Page 4 of 4

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2019 8:36 pm
by TopHatFox
Went on a 6 hour state-park date with a woman from Thailand today (grew up in the states). Instant-connection, constant conversation, immediately gets put in the favorites. Ta da.

Incidentally, she said that Thai ppl have a special saying about turning 25 yo, so I suppose that’s some proof about this age being special in some way.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 11:04 am
by slowtraveler
Huh, no Thai person has mentioned any saying like that to me. What's the saying?

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 3:25 pm
by unemployable
Some people die at twenty-five and aren't buried until seventy-five -- Misattributed to Benjamin Franklin. The internet likes to think Franklin said this but no source material seems to exist. It's not his writing style anyway.

THF, you may be thinking of what the Japanese call Christmas cakes.

I think you should make this song your anthem.

I have more serious thoughts about this I'm gathering for now. Been on the road; I always seem to miss these threads.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 4:48 pm
by OTCW
The twenty year olds down the block have given up mowing their yard. I hope they get it done before they turn 25 lest it revert back to jungle.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 5:34 pm
by daylen
Property value aside.. how cool would it be to live near a jungle? You could harvest bananas for breakfast, and the local insect ecology would surely be boosted.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 7:05 pm
by Frita
OTCW wrote:
Mon Apr 22, 2019 4:48 pm
The twenty year olds down the block have given up mowing their yard. I hope they get it done before they turn 25 lest it revert back to jungle.
Do they live next door to me?

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 7:44 pm
by suomalainen
unemployable wrote:
Mon Apr 22, 2019 3:25 pm
I think you should make this song your anthem.
Damn, that's depressing as f*ck.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 8:33 pm
by enfier
When you are 18 or 19, life is about what you are going to do in the future. There's a wide word full of possibilities and if you meet someone new you might talk about your hopes for the future. You've also stood on the shoulders of your parents to some extent - if they fed you healthy food and made sure you took time to do your homework and paid for you to have middle class clothes and go to a middle class college, well there you are healthy, with good habits and in a good school.

On your way to 25, your life is about your current results and your current results start to be more a reflection of your own personal habits. When you are 18 you can talk about starting a business someday, but when you are 25 it's just not interesting any more. If you were going to do it, you would have already started. It turns out that starting a business involves a ton of risk and time and saved money that you don't have. Whatever bad habits you had at 18 have had time to accumulate over the years. 3 lbs a year added to your waistline since 18 has become 21 lbs and you are starting to look like crap in the mirror. Playing video games and smoking weed with your friends on the weekend starts getting drained by people getting married, having kids and spending the day at IKEA looking at toddler beds. Having a kid eats your time like no other and getting woken up every day at 6:30 AM and sometimes a few times in the night tends to beat you down.

Jeez, when I was 21 I used to skip the gym, eat whatever, and play video games for ages. There's just no way I could do that today at 37 and look, feel and come across as anything but a loser. Every activity that I want to do has to be judged against the other uses of my time that I need to put effort into to get to where I'd like to be. Tonight after work I can either hit the gym or I can spend time with my son or I can relax and have a beer or I can play video games for an hour or two. What I can't do is more than one of those. I've got to pick the priority and stick with it.

So I don't know maybe people do give up at 25. Maybe they didn't have much of a plan to start with and pie in the sky dreams get replaced with the routine and reality of daily life. I never gave up, I just keep working at it, even if it's tiring. The dreams, like financial independence or a great physique are exciting but the reality of showing up every day and sticking to the plan is just kinda boring.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 3:20 pm
by orthodoxcaveman
I am on the far side of 25 and my siblings, who are both chronologically and developmentally under 25 sometimes reveal the impression that I've given up, slowed down, ceased to be vibrant or thriving, etc. I think it's because we share fewer problems, challenges, and interests. Therefore, we interact less on those planes, and they don't see where I spend my energy.

