasantness in the world, as long as they are happy then they dont really care about the starving millions, victims of floods, earthquakes, war etc. Out of sight, out of mind.

So these happy people, are they really 'happy', or are they living in a fantasy world that could crack at any moment?

(I am not sure where I am going with this, I may have wandered a bit off topic, & I am not sure if this is what you are talking about on this subject, so I will stop wandering)

Happiness does very much depend on the individual, and there is no harsher critic of you than yourself. Happiness is fleeting, enjoy it while you can, because you never know whats around the corner. I guess that makes life a bit more interesting.

Anyway, thats enough rambling for now. Good luck with the website, I look forward to seeing your rants and other peoples responses to them. There are plenty of things out there to rant about, I am sure you agree. I would like to get around to replying to all your rants, although I would have difficulty with your Traveller one, because it would really show up what a hypocrite I am. On the one hand there is the fact that they are people & should be treated like everyone else, on the other is the fact that I would not want 20 caravans to park on my doorstep.

If you want our responses, try to be more specific in the questions you ask though.

I am still waiting to hear Mart's detailed response on the old, but not forgotten, discussion on pre-determinism & free will, one we may never agree on, but your site provides a good forum for these discussions, often dreamed up in the early hours of the morning after too many beers. I would like to see those type of discussions here, as well as the odd rant.

PS

Merry Christmas, and a happy new year everyone.

Apologies for formatting, gmail has done funny things after I c&p it

On 02/01/06 Mart wrote this in reply...

Excellent Donal, good to see this site still going, and for the record, I will dredge up the old one of predeterminism as well (which Finbarr referred to at the end of his rant), cos for me that is still a clear one, but one I backed away from when it became a huge pretty much thesis amount of work - but I will send you on what we have on it so far and then my response will follow one of the days.

Anyway, as Finbarr said, I think your 'how do you feel about your age' question really has transformed into the question of 'how do you feel about yourself'. I turned 30 over a year ago now and I can truthfully tell you it made no difference to me that I broke into a new decade. I would like to think this means that I am happy enough where I am, but I know it more means that I know enough to know that age is not that important. at the risk of going off briefly on a huge tangent here, the reason I know this is that I still feel the same now as I was when I was younger, the restriction on my freedom comes more from the circumstances of my life, restrictions which would be in place even if I was in the same circumstances and 20 years old. In a way, this is very sad in itself, but my point is that age doesnt matter at this point. maybe later when I am so old that my body starts to break down the it'll matter but 30 is not that point (though if you really want to be morbid, it is closer to it).

And in what could be a whole other rant of its own, I agree 100% with Finbarrs assessment of the small talk people make, trust me everyone who asks me 'how are you' or 'how was your weekend' every Monday morning don't care about the answer. The difference between me and everyone else in my office (where for example I hear it most) is that I find this conversation so banal I don't bother answering most of the time. this is normality, jumping through these hoops, and that is why I would rather have 5 people in my life who really know me and can talk to me rather than 100 'friends' who are really just acquaintances who don't know me at all and I am not free to be myself in front of. for me, the latter group of people are not valuable in your life other than the roles they play as colleagues, relatives etc. this is also why I am probably a social misfit or outcast to some extent, cos that is where I'd rather be. I might even slightly disagree with Finbarr is his assessment that possibly there is a sinister aspect to peoples inquiring about the trivial details like job etc - I think their really uninterested enough that there is neither the desire to feel superior or an attempt to asses someone's status, it is simply as he said small talk. I just happen to think this is pointless - I always rather find out who someone is rather than what they do or where they live. Remember Jack Kerouac - he would always ask someone on a long bus journey who happened to be sitting beside him 'what do you want out of life' - if someone asked me this I would look forward to a genuinely interesting conversation, instead I get 'whats your name/where do you live/whats your bloodline' - at which point I would tell the enquirer to stop talking to me.

As for happiness - there is too much there for me to say here. I will send you a separate mail about happiness, because that is what the holidays should be for me so I am going to slot it into that category in answer to your question about the holidays.

(Later on Mart added to the above by writing this....)

I guess I have not talked about the happiness I promised to speak of in this section, so I will now (this is probably better placed in the other thread you have going then, the one Finbarr answered). I think I disagree with Finbarrs definition to some extent. I say 'I think' because I guess I am not really sure. I like the idea that happiness is something attainable, I don't like the Tyler Durden in Fight Club philosophy of always moving always striving towards it. I like the idea that I get there and then I'm happy. And I think this happiness is attainable, so long as you know that my definition of happiness is not a permanent state, the best happiness I think you can attain in life is to be kinda happy most of the time mainly. You will still have high moments, and low moments in life, regardless of where you are in life. If I was doing a job I liked with people I liked, and had hobbies I liked and mates who shared the same interests and we had the time to spend together on our hobbies I think I would actually be happy. Maybe my needs are simple or maybe I am delusional. I do agree that this happiness is to some extent a shell that could get broken at any moment. Firstly, a personal tragedy could hit at any moment to ruin all your happiness, so to even have a moment of happiness is to deny this possibility (at some mental level anyway), otherwise every moment of happiness would be tainted by the fear of what might happen to cause this happiness to be lost. Secondly, any happiness one has necessarily is to block out all the unhappiness suffered by anyone else in the world (starving millions, victims of floods, earthquakes, war etc). I definitely believe this is actually a necessity - if you truly acknowledged the level of bad in the world, and accepted what difference you could make and the obligation you have on yourself to do something about it, the weight of it would probably crush you and you would go insane before you did anything about it. This is not to alleviate you from doing anything about it, it's just that this denial is needed to some degree.

Mairead wrote in Reply

Reply to How do you feel

Well now Donal, having turned 29, I think you should have laid those demons about being 28 to rest. As for me - I'm just glad being 28 is over with. I'm not too fussed about turning 30 to be honest. Maybe it's because I;m a woman, we try to ignore that fact. Men are bloody useless about it. One aquaintence started bleating on about it on his 28th birthday - and bizzarely enough his panicing didn't get any more tedious as the years went on, I wonder why?

Perhaps it's because men feel that they should have achieved more by this landmark birthday? Despite the fact that (on paper at least) I have achieved a lot in a comparitively short time - there is always someone else who is more accomplished, talented, wealthier and generally seems more content which really feeds into the male competitiveness gene.

That's the thing about the Darwinian evolution thing - the propelling nature or our need to progress has some less than ideal side effects - envy and dissatisfaction.

The thing is that happiness is for fools and lunatics, as someone once said. The best a person should hope for is contentment (punctuated by moments of joy). It's a more attainable state of mind and during the bad times it's better to swing from contentment to discontent than from "happiness" to misery. Much better for the ould "chi".