Your 30s Are When Reading Counts
I’ve developed this newfound passion for reading, 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. Reading and writing were cool to me. But I never got to truly explore reading for myself, find my niche, or discover what kinds of books I could get into for my own enjoyment. I never found it.
After a childhood in church, Sunday school, and Lutheranism, I spent a brief period in my late teens and early twenties exploring esoteric knowledge. I should save the church and Lutheranism story for another piece. I got involved with 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 went deeper into the occult. I looked into figures like Aleister Crowley and Éliphas Lévi. 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 a secret thing that not many people knew about. Some of it was controversial, went against the grain, and felt very contrarian.
Some of it was even the opposite of the belief system I was brought up in, one I didn’t really have a choice in. I felt it was important to explore different belief systems and learn how people across the globe came to understand God, theology, and how to live. A great deal of my reading journey started there. I read whatever I found interesting in those occult and esoteric texts.
But after a while, I began to notice patterns. I began to question the occult mystery, mysticism, and metaphysics. As I grew and learned, and started cross-referencing ideas across different philosophies, I stopped putting as much stock in it. I still accepted the knowledge and put it to good use in thinking about my consciousness and my place on the planet, in relation to everything else. But I began to step back and look for more evidence and knowledge.
I’ve always been a skeptical, cynical, analytical person. So I began to question even the things I had already questioned, and those questions begat more questions. I stepped back for a while because I felt disillusioned, and maybe there was an existential crisis there too. Simulation theory came into play. Quantum physics hit my radar.
I was trying to understand how these different ideas could fit with modern belief systems. Christianity, Western occult philosophy, Eastern traditions, and all these different ways of understanding our environment and consciousness. As I studied everything, I saw associations, but I also saw contradictions and perpendicular lines almost as often as I saw parallels. So I took a step back.
I stopped reading as much and started listening more to podcasts. I listened to people I considered philosophers and thought leaders, people who talked about ideas they’d encountered in books. I saw it as a quicker way to research. I could draw conclusions and make connections through these secondary sources, from people who had read primary sources and were sharing their thoughts on them.
These were Christians, atheists, Buddhists, Hebrew Israelites, secular humanists, agnostics, and more. I could combine what I heard with what I knew from my own reading and connect the dots. Things began to make more sense, and I was okay with that for a while. This was during the latter 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 a hunger for knowledge, but also for entertainment and literature. I have a thirst to read the classics and to read from my ancestors.
I want to read Black authors from the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, people who came before me. I want to understand their lived experiences, how those experiences connect with me and the modern world, and what conclusions I can draw from people who left their pain on the page. They 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 esotericism, I’ve found my niche in reading for fun and entertainment. It’s been a great replacement for doomscrolling. I’m excited to read a chapter in a book I discovered through podcasts, social media, friends, my own research, or books I’ve already read.
This has been a great rebirth of my excitement for knowledge, for learning, and for understanding life as a whole. All my life, it has been a central concern, a goal even; I’ve wanted to understand existence & philosophical takes on what it means to be human, to be a man, to be Black, to be a writer, a creator, a creation.
I’m excited for this journey as my thirties unfold. I think it’s happening at the right time, because now I’m ready to decide where I stand on philosophy. I’m ready to take a stance on theology and religion, and to take positions on politics, existence, grace, and all these different things.
In my twenties, I didn’t feel equipped with enough experience and knowledge to make a statement on what I believed. I didn’t feel like I’d done enough research to reach a conclusion or create a thesis that reflected 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 explain why I believe what I believe without feeling guilty or ignorant. I’ll be able to back up my views with more than emotion, using research, guidance, philosophy, merit, and spirit, and speak with confidence in what I’m saying and what I believe.
Being confident in what I believe, that’s always been important to me. Until now, I haven’t been able to say without a doubt that I’m confident in my political views, my belief system, my own existence, my purpose, or any of these things.
Now I feel like this is the beginning of me developing concrete stances and supporting them with evidence in my writing. It feels really good to be at this point.
My statement is this; your thirties are the best decade to establish these things, to really home in and become concrete in your personality, your politics, your philosophy, and things of that sort.
I think it’s a really beautiful thing. This journey has been a process, and I’m glad and grateful to be enjoying it and able to share it with the world.
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