Confucius once said: "I have five out of ten and am determined to learn, thirty and standing, forty and not confused." Until now, the phrase "thirty and standing" is often mentioned, in people's cognition, thirty years old is equivalent to an age threshold, and it is always associated with starting a family. And there is a folk saying that says: "Thirty is not hair, forty is not rich." This is not difficult to understand.
It means that when a person is thirty (more) years old, he cannot seize the opportunity to develop, and by the age of forty it is difficult to achieve anything more. Although this statement is absolute, many people agree with it, which is why it can be spread so widely. Why did the ancestors repeatedly emphasize the point of thirty years old? How important is it? Let's talk about it.
This statement has a long history, in addition to the traditional Confucian view, in fact, the folk have long been aware of it. In ancient times, the people lived a traditional life of "male cultivator and female weaver", the productivity was relatively low, and they worked hard all their lives, and they did not necessarily have much family property to accumulate. As a result, many people will choose to do business or study, participate in the imperial examination, and change their status in this way.
"Asagiri Tian Shelang, Twilight Heavenly Son Hall." In ancient times, there was a clear difference in status between scholars, farmers, workers, and merchants, and "scholars" were scholars, who were officials in the dynasty and belonged to the ancient nobility; while "merchants" were in the last class, although they had money, their social status was not high. But in the eyes of ordinary people, whether rich or expensive, it is better than facing the loess and facing the sky and being a farmer for a lifetime.
In addition, the life expectancy of the ancients is generally low, in our view, thirty years old may still belong to the age of not too long into society, the career has just started, but this is not the case for the ancestors. They can have children in their teens, and in their twenties they have taken on the responsibilities of the whole small family, even the big family, so thirty is an important turning point for them.
Since there is a saying of "looking at the old when you are young", the ancestors will feel that the thirty-year-old cannot make a career foundation, and it will certainly not be able to achieve achievements in the future, which is naturally not difficult to understand. But not everyone thinks so, and if everyone believes this, those who enter middle age will not lose their enterprising spirit. Even in ancient times, there were countless examples of "disobedience to old age".
Many celebrities belong to the "late completion of the big instrument", not to mention the Jiang Taigong who fished by the Weishui River, Liu Bang, the founding emperor of the Han Dynasty, who was only a small Surabaya pavilion chief, he was 47 years old when he started the incident in Pei County, and he actually became the emperor in only eight years; and in the early years of the Han Dynasty, there was another person who was also famous for the late success of the big instrument, he was Zhu Maichen, one of the nine secretaries of the Han Wu Emperor period.
This man is very strange, when he was young, he liked to read very much, and he liked to read while collecting firewood, and his voice was so high that passers-by looked sideways. Zhu Maichen's family was poor, but he still married a wife, his wife saw that he was more than forty years old, still just studying every day, achieving nothing, insisting on following him and leaving, he agreed, did not expect that when he was nearly fifty years old, Zhu Maichen went to Chang'an to meet and was used heavily.
Not only in ancient times, but also in modern times and modern times, there are also many examples of late achievements. Ancestors said "thirty is not hair, forty is not rich", in order to motivate people to work hard when they are young, do not live up to the time, indulge their own pleasures, if you do not develop after thirty years old to give up yourself, it will really lose all opportunities, every middle-aged person, should keep this in mind!