This week my heart sank as I read that Forbes had published their ‘30 under 30 list’, as they do every year. Sure, it’s full of smart, successful and prospering individuals such as Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe, author Yaa Gysi or Peche Di, who has founded a trans modelling agency. Kylie Jenner, Elle Fanning and Simone Biles are also on there.
These lists have always bothered me. Perhaps it all stems from reading list like Forbes' annual 'class of' young influencers in the Sunday supplements bought by my parents when I was growing up, perhaps it's because our society generally equates success and desirability with being young. They inspire a creeping sense of fear about my morality to sweep across my chest and light an urgent fire in my belly that fuels me to do things like write lists of whacky ideas I’ll never see through. This anxiety about succeeding in youth and the urgency that comes with it is epitomised by the journey of Lena Dunham's character Hannah from GIRLS. She is desperate to write, desperate to be published and convinced that she can be the voice of her generation. She wants to put together a collection of essays about her life, but finds she has nothing to say. As the series go by some of her peers make it while she flounders.
This year I’ll turn 29, the twilight of my twenties. I’ll have one more year to achieve things ‘before I’m 30’, and then I’ll be consigned to irrelevance. You’d be forgiven for thinking that ‘your life ends when your 30’, because that seems to be the general consensus in the media. Especially if you’re a woman.
After women turn 30 they don’t appear in music videos, they only play someone’s mum or Bridget Jones on screen, they don’t appear on ‘one to watch’ lists and they don’t get described as ‘pioneering’.
There’s no doubt about it, we live in ageist times. Short of that one time Celine plonked Joan Didion in a highly Instagrammable sunglasses ad, the fashion industry is full of lithe influencers in their early to mid-twenties. The same, broadly, is true for TV whether that’s entertainment or current affairs. Ditto music.
Discussion of a person’s achievements is often followed by ‘and their only….22’. Magazines hail child prodigies and bright young things as though that’s the only available image of success out there. It’s not. There’s also a consensus that, by the tender age of 25, you’re somehow supposed to have your shit together, your career on lock down and be well on your way to buying a house if you haven’t already bought one. Why? Because, as the cliched adage goes, ‘time is money’. How you spend your time is reflected by how successful you are which, in our culture, is measured by how much money you have.
Making it in your twenties on such terms is all very well and good, I’m sure, but there’s also something to be said for doing it later in life. In fact, I’d also like to make the case for not making it in your late teens and early twenties and, more than that, for getting it wrong and failing.
There is so much emphasis on goal setting, future planning and achieving. We’re encouraged to be productive at all times, focussing on what our futures will look like. The problem is, this doesn’t necessarily make us happy. Your life isn’t your future, it’s what you’re doing right now. t’s what you do every day. By focussing on quick wins and blockbuster achievements there is a danger of becoming divorced from yourself. If you have your eyes constantly on the horizons there’s a danger of missing what’s right in front of you.
I’ve learned so much more from my failures than my successes over the last decade, the ideas that never saw the light of day, the opportunities I missed and the ventures that never got off the ground. From those experiences I’ve gained the skills and knowledge that I use today and, hopefully, will use one day to start my entrepreneurial sausage dog grooming empire slash dating app/write my best-selling novel/direct my full length critically acclaimed feminist feature film/get a PHD.
Society makes it look like you’re only vital and worthy of attention in the first quarter of your life but, guys, this is a long game. And, as in sport, the game can change in the third quarter or surprise you in the final quarter. The work you put in at the start will lead you somewhere, and what you end up doing will be all the better because of it.
J.K.Rowling’s first book was published in 1997, when she was 32. Charles Darwin was 50 when he published On the Origin of the Species. Vera Wang entered the fashion industry at the age of 40.
As my twenties draw to a close I look back and wish I hadn’t spent so much time rushing. I wish I hadn’t so urgently felt I had to do everything before I was 30, or felt defined by my successes – what the rest of the world was seeing of my life. Now I feel very differently. Life really isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon and you need to know where your strengths lie if you’re going to get through it. If you don’t know where your weaknesses, what strategies do and don’t work for you or what you are and aren’t capable of, you’re far more likely to get caught out along the way.
When are you too old to achieve you dreams? Too old to be hailed as a genius, innovator, game changing entrepreneur? Never. You’re never too old to make it, start again or change the world.
As the modern and recently departed sage, Carrie Fisher, said to those who age shamed her in Star Wars The Force Awakens:
'Youth and beauty are not accomplishments, they’re the temporary happy by-products of time and/or DNA. Don’t hold your breath for either.'
One of the best takes on this though, in my view, has also got to be one of the oldest. In On the Shortness of LifeRoman philosopher Seneca said:
‘It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested.’
Time, unlike money, fame or success, doesn't come and ago. It just goes. So don't be fooled into wasting it by comparing your achievements to those of other people.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.