A few years ago I traveled with my grandparents around China and we visited the beautiful campus of Xiamen University.
In some ways my grandparents are the most successful people I know, they got married at 18, had been married for 60+ years, and now I have a large family of 32 cousins. I owe so much to the opportunities I have had to them.
I was also able to get to know and spend significant time with them, because they got married young.
I think there is a danger that as a culture and a sector we are advising students in a way that is too one dimensional.
Nobody is paid to advise you to eat your vegetables, and everyone is paid to encourage you to seek greater freedom, delay, and keep spending on yourself.
I see many of our incentives actively eating into the family, and sometimes that is destructive and goes too far.
We should stop treating the delay as the default and family as the thing you fit in once everything else is done, and build societies and institutions where families can thrive.
Getting married and having families younger can give more years of overlap between generations which can strengthen the family structure, communities and societies.
It’s something that can’t be measured and often comes at great sacrifice but it is incredibly valuable.
You can also get huge growth and have a massive impact by responsibility, commitment and sacrifice, not just by greater independence and delay.
What does success mean to you?