[jnoller]

Grow up without money and constant financial worry, without a sense of home / self and few / no friends and start in the workforce when you're a teenager. You find yourself in "always make more money to be more secure" and "always look for validation from other that you belong". You become career driven as thats what defines you - and a "community" becomes your self reinforcement and friends.

[sridca]

This is an important observation about identity (a sense of self) itself.

What's more interesting to me is that the point remains valid even after replacing "money" with "love", "financial worry" with "social anxiety", "workforce" with "family" and "career" with "family", viz:

> Grow up without love and constant social anxiety, without a sense of home / self and few / no friends and start in the family when you're a teenager. You find yourself in "always love [more] to be more secure" and "always look for validation from other that you belong". You become family driven as thats what defines you - and a "community" becomes your self reinforcement and friends.

The question then becomes: why the need to identify in the first place? Why the need to "define" oneself (be it via a career or family)?

[mercer]

Wow. That's a very interesting point you touch on!

I've noticed that many of my late-twenties / early-thirties friends struggle with their current lives, and I think it often is because of what you describe: they spent so much time trying to 'become' that they never really considered or learned how to 'be'.

I struggle with this myself sometimes, too, and I consider learning how to 'be' with what I am now to be one of my biggest challenges and most important skills to practice.

[notacoward]

I don't think it's a late-twenties or early-thirties thing. I'm 50, and many people in my own age cohort (including me) have to deal with the same issues. IMO it has to do with the kind of community one grew up in vs. the kind of community one occupies as a computer professional. If they're significantly different, there's a feeling of being an outsider/impostor and of having to try to fit in. If they're the same, there's no such drive. People who grow up poor and find themselves living amidst the relative affluence of high tech are often the most aggressive about either saving money or showing the outward signs of wealth. People who are the first in their families to get a good education are often the most likely to value it and/or show it off. You see the same sort of thing among people who lived through the Great Depression, or WW2 and its aftermath. In contrast, people who had all these things since birth tend to take them for granted and not think about them much. Cinderella never quite felt as comfortable in the castle as everyone else seemed to.