“Sometimes wisdom doesn’t come with age.”
When I first heard that in my late 20s, I just shrugged it off. ‘That won’t be me,’ I thought, ‘because I’m smart.’
In my 20s, I thought I knew what I wanted in life. I believed that if I ‘tried my best’ and ‘got better every day,’ I’d be rewarded. Any difficulty was just a challenge to overcome. And I always did, or at least I thought I did. My 20s went by like that, and I lived off small victories.
As I turned 30, my perspective began to shift. At work, people started seeing me as a senior—both in experience and age. Outside of work, I became an older brother to many, sometimes even an uncle. I wasn’t a kid anymore.
Yet inside, I still felt like one. Because, well, wisdom didn’t come with age for me.
The question ‘what’s your life goal?’ kept coming up in conversations with friends, and I realised I didn’t have a good answer. I’d spent so much time figuring out what I didn’t want, but I’d never really asked myself: what do I want? What’s my long-term goal? Where do I see myself in 5 or 10 years? Challenges that used to excite me now made me ask: what’s the point? What happens after I overcome this? Soon, young people in their 20s could do what I do, maybe not as fast, but they had time and energy on their side. The same energy I once had. If they could easily replace me, then what was left of me that was still valuable? Who was I if I could no longer do what I used to?
This crisis had been brewing for over a year, and it hit its peak during this Tet. It was a long, lost period.
But I’m grateful it happened. Maybe I needed to hit rock bottom a little to finally start climbing out of the well.
My wish in life is actually very simple: I want to enjoy life with my loved ones. To me enjoying life means having a good living standard, travelling, learning new things, and eating well.
To do that I need to balance three things: health, money, and time. I’ve decided health is the top priority—I need to be healthy, so I need to be disciplined about exercise and food. No more late nights.
Since time is limited, I need to be strategic about the work I do for money. I realised I don’t actually like working that much (haha…), so I need to find something with a high return on investment for my time and effort. A simple chart like: what am I good at, what does the world need, what can I get paid for, and what makes me happy? is a good start. (All of this leads me back to Marketing.)
Then comes the question: how do I make it sustainable? Maybe I need to learn to build a team to do the work, or create passive income. These are all baby steps, and I’m still figuring it out. But everything I do from now on, big or small, needs to contribute to my long-term goal.
All of this seems so obvious, but I only just figured it out.
Is this a taste of wisdom?
Me, at 31, hopes so.
P.S. Even though this isn’t a LinkedIn post, I have to express my gratitude to anh Đạt, who’s been a true inspiration. Every conversation with you, whether in your cozy living room in Hanoi or during a peaceful walk along the river in Cao Bằng, feels like therapy. You helped me put my struggles into words and connect the dots. So, thank you. (And you too, Patrick!)