In reality, of course, I do a lot. I work (a lot) at a demanding job; I exercise in my home gym or go to jiu-jitsu at a gym they can't afford; I put a lot of time and effort into a bbq hobby they can't relate to because they live in apartments and don't have a backyard; I read books that don't (yet) interest them; My wife and I are planning for a child -- none of them even have significant others yet; I just finished by third novel, but because none are published (yet) there's nothing really tangible there either.

But very little of that is visible to them, and to an observer who is not attuned to the things I'm putting my efforts toward in any way, I can see how it might look like I do nothing but go back and forth between my house and my office. I am close with my siblings, but they have no language and no experience to relate to what I spend my time doing.

I suppose it's similar for many people.

Others (in my experience) replace their identity with their work and forget about hobbies, interests, fail to develop their personalities or cultivate meaningful relationship, etc. Others give up and lose themselves to unrewarding distraction.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 6:22 pm
by sarger17
TopHatFox wrote:
Thu Apr 18, 2019 2:40 pm
I don't know if I'm crazy here or not, but it seems like people kinda....give up after a certain age? Almost like they're dead inside or something...no longer curious, not taking care of their bodies, no longer interested in their own goals, etc. It's kinda sad!

Have you noticed this phenomenon?
I changed drastically at age 30, for the better. From 23-28 I worked on capitol hill and also for a non-profit in DC. I was very much focused on career, relationships, going out, spending etc. Moved back home to NJ and was introduced to Stoicism from a friend, then FIRE (had already read several free-market oriented books such as Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, Human Action etc) so that side of FIRE came easily. I feel like didn't actually gotten my shit together until I hit 30, contrary to some people "quitting" at 25.

Although I've always been an athlete, I ate and drank horribly too. Not anymore, feel as though I wasted my 20's. Oh well, upward from here!

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 10:20 pm
by unemployable
This thread's not dead yet? Cool.

I think you are seeing the manifestations of peoples' inherent goals and motivations, which cause many of them to reach a sort of steady-state in their mid- to late- twenties. You can call this "quitting" or "peaking" or "coasting" if you want. It can encompass marriage and having kids in addition to career goals.

Is that bad? Not necessarily. If you're a blue-collar or low-skilled white-collar worker, what else is there to do? How do you get promoted from secretary or lathe operator or head chef? A few of these people start their own businesses or become independent contractors, but it's not like the law firm track where you may or may not make partner in 10 years.

(By the way, does anyone else not envy doctors? You show up at the same damn hospital or practice every day for 30 years and deal with sick people. Your reward is you get to drive a two-year-old BMW home. You don't get to take business trips to hospitals in like San Francisco that at least get you out of the office and in front of other people in your field. Where's the fun there? Yeah, I went to high school with a guy who runs his own practice and is the team doctor for a professional sports team, but he's in like the top 5% of doctors. I digress... or not...)

Then we all have to make decisions that consider our limited time, resources (money/connections) and knowledge. Should I blow $100k on business school? No, because I hate debt and this job pays "enough" for now as it is. Should I work later/harder and try to get promoted? No, because I want to go home to the people I love and get sleep and hit the golf course on Saturday. Should I send out more resumes? No, because I bombed my last 24 interviews and I'd rather go hiking anyway. We trade uncertain future success for more certain present comfort. This trade is not risk-free in either direction, but our experience guides us to what we believe is the preferable outcome. It's often in the mid-twenties that people start choosing the "comfort" route more often, once the "ambition" option turns up dry or not worth it one too many times. For me it's been more like mid-forties. If that's giving up, so be it.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 11:25 am
by prognastat
I'd say that for many people before 25 you are high in potentiality as you likely haven't been locked in to a path yet. You don't have a career yet, you likely aren't married and probably don't have kids. You could start a career in multiple fields, you could go travel, you could bum around for a while etc.

However after 25 many are locked in to a career, are often married or looking to get married and either have kids or working to have kids. This is a decrease in potentiality. You could still make the decisions you could have in your early twenties, but there's already a sunk cost in your current path and switching it up would be more of a setback. As such your goals and interests shift meaning you have less in common in your late twenties vs your early twenties.

