Matt Fish at 30

Now this is good stuff -- painful to read, far more painful to write, but fearless self-analysis and examination of conscience. Excerpt:

2009 is the year I turn thirty years old. Such milestones contain a foreboding magnetism: they tend to draw all memories toward it, recasting them and judging them from a new perspective. So many illusions have failed this past year; for myself, this last year (although I admit, I still tend to think in academic years), a few may have deflated as well. If thirty is the onset of adulthood for many of us today, its vantage point allows the look past at one's twenties, a dissolute time if there is one. Although I still suspect that a lot of other people get it figured out by the time their twenties are over: many of my friends are married, have several children, have established career paths. This may be a peculiar characteristic of the conservative Catholic subculture. I have the impression that some of our peers in the world are not so settled.

That doesn't help me of course, knowing what I know. I don't mean to sound pompous--I mean that in the truest sense, and even more, in the sense of ignorance being bliss. When you know, indubitably, that we are called to sainthood, to love God above all for his own sake, who alone satisfies; that this requires in all us earthly sinful souls a long commitment to detachment; that most of what the world proposes as blessed and worthy is the opposite of what is in fact the case, and that real life, real blessedness is only found in mercy, poverty, purity, meekness, humility, persecution; that death will soon enough come, and surely will equalize all our vanities and accomplishments, for this earthly life is only a moment compared to eternity with, or without, God; finally, that what is most real and worthwhile, is love, not power, the gift of self, not acquisition for the self, peace, not violence.

Far from a collection of abstractions, these truths of the faith, if you will, are revealed in the concrete events and vicissitudes of real life--and especially, it seems, the failures--year in and year out. This collapse of the stock market and economic recession probably allowed many a chance to glimpse the ephemeral nature of stuff, money, the security of wealth. For myself though, I've never had much money. I've been in a great bit of debt since college (compared to most people I presume), but no matter what my occupation or state, I've been able to spend a good bit and enjoy many leisurely activities and pursuits. I'm not talking Gstaad or Ibiza, yachting or four star restaurants, but things like road trips, eating out, living as a student in Europe, taking vacations to national parks, having books, a computer, clothes, other nice things. The last year and a half I had a kind of financial epiphany, realized my profligate ways, and have since assiduously applied myself to saving, building my credit, investing, planning, what have you. It probably sounds unbelievable, but I think I saw a lot of the downturn coming, and watched it all with a kind of detached, amused interest. I don't have much, so I didn't suffer much. Time is on my side, and I have a secure job, cheap rent, and a paid used car, and only my largish student loan payment, so I don't sweat too much.

What I have anguished about is more my inability to put in practice those truths mentioned above. As I draw closer to my thirtieth birthday, increasingly I find myself looking back on my twenties with sadness, regret, even disgust. That may sound harsh, but again, when you know what I know, the only possible conclusion is the latter.

Instead of growing in holiness, I seemed to peak, spiritually speaking, at college, and have managed to do most of the things I swore I would never do in the years hence. In fact, I distinctly remember being at college and thinking, I don't want to be struggling with this or that in ten years, I want to be this person having accomplished all these great things by this time. And what happened? Evil got easier and easier. Good became harder and harder. And instead of a progressive ascent up the mystical mountain, at times I find myself, almost thirty, wondering where God went, starting to forget even what he sounded like, what intimacy with him felt like. Some have told me this experience is not all that uncommon for people my age, precipitating a kind of second conversion, a conversion to grace. I remain dubious (or perhaps just jaded).

Read the whole thing.