A tweet about what we ‘should have achieved’ by the start of our fourth decade has gone viral. It’s all part of a personal growth industry predicated on making us compare ourselves to others
What had you achieved by the time you were 30? I’ve been working out my list: grade 3 clarinet, whatever Brownie badge you got in the 1980s for cooking two sausages in Brown Owl’s kitchen, a dead parent, two baffling infant sons, a degree Rishi Sunak would probably ban, an autoimmune condition and a job I hated.
I ask, because once again a man has decided to explain what people should have or have done by 30. It’s a perennial temptation for a certain kind of internet gentleman. OK, it’s not always men, but there is something about this brand of would-be motivational hectoring that is business-bro catnip. Remember the chap who said if we didn’t use lockdown to become entrepreneurs or learn a new skill (as opposed to testing every crisp variety in Tesco Metro), “You didn’t ever lack the time, you lacked the discipline”?
A burning fury about some trivial aspect of your neighbourhood (lighting, bollards, men who trim between the paving stones with scissors).
Three to five relationships – romantic or platonic – that you feel lasting guilt about.
A part of your face or body that you don’t recognise any more. Whose chin is that? What’s that lump on my eyelid? When did my heels take on the texture of barnacles?
A miasma of pension dread.
An anecdote you cannot stop telling even though you know your interlocutor has heard it before. (Me: this was my grandfather’s knife. My husband: I know, you tell me every time you touch it.)
An alternative career you truly believe you would have been happier in.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
