The 8 Ages Of Man

In William Shakespeare's play, As You Like It, he poetically describes the 7 Ages Of Man in his famous "All The World's A Stage" speech.

Read it here if you want to.

I have concocted a similar 8 Stages Of Man.  In my version, each stage describes how we identify rewards and how we seek to achieve them at each stage of life.  So here goes.

Act 1: Comfort

As babes and toddlers our primary source of reward is in achieving physical comfort.  We seek warmth, food and soft textures.  We dislike pooing, cold and hunger. Comfort is reward, discomfort is punishment. This is our basic nerve endings at work.





Act 2: Objects

As infants and young children we associate objects with reward and lack of objects as failure. We love objects.  We explore their colours, their shapes, their textures, smells and sounds.  We judge who is the best kid by the objects they have.  Having toys, sweets and branded gear all ups our status with other kids . We also treat people and creatures as objects. In childhood, we define furry animals cute and ugly people as either silly or scary.


Act 3: Personal Identity

In our teens, our focus moves towards ourselves and how we are perceived by the other people.  We identify reward as being a member of the right group in society. So we seek to find the most influential group or team we can join and become a member of. We discover our style of fashion, our choice of music and the type of activities we fit into. Are we nerds, sportsmen, artists, leaders, carers, maybe warriors.



Act 4: Target Orientated

Around the age of 20 we realise that being a member of a group is insufficient to achieve the rewards others receive.  We see people succeeding by hitting targets.  Top grades in education, becoming top in the league, hitting sales targets becomes the route to success and rewards.  We sacrifice our personal identity to achieve a higher performance and hit those targets. It's time to do or die.



Act 5: Roles & Titles

Sometime around our 30's we realise that there are people receiving more rewards than us even though they often under perform and fail to hit targets.  If anything we see that the people hitting their targets stay where they are on the rung of the social and employment ladder.  We realise that what really matters is the role people perform and the title it carries.  The bigger the role, the bigger the title, the better the rewards, regardless of actual performance and targets achieved. We steer our attention towards obtaining the best title. The impressive title of Senior Pencil Sharpening Analyst & Photocopying Specialist is within our grasp.

Act 6: Rules & Regulations

We hit our 40's and our career is buzzing because we have a great job title.  But then we see that there are people with no fantastic title driving around in sports cars and living in a big house.  How did they get better rewards without a great job title?  Surely that's unfair.  They must have been cheating. It takes a while for us to figure it out.  Finally, we realise that society is based around rules and regulations. These people didn't require a superior job title, they merely used the rules and regulations to their advantage. They understood how to make the rules work for them.  It is at this stage of life that we attempt to understand the rules and regulations so we too can exploit them to our advantage.

Act 7: An Amazing Journey

We are now in our 50's and slowing down.  We've been though quite an experience, chasing our dreams with performance targets, job titles and searching for ways to exploit the rules of society.  We can finally see who has done well in life and who has failed.  What becomes apparent is that the people who are admired the most are those who have travelled the most interesting journey in life. They are the ones who have received the most accolades and rewards. Some have even reached the status of heroes and martyrs.  To achieve the same accolades we must promote our journey, usually with a little embellishment.  We must show that we have made an amazing journey through life and should be rewarded for doing so. We tell everyone who listens about our journey, and even those who don't want to listen.

Act 8: The Legacy

Finally we reach our twilight years.  Our energy dwindles and our days are numbered.  Will people remember us after we are gone? What will they remember us for?  Why are some people like Einstein and Shakespeare remembered whilst others disappear forgotten in the depths of history?  We realise that these people left a legacy for the generations that came after them.  We must do the same.  We must leave something that the next generations will remember us for. The final achievement is to become part of recorded human history.

Final Note

This is really a warning.  I believe those who do not achieve these 8 stages in their life, and those who achieve them too early in life, will become miserable. There is no shortcut.