Three Adult Lives: A new life perspective - it all starts today

By Stephen Castree

Do you feel that you are in the middle of your life and stuck, with the excitement of day-to-day living ebbing away? Do you feel that the indestructibility of youth which at one time flowed through your veins has dried up? Are you in your early career and somewhat lost? Do you feel you wish you had done more with your life when you were younger?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naucala Publishing
• Release date: Aug 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781916696808

Book preview

About the Author

Stephen Castree was born in Epping, Essex, UK in 1972. After attending Dr Challoner’s Grammar School in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, he read French and Sport and Recreation Management at the University of Birmingham in the UK as well as UFRAPS (Unite de Formation et de Recherche des Aptitudes Physiques et Sportives) at the University of Lyon in France. He completed his MBA with the University of Birmingham Business School in 2006 and a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics with The Open University in 2022.

Stephen has been involved in the start-up and management of over ten businesses which have collectively created over two thousand jobs, and they remain successful to this day. His involvement is across industries, from the removal of land mines, to climate change consultancy, agriculture, financial services and investment funds. 

An avid sportsman Stephen has completed a number of marathons and actively participates in tennis, squash, yoga and gym. As a swim coach he attended the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in 2002 and the Olympic Games in London in 2012, representing Bermuda.

Currently based in Bermuda, Stephen lives a nomadic existence, living and traveling with Danielle, his girlfriend. They collectively have four children, Chloe, who is at university, Lucas and Brooke who are at boarding school, and Rome, who is beginning the excitement of his life and is about to start school.

A keen traveller, Stephen has experienced over fifty countries and completed summits of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Mount Elbrus in Russia. He plans to continue his life of adventure and is embarking on his second adult life with energy, passion and pleasure, firmly believing that the best is yet to come.

Preface

How do we choose to live our lives? What choices do we actually make and how many are made for us? Can we change our path? Is it possible to reinvent ourselves? How does this all work? Why does it seem easy for others and so hard for me to make the changes I say I want? Am I trapped in the hamster wheel of life as I sometimes feel, on a treadmill to nowhere, or am I truly free to do as I choose? Does life have a point? If it does, how can I even begin to find my reason and purpose?

That is a lot of questions for an opening paragraph of any book, and to suggest that it is possible to deliver answers to these would be fraudulent. This book is designed as a concept and one possible way to approach these questions and it will try to provide you with a toolkit to commence your own exploration of ‘you’.

This concept will take you on a journey, a journey which begins with an analysis of how our early years prepare and shape us for adulthood. It outlines how, being born with our DNA and our mind, both of these may be considered our computer hardware onto which all learning, the software, is loaded as we grow and develop. A discussion follows of how we might begin to define the function and experience of childhood as we start to be shaped into who we are, and it questions what we mean by being an adult and how we get there.

Consideration is given to how we are shaped by society and by those around us, which gives us the tools to become adults whilst simultaneously moulding us into shape and trapping us into a specific way of thinking, of feeling and of being.

As a product of the environment in which we grow up, we are trained to think, feel and behave in a certain way, and this often remains static, engrained in us, until the day we depart the earth.

Three Adult Lives offers an idea of how we can separate, isolate and challenge this learning and taught phase of life. It recognizes that there is a path which moves us from a child, through our teenage years and young adulthood, or adult-in-training, into the stage of life where we are a ‘true adult’. This concept allows us to not only challenge the deepest and most embedded parts of who we think we are, but to reject them and start with a clean piece of paper, should we wish to do so.

Our traditional view, assuming that most of you readers are, like me, a product of Western society, believes that that a fully-fledged adult is able to recognize right from wrong; able to understand political, societal and some economic issues; able to participate fully in society or exclude themselves from it; and able and experienced enough in life to make fundamental life decisions not based simply on short-term emotion or human selfishness and greed. These key traits imprint on us much of our Western democratic societal values, and often we take what we are taught for granted assuming it holds some type of universal truth, but what we know, and what we have been taught, offers just one perspective.

The approach of Three Adult Lives starts by taking us on a journey, starting from our birth and culminating in the adult we are in the process of becoming or the adult we are today. The time when we reach adulthood, for the purposes of this book, becomes a question, and we will consider when this actually is and when our adult life, or lives, really begin.

The concept presented here is applicable to any individual. Each reader is considering this approach at a specific time and personal situational stage in their life, with inputs as unique as a snowflake or a fingerprint. The approach to our life which we have followed to date is also unique and this book will present you with concepts to assist you on your own developmental path.

Three Adult Lives presents you with a theory of how to view the world through a different lens as well as offering some tools which you may choose to use to unpick your own life to this point, to question and challenge the very fabric of who ‘you’ are, and what ‘you’ want. Some of these tools will hopefully be of assistance to you on your journey, and I hope that the ability to simultaneously open and free your mind, and to reconsider everything you thought you knew and everything you think you are, is both liberating, exciting and frightening in equal measure.

The world I grew up in is a world largely of capitalist liberal democracies, with a regal element to it. It is largely a Christian, conservative and white environment. This is the world which shaped and formed me, and it is therefore the only world which I am equipped to write about. During this journey I will use my own personal experience as an example of how I have tried to approach my own analysis and the work I completed on ‘me’. It is not designed to be a guide; every single one of us has our own path or journey to take, so it is merely an example, albeit a real-life one.

