Transcription
So, my husband and I are currently hosting about 25 people over a 30-day period. And the guests range in age from like late 20s to early 40s, but most of them are like us in their mid-30s. And something I did not realize even when we were putting together the guest spreadsheet. Uh, like it did not hit me until people started arriving was just how radically different your 30s look from person to person, including just in the people we know.
Like, we have people here who freshly broke off an engagement and we have extremely happily married people. We literally have a divorced couple sharing a room because while they are no longer together romantically, they are still best friends. We have people who are pregnant and people who are militantly child-free. We have parents bringing their kids and getting an early night's sleep. And we have single people who are looking to hit the town on a Friday night and meet someone. We have people who are really advanced in their careers and people who are completely starting over professionally.
I think part of it is that these are all people from many different parts of our life. They're not like one friend group and many of them don't even live on the same continent. But it is a good reminder seeing up close and real time how different everyone's life looks at the same age that although sometimes we can get into social groups that tend to be pretty homogeneous and makes us feel uh like everyone is on the same page and either we're behind or we're not doing it right like life looks extremely different for people especially during this decade and people who are scrambling to have everything figured out by 30 I think are making a huge mistake because many people don't even start to truly understand themselves until 30.
Like we literally have multiple people who ended very serious relationships or engagements this year in their mid-30s and are starting over from zero. And for many people that would feel terrifying, but to me it's way less terrifying than the alternative which is marrying the wrong person. Anyway, society is very good at convincing us that we need to achieve certain things by certain ages or there's something wrong with us. But I assure you that again, especially in your 30s, life looks extremely different for everyone. And the most important thing is to make the choices that feel true and right to you and not base them on what other people think because you are not behind anyone. Everyone is running their own.