Forget Everything You Know: Your 30s Are When Reading Counts

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I’ve gained this newfound passion for reading lately, and it’s unlike anything I’ve experienced before. I’ve never been particularly averse to reading. I’ve always understood it to be fundamental, and I was actually good at it. In school, I enjoyed popcorn reading and reading comprehension tests were easy. I never struggled in that department. In fact, I was fond of it. Reading and writing were cool to me. But I never got to truly explore reading for myself, to find my niche or discover what category of books I could really delve into for my own enjoyment. I never found it.

For a brief stint in my late teens and early twenties, I got involved with esoteric knowledge: mysticism, occult language and texts. That was really big for me for a while. I explored the Kybalion, which became my main focus on the hermetic side of things. I studied Egyptian philosophy and Egyptian gods, then delved deeper into the occult. I looked into figures like Aleister Crowley and Eliphas Levi. I explored Theosophy, the Order of the Golden Dawn, the Rosicrucians, and the Kabbalah.

These different traditions fascinated me. I found them deeply interesting, and I felt there was a wealth of knowledge there. If I’m honest, it also felt kind of cool, like I was learning about this secret thing that not a lot of people knew about. Some of it was controversial, going against the grain, very contrarian. Some of it was even opposite of the belief system I was brought up in, one I didn’t really have a choice in. So I felt it was important to explore different belief systems, to look into how other humans from across the globe came into their awareness of God, theology, and their philosophy on living.

A great deal of my reading journey started there. In these different texts, these occult and esoteric findings, whatever I thought was interesting to me.

But after a while, I began to notice patterns. I began to question this occult mystery, to question mysticism and metaphysics. As I grew and learned, as I began to connect different dots and see patterns in other ideals and philosophies, I didn’t put as much stake into it anymore. I still accepted the knowledge and put it to good use in terms of my consciousness and awareness of my being here on the planet, in connection to everything else. But I began to step back and look at more evidence, more knowledge.

I’ve always been a very skeptical, cynical, analytical person. So I began to question even the things that I questioned, and those questions begat more questions. I stepped back for a while because I felt disillusioned, and there was maybe some existential crisis there too. Simulation theory came into play. Quantum physics hit my radar. I was trying to understand how these different ideas could mesh with modern belief systems: Christianity, Western occult philosophy, Eastern traditions, all these different classifications and understandings of our environment and consciousness.

As I studied everything, I saw connected dots and patterns, but I also saw contradictions and perpendicular lines almost as much as I saw parallels. So I took a step back.

I stopped reading as much and started listening more to podcasts. I started listening to people I would consider philosophers and thought leaders, people who would talk about the knowledge they’d received from books they read. I looked at it as a way to do quicker research. I could draw different conclusions and parallels using these secondary sources, people who had read primary resources and were giving their thoughts on them. I could mix that with what I knew from my own primary source knowledge and connect dots there. Things began to make more sense, and I was okay with that for a while. This was the later half of my twenties.

Now, at the beginning of my thirties, I find myself getting back into reading, even more feverishly than ever before.

I have this hunger for not only knowledge but also entertainment and literature. I have a thirst to read the classics. I have a thirst to read from my ancestors. Black authors from the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, people who came before me. I want to get an understanding of their lived experience, how it connects with me, how it connects with the modern world, what conclusions I can draw from people who have left their pain in pages, who have left their remnants, their existence, in literary form.

I’m once again fascinated by the wealth of knowledge I can dive into. While I still have a knack for philosophy, the occult, and esoterics, I’ve found my niche in really reading for fun, for entertainment. It’s been a great replacement for doom scrolling. I’m now excited to read a chapter in a book that I’ve discovered through podcasts, through social media, through friends, through my own research, through books I’ve already read.

This has been a great rebirth of my excitement for knowledge, for learning, for just understanding life as a whole. That’s always been a central concern and a goal for me: understanding existence, philosophical takes on what it means to be human, what it means to be a man, what it means to be Black, what it means to be a writer, a creator, a creation.

I say all this to say that I’m just excited for this journey now as my thirties unfold. I think this has happened in the best way it could have happened, because now, in my thirties, I’m ready to make decisions on where I stand with a lot of my positions on philosophy. I’m ready to take a stance on theology and religion. I’m ready to take a position on political views, on existence and grace and all these different things.

In my twenties, I didn’t feel equipped with enough experience and knowledge to really make a statement on what I believed in particular. I didn’t feel like I’d done enough research to come to a conclusion and create a thesis on my original, unadulterated take on any particular subject.

But now, I think I can do that. I can stand on business, so to speak, or at least I’m building that position now. In the coming years, as I read more, I’ll be able to expound on why I believe what I believe without feeling guilt or ignorance about it. I’ll be able to back things up not only with my emotion but also with proper research, guidance, philosophy, merit, and spirit, with confidence in what I’m saying and my belief.

That’s always been important to me: being confident in what I believe in. To this point, I haven’t been able to say without a doubt that I confidently believe in my political views, that I confidently believe in my belief system, my own existence, my purpose, any of these things.

Now I feel like this is the beginning of me having concrete stances, concrete evidence in my dissertations. It just feels really good to be at this point.

My statement is this: your thirties are the best decade for you to establish these things. To really hone in and be concrete in your personality, your policy, your philosophy, and things of that sort.

I think it’s a really beautiful thing. This journey, as we know, has been a process. But I’m glad and grateful to be enjoying it, and also able to share it with the world.