I can definitely say that there was a definite shift for me from early to late twenties. I was kind of aimless in my early twenties and it wasn't until my mid twenties when I figured out what I did and didn't want in life. This is also the time where I went from just being a slightly frugal person to finding and setting FIRE as a goal. I became more serious about my work and goals. I'm sure someone would say I became boring as I was less interested in doing crazy things than I was before(beyond of course most people considering FIRE/ERE crazy I mean mainstream accepted crazy like going out to party or doing an impromptu road trip or buying something very irresponsible on a whim).

I wouldn't call it giving up, but it might look that way to someone who hasn't gone through that shift yet.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 12:00 pm
by sarger17
prognastat wrote:
Fri Apr 26, 2019 11:25 am
Completely this. 100%. I think at a certain age, everyone starts thinking about what their life is shaping up to be and the main difference is that some do something about it and others just accept it and keep doing the same thing. When you're in your early 20's- you're focused on college (if you went), getting a job and once you accomplish that, you enjoy having a nice paycheck and being able to go out and spend it and be part of the working class.

When I hit 30, I began to hit my "am I on the right track" sort of thought process because everything started to slow down. I was no longer as young and the "going out" slowed down. I began to reconsider what I prioritized and started to evaluate myself more. I was in a totally different frame of mind compared to my early twenties.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 5:25 pm
by jacob
I came across this--- https://markmanson.net/life-cheat-codes ---which frames life as a video game and insofar that is appealing(*), it might give some perspective. Life after 25 is roughly "level 4" in the link. Level 4 can of course be many things. For most but not all people "level 4" is a career and a family. For a few it is something else. For example, for me it has been telling people about ERE. Incidentally, this was not anything I ever planned for nor even remotely predicted when I was 25 or 30.

I would posit that it is very rare for "level 4" to comprise "travel", "experiences", or similar from the "strictly self-indulgent" column. As such they don't really form a sustainable basis for life because such self-indulgence/hedonism lacks "meaning". Many find it necessary to have something to live for and "having fun" only lasts so many/few years before it gets old. If nothing else, people tend to run out of bucket list items insofar they don't contain something substantial that takes more than a couple of months to complete.

(*) Probably mostly to ~20yo dudes.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 8:54 am
by 7Wannabe5
@jacob:

Interesting article. Likely about as valid as a hierarchical model can be. It resonates with my recent experience of being engaged in "legacy" work and then suddenly finding myself blasted back down to Level 2 due to severe mental illness of close family member. Obviously, needful attention is often simultaneously paid to all levels when engaged in a complex task such as planning a dinner party.

Another note about "legacy" phase of life would be that to some not insignificant extent, many of us may find ourselves there simply by continuing to engage in the practices we adopted while in Level 4, but with contraction of close circle responsibilities. A chapter on Empty Nest Syndrome written by a devoted gardener which I recently read echoed many of my experiences and sentiments. Legacy isn't necessarily set in the stone of a plaque or the ink of a footnote; it might just be a piece of advice on how to deal with rabbits in the lettuce remembered and passed down.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 12:19 pm
by FIRE 2018
It's all relative in the USA. Go to poor Southern states where fried foods and junk foods are the norm then obesity is clearly everywhere. In the major cities out West or North , there is less obesity.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2019 6:40 pm
by Nomad
Ego wrote:
Fri Apr 19, 2019 12:07 am
I've said it before and I'll say it again, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Even if those people are in your head.
What if all of those people are in your head?

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2019 6:51 pm
by Dream of Freedom
Nomad wrote:
Tue Jul 30, 2019 6:40 pm
What if all of those people are in your head?
Charge them rent for living there.

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2019 11:38 pm
by Ego
Nomad wrote:
Tue Jul 30, 2019 6:40 pm
What if all of those people are in your head?
I don't personally have experience with all of the people in my life being in my head but I would guess it is the same. It may explain why we can be so influenced by a book. The author inhabits our head and diverts our attention*. We incorporate their theme into our story and then live it.

*our most valuable resource?

Re: Do people just give up after 25?

Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2019 8:47 am
by soundboy22
Not at all, if anything my will has gotten with age