Lately there’s been a gradual uptick in young(er) people asking me for “advice” and a steady decline in my energy to be helpful in any way. So I made up a convenient boilerplate advice table to blow them off with. Some notes follow after. I posted a draft version of this on twitter earlier, where it got some good reactions.
Life Stage | Light Side | Dark Side |
---|---|---|
Childhood (0-13 – fairly limited control) | Play, explore, learn life-positive attitudes, get primed for a good life through benevolent supervision by not-too-messed-up adults. | Endure abuse, develop fearful attitudes and arrested development, develop unstable tendencies that make you derail under stress, develop PTSD. |
Adolescence (13-18 – significant control) | Get socialized, make friends, initialize social networks, develop skills to live off of, learn to regulate emotions | Get alienated, disconnect from peers, become isolated, find coping mechanisms like drugs, get caught up in stormy unregulated emotions |
Emerging Adulthood (18-30 — you’re fully in charge for the first time) | Get worldly, develop relationships (including with yourself), learn who/what to trust, thread the needle of cynicism vs. motivation. Learn to be kind to yourself. | Get clueless, bewildered, and desperate to be “seen” by someone, anyone. Become vulnerable to radical manipulation, learn resentment and helplessness, become egoistically attached to your talents/skills. |
Act 1 (30-42) | Pick risks, battles, commitments, and responsibilities that will make you who you are. Build an open-play win/lose record. Aim to collect 7 significant scars (see The Key to Act Two) | Fail to launch. Never take on anything that counts as “living” but continue endlessly optimizing starting positions and justifications. Get trapped in Dr. Seuss’ Waiting Place. Become self-alienated by refusing to discover yourself. |
Act 2 (42-54) | Understand your own past, and make your peace with it. Decide what/who to forgive/forget — or not. Decipher your scars and figure out what lock in the universe life has keyed you to open (See The Key to Act Two) | Put yourself into a terminal box that you cannot work yourself out of, alongside others who don’t know who they are and never stop waiting for life to start. Allow your physical, mental, and institutional health problems to define you. Become a professional patient of the system. |
Act 3 (55-70) (this is beta since I’m not there yet myself) | Figure out and play your Elder Game in your Late Style, the most mature form of doing whatever you do. Beat a wisely calculated retreat and cede agency to younger people as early as possible. | Hold on fearfully to whatever agency you have, for as long as you can. Fail to understand the future and those it belongs to. Gracelessly wear out your welcome and get in their way. Fail to pass on any batons you hold. Set up the future for failure. |
Endgame (70+) (insufficient visibility) | TBD? | TBD? |
Epitaph | TBD? | TBD? |
Notes:
There’s a bunch of things to say about this table that will be obvious to older people and might not be to younger people, so let’s say them out loud.
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