Can we end the ‘what advice do you have for your younger self’ question?
Unpacking the world's worst question and offering up my one piece of advice
Credit: Ellen Lai Photography
I have the luck of being someone who gets interviewed time to time about my career and life choices, particularly as I move further into my 40s. Sometimes I like to talk about the ageing narrative and torching the status quo, and because I also talk about things like career and dating and relationships, one of the questions I get asked the most is also my most loathed question: what advice would you have for your younger self?
Aside from the fact that my younger self would have said: ‘who’s this patronising twat?’, truly, what does that mean as a question? Could we not just ask the question differently, such as what is the advice we would give now? Good advice doesn’t go off like an egg sandwich. Usually it’s applicable no matter what stage of life we are in.
There’s also a whiff of ageism about it. It's interesting to note that in media, women in their 20s and 30s are chiefly called upon to report on life in the present tense, while women over 40, 50 and beyond are asked to comment on it retrospectively. Do they imagine that we sit inside bell jars, removed from society, pickled in the juices of our own wisdom, observing but not experiencing life?
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I think if we are thinking about advice for younger people, perhaps we could do something more useful and give them – especially those on the cusp of turning 30 – a reprieve from needing to have life sorted, and tell them that the idea that you do, reeks of Emperor’s New Clothes and that no one, not you, not anyone you know had life figured out by 30. And, that considering you start the decade probably at university, still asking your mother to wash your clothes, putting together meals reanimated by hot water, it is beyond mad to think that in a mere 10 years, you’re meant to know the answers to the universe just by dint of ageing out.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently for two reasons. The first is that I was catching up with a few people in the book industry and they were talking about how publishing books that chart turning 30 are apparently a big thing at the moment.
Really? I asked. I thought we’d covered that. Haven’t the milestones moved? Apparently not. It is big business because it is a generation caught in the crosshairs of two contradictory ideologies. On the one hand, the sense that they shouldn’t be beholden to timelines, that they should be more evolved and secure in their own knowledge of the self. And on the other, the reality that they do live in an ageist society, where age does matter particularly on social media, and the pressure to fulfil the narrative of house ownership, relationship, and babies hasn’t dissipated.
Recently I learned about the dumbo octopus. It can live up to 7000 metres beneath the sea level, and the pressure of its environment is what holds its semi-gelatinous body together. I think about what would happen if it were to come further towards the surface. The vision I have is a creature disassembling, quite literally unable to hold onto its sense of self.
When the pressures that are used to shape our dimensions are removed, it can be mind-fryingly terrifying. Because what is left in the void is you, and when you realise the construction of your life is in your hands, and what you value is your guiding star, and then realise you have no idea what it is you want, the effect can be paralysing. Particularly if you are told that you are meant to have it figured out.
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