Write & Lift is an ethos of personal and spiritual development through conscious physical exertion and practice of the writing craft. Through this effort to strengthen our bodies and minds, we become anti-fragile and self-respecting sovereign individuals. Through this effort, we may stand against untruth and evil and create a new culture of vitality, strength, and virtue
Quarter Life Crisis
Every man going through a quarter-life “crisis” experiences the same things.
An anxious confrontation with the smallness of his existence:
we’re programmed to carve out a unique “destiny” in life. We want respect and admiration. We want a grand adventure; an ignorant and fearful beginning with a triumphant end where we hold up the keys to some puzzle or plant our flag on some undiscovered landmass and say with our chest, “I did this.” In our late teens and early twenties, we still hold on to the promise of the following year’s adventure. But then, like nearly every human that has ever existed on this Earth, we get busy surviving; become burdened by noble and inconvenient responsibilities, and we leave the grand vision in the rearview mirror. One night, we rest our heads on the pillow, tossing and turning, remembering the conversations about the grand vision we shared with friends over drinks a decade ago. One night, we all remember that feeling of self-promised glory and just how far we’ve led ourselves down a different path.
This sense of dread has one of two characteristics. We recognize that the “mission” thesis itself was flawed or disconnected from reality and that all lack of tangible “trying” was more or less doomed to fail in the first place. Or, we recognize that we didn’t have what it took to accomplish the mission at all. You can’t be a Navy SEAL because you couldn’t complete training. You couldn’t be a rockstar because your band wasn’t that good. In either case, there is a period of psychological adjustment to the refined dream that a wiser version of yourself must know and put into place. This is the role of wisdom. Some of us are born with singular gifts that demand our attention, passion, and focus. Others (most of us) want many things and must learn to tie these together into our desired life.
A sense of disconnection from the reality of adulthood:
“How old are you Dad?”
“I’m 56 but I still feel 18 inside.”
When we’re young, we assume that grown men interface with the world in a different brain—an “adult” brain. I remember sitting on my Dad’s shoulders as a kid, imagining what it must be like to have your eyes so far off the ground; to be a giant. Well, I’m 6’4 and I have no distinct memory of waking up in a large body. I just am; in all my awkward, back-pained, glory.
The same questions we ask about our parents eventually swing back around to us. If feeling like an adult is a specific set of thought patterns, actions, and sensory perceptions, why do I still feel like I’m 18? Reality is a blunt object. When you’re old, the world will see an old man, regardless of how you “feel.”
I’ve made the mistake of trusting the “wisdom” of older men, who I came to find out, hadn’t matured a day since the time they learned to drive a stick shift. Alternatively, I’ve met men my age who I trust to give me life advice, feedback, and guidance any day of the week. Being an “adult” isn’t a feeling. It’s born of action. Handling responsibility, standing up for what is right, treating others with respect, pursuing your goals and avoiding unnnecesary distraction, and staying true to your compass.
Meeting Your Future Self
Fucking up in life exists on a spectrum. There’s a world of difference between working a job you hate for two years before pivoting and working that same job for twenty years. A world of difference between cutting it off with a girl you “sort of like” and choosing to get married and have children because that’s what you think you should do. When people tell you to make mistakes when you’re young, they never tell you how to avoid making the same mistakes. They never tell you how to leave a mistake. That’s entirely on you.
I’ve yet to meet or read about a man who has never made a mistake. But I’ve met quite a few men whose continuous mistakes have turned their lives into a tragedy. These men always meet their future self in the form of someone else, because they’ve either squandered most of the time they’ve had, or they’ve spent years internalizing excuses as a defense mechanism for looking in the mirror. I’ve known men who were short-order cooks for thirty years before they decided to return to school and become accountants. When my Grandpa was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer in his 60s, he told me he wished that he had never eaten fast food and that if I was smart, I’d never touch that stuff. In both cases, the damage was done. The cook who returned to school had trained himself to be ok with mediocrity. He couldn’t keep up with his younger classmates and the workload. He had a family that needed food on the table NOW. My Grandpa lived a year longer than he thought, but in the end, he succumbed to his illness. Even he, one of the most successful and honorable men I’d known, couldn’t outrun the accumulated weight of decades of convenient fast food.
When you’re in a slow rolling cycle of fucking up your life, it doesn’t usually feel like it. You’re not in backbreaking pain. You still can have “good” days. But we’re terrible at second-order, long-term thinking. We’re terrible at appreciating and recognizing our capacity to change. Your mind will hide night-and-day truth from you if you train it to.
I’ve made plenty of mistakes. I’ve burned years. But I’m grateful that I didn’t let it get worse. I learned to recognize the path before I’d gone too far and didn’t have enough gas to turn around. I’m turning 34 this year—still a young man in my eyes. And I’m often surprised to get messages from young guys (18-24) who ask me broad questions about life. I don’t want to preach or speak from authority (because I’m just a guy) but I usually say the same thing:
Your intuition is the closest friend you should keep when you’re young. You chart your course on the map, but this internal voice lets you discern the territory. Try new things, learn new things, and meet new people, but listen to what your intuition tells you. God put this voice in the back of your head for a reason. Discern your path and have the courage to step off it if necessary.
As always, thanks for reading.
-Joe
This hits hard brother
It's really only in the past few years that I've come to appreciate the profound psychological differences between men and women. I'm not just referring to personality attributes or fashion preferences - I mean lifeplan and values and identity. I suspect the delay in that realization is due to the culture in which I was raised, but that's a separate point.
Men often seek loneliness in ways that women do not. They conceptualize achievement and striving and even regret differently, I think.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/risk-taking-and-conformity
I always enjoy reading these kinds of reflective pieces about psychology and eudaemonia. It's amazing how rare information like this now is in our world.