What is potentially Survivable?

When people are young often they think "I can do anything with my life!" and that is true but in the end the question then becomes, "What is actually survivable?" In other words people often will say when young, "I can physically survive it I do that!" But, you may not emotionally or spiritually or mentally survive doing some things.

This is why so many people die under the age of 30 especially between the ages of say 12 and 30 or puberty and young adulthood.

Why is this? The first reason is unrealistic expectations. I would say both directly and indirectly this is what kills most young people. They fall in love with someone or an idea and when that doesn't work out they self destruct directly or indirectly quickly or over time. I have had this experience too and just barely survived from ages 21 to about 24 myself. So, I know personally what this is like.

Though idealism is important, realism is useful to survive ones 20s. However, too much realism makes someone just so completely cynical that literally no one wants to be around them. So, there has to be enough realism to survive your 20s with enough idealism that people actually choose to be around you. So, it is always a balance in the end.

Complete realism might get you through your 20s but then if you are all alone because no one wants to be around you because you are such a downer then you might self destruct from loneliness too by the time you are 30 to 35 or older.

So, balance in the end in all things leads to a contented person in old age that actually still wants and chooses to still be alive by their 60s and beyond.

By the way, happiness that everyone searches for is usually fleeting but contentment from practical useful choices often is the best ongoing people can hope or expect in their lives.

Though happiness would be nice it usually isn't sustainable in the ways people want in their lives.
But, contentment is often sustainable throughout ones lives from their 30s on.

I haven't met anyone in their 20s that is completely happy but I have met people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s and beyond that are fairly happy with their lives and choices. Once 20s are just so experimental and often disappointing that one just has to tough out these times in ones life to get to a better stage. But, good choices to some degree have to be made at most points to survive to even be 30. So this is important to think about too.

What I ran into in myself is expecting too much from myself and then being disappointed and wanting to die because I couldn't be as good at everything as I wanted to be. Since this is the experience most people have being a little easier on yourself is the way you might survive to be 30. IF you make it to 30 you might have a much better handle in how ridiculous what people in their 20s expect of themselves. If you only have a 5% to 10% chance of success in something and then you fail if you are angry with yourself you are pretty silly because one needs at least 50 50 odds to be realistic about being angry with themselves. And even then they have only a 1 in 2 chance of success.

Being realistic about the odds of success in anything you do in life is one of the ways you will find to stay alive through your 20s to make it in one piece into your 30s. By the time you reach your 30s often you sort of laugh at all the silly mistakes in actions and judgements you made in your 20s and are very grateful to be 30 or more. IN fact the physically happiest age of people on earth is 33 statistically.

Mentally and emotionally I have been the happiest since I was 50. But, physically I agree the happiest physical time is around 33 because you still have your health and you have usually figured out how things work and they never really work the way people or your education says they do. So, figuring things out in reality saves your life. So, College critical thinking about making decisions is one of the most important things to learn for your long term survival. Also, find someone or something to believe in. This makes life much more bearable.

"And you can survive to 105 if you're young at heart" (Sinatra lyrics) This is important too to longevity.