Staying Alive: Unrealistic Expectations

What is the number 1 problem of otherwise mentally and physically healthy people under the age of 30 worldwide?

That's right! It is unrealistic expectations. However, the real trick is getting enough experience to realize what unrealistic expectations are without suiciding or dying or becoming incapacitated in one way or another.

To give an example, a lot of this is about choices. My parents for example, really had no choices compared to my generation growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. Compared to them we had an infinite amount of choices by comparison and for me personally this wasn't a good thing.

First of all when people said to me, "You can be anything you want when you grow up including President of the United States!" At first my reaction as a child was, "Wow! I can be anything I want to be." But then as I thought about it more as a logical and rational person I thought, "How do I decide from an infinite amount of choices?" The problem was there were just too many choices for me. And because neither my father or mother had had choices in their lives except for deciding where to live or who to marry they couldn't understand what I was going through. So, I was alone facing something they had never faced and I was scared.

Luckily, I survived all this insanity and lived to become 30 and by then I had a 4 year old son and was a single father. The number one reason I survived my 20s was I had a son at age 26 and decided to stay alive for him so he could grow up and have a good life. Was that a good decision? It kept me alive and out of trouble which as a physical risk taker kept me alive. So, at age 25 or 26 I stopped rock climbing and sometimes climbing without ropes. I stopped dating women other than the one I was marrying and having my son with. I also had to quit college and support my new wife and child and give up my dream of becoming a psychologist after several years of college. As a person I regret having to do this but also am grateful (unlike many fathers) that I was strong enough to stay with my son and to stand by him still (he is now 39 almost 40). I still call and talk to him most days even though he is out of state because my own father died in 1985 and I miss my father so I keep in touch with my son and he with me. I have been raising at least one child under 17 continuously now since I was 26 and my son was born and I'm now 65.

But, I must say surviving my 20s was much more horrific for me than either surviving whooping cough at age 2 or surviving childhood epilepsy from age 10 to 15. MY 20s were hell on earth because of unrealistic expectations. By the time I was 30 my expectations were just beginning to become more realistic where I knew I was going to survive not only for my children but also for myself. Because you can stay alive for others but it is much better if you also want to stay alive for yourself because you are happy. And I was happy starting about age 30 to 32 until I was about 37 when my father died. Because of these "5 years of happiness" I have been able to keep going ever since. The next time I think my life was really happy was after I almost died at age 50. I was just so grateful to be alive that I threw away all the middle aged crazy stuff and just became very grateful for each new day of life with my family and friends.