The key premise of the Three Adult Lives approach to life is that we are born with what is akin to computer hardware and we immediately begin to install software on ourselves as we absorb and learn from everything, and everyone, around us. We are placed into the training pattern of childhood and then released into society as adults. Three Adult Lives proposes that the time we reach adulthood, where we are capable of becoming full members of society according to Western expectations, is not eighteen or twenty-one, but is rather later than that, with an additional period of adult-in-training also existing to transition us from childhood to adulthood.

Once we finally reach adulthood, I propose that it is then that our three adult lives begin, and we should be considering our age to begin again from zero when we reach this point. The concept believes that, on average, this begins at around thirty years of age, at which point we are new-born adults at age zero. This in its own right may immediately change the perspective you hold, so to all those who are twenty-nine reading this, you are only just about to start, and to those who are thirty-five, don’t worry, of course it is hard, of course you feel lost and confused; you are at the very beginning of your epic journey of life.

Three Adult Lives suggests that our remaining expected lifespan, the total number of years we can expect to be alive as an adult, is a period which may be carved into segments. It is no longer the case that an adult life is simply one block of work into old age followed by retirement. With people living longer than ever before, these phases, or stages, of life can be broken into three new blocks of time, Three Adult Lives. With this changed perspective we can create opportunities and maximize our experiences by living three lives, not one, and maximize the short period in which we live on earth, not wasting a single minute and thriving in our lives.

By subscribing to this viewpoint, and actively challenging much of what has shaped us in our pre-adult years, we may view our lives in a different manner; we can take different decisions and continually experience life as a series of shorter magical events which may each be filled and lived with childlike wonder. 

Such an outlook does not require a subscription to any particular religious or secular way of thinking, neither does it require us to reject them. It can instead liberate us from the shackles of expectation which we create and put upon ourselves due to the training we have received or, in some cases, from the indoctrination which has been drilled into us from the day we were born. Three Adult Lives challenges us to view the world through this different lens and offers a brand-new energy and vision of what opportunities there are for you in life. This changed perspective may encourage you to take new risks and seize new opportunities; to reconnect with your childhood dreams and never leave yourself looking back thinking ‘what if’; to once again feel the indestructibility of youth; to reinvent yourself personally and/or professionally; or it may offer you validation and solace of the way you currently live, being satisfied and content with the path you have chosen and finding that you are just where you are meant to be, doing just what you were meant to do.

I believe that for some this approach and perspective may be truly liberating and this simple shift can define your own life with a brand-new life story. It is an approach fit for purpose taking into account the ways of working, living and travelling in the twenty-first century. For others, it will simply be a reflective time as they understand a little more of what makes them, them, and how their upbringing and their unique experience of the world has shaped them into who, and what, they are today. This may equally lead to contentment and satisfaction with their current place in life, but still offer a different perspective within our day-to-day lives, more aware of each passing moment. We may also gain a deeper understanding of how others who have received different training from us can view the world in such a radically different way and reduce judgement that we so often pass on these differences.

Three Adult Lives proposes that life is segmented into three separate and distinct adult lives, each with an opportunity to reinvent or reposition ourselves and our outlook, growing all the time through an ever-developing and ever-changing self, whilst at the same time offering us the opportunity to change nothing and just live how we are and who we are three times over.

A consideration of upbringing, moral and ethical codes, a brief evaluation of society’s view of us and our view of society will be presented, followed by a discussion of the inter-relationship between the two. We will evaluate development from baby to child, to teenager and to developing adult, or adult-in-training, as the world provides the software downloads which we install and use on the hardware we were born with to shape who we think we are. Once our training is complete and our software is deemed to have been installed, we test it during our adult-in-training stage, and only then are we ready to embark on our first adult life.

For those starting their journey around age thirty, this may give you the toolkit you need to continue your life of learning and develop your own roadmap, whilst living each and every day in the moment. For those partway through their lives, this shift may change the view you have of your expected remaining time and challenge you to look at life as something you can bring so much more to and which you can expect so much more from. It will also offer you a different perspective to reflect on all the wonderful things you have already achieved in your early adult life/lives, things that we so often don’t reflect on.

In creating the structure for this book, Part One and Part Two will outline the process, and I will present events and experiences from my own life to offer a real-life view of this journey. This is not designed to be an autobiography, though some elements will include some significant and impactful personal experiences, and these are important to allow an understanding of the backdrop of my own experience leading me to my own views.

With the approach, or philosophy, of Three Adult Lives presented, Part Three moves to consider some theoretical philosophical and non-traditional Western approaches which may be used to both challenge and define ourselves and firm up our own personal views of who we are and what we want to be. These elements are designed to help us question where we are today, who we are, what we are and what we believe. These are questions which I have found critical as I have upturned my personal view of, and approach to, living. I would encourage you to read these with an open mind, setting judgement aside, and to really consider each chapter and what it means to you, as only you can decide your personal views on these items.

Part Four revisits the building blocks of life-to-date, and we pull together some of the toolkit which is outlined in Part Three. In this section I also include some thoughts and readings which have been particularly useful as I have worked through who I am and what I think. This is where everything changes and we pull the ideas together. It is the moment where You are challenged to define your path; You can choose your future; You can set your values; You can redefine your own moral code; You can choose where to live and what to do. And the magic – well, there is no magic, but by changing your outlook and behaviour you may just be able to garner greater control of your life, and by gaining confidence in this new outlook, you may decide to make changes in your own life and indeed choose to live Three Adult Lives and not one.

You are the only one who can do this, and in doing so, you can be unapologetically yourself. You can take actions you believe to be the best for you,