ATTEMPTING to convince yourself physical decline, burdensome responsibilities and heightened stress are a good thing? Here’s why you’re so glad to be in your thirties:
You earn more
Your twenties were spent bouncing from one low-paid job to the next, indifferent to being fired if a friend had a spare Latitude ticket. Now you’ve settled into a soul-destroying career path with a slightly better salary. No, it hasn’t kept up with inflation and you’re still in a five-person houseshare, but you’ve recently acquired a third pair of jeans.
You’ve become wise
While you used to drift around in blissful ignorance, uninterested in interest rates, now you’ve been blessed by seeing life as it really is: toil, inevitable decay, and suffering. Miserable, but at least you don’t make dumb mistakes like getting Turkey teeth.
You know who you are
Your twenties are riddled with doubt. Are you dating the right person? Should you change your career? Do you want kids or not? These anxieties melt away in your thirties as you resign yourself to the fact that you’re an unremarkable nobody who the universe is indifferent to. Even if you do everything right history will forget you. The pressure’s off.
You no longer have to go clubbing
The ten-year pretence that nightclubs are worthwhile is over. Nobody expects you to go in. On work nights out you’ll bid farewell to your colleagues in the queue and skip away to the taxi rank feeling their envious eyes upon you. And your friends? They’ve had kids and traded it in for three pints on a weekday night and being home by 10pm.
Your dreams have died
Twentysomethings hustle to achieve their wild ambitions and put a dent in the universe. By your 30s, you’ve seen even the best and the brightest fail and sagely decided not to bother. Now your dreams are flossing once a month or washing your bedsheets. Your expectations are managed. You call that happiness.
