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I'm reminded of a quote from J. M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan: "You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it." I once thought it was, and have often seen it used as, an inspirational quote until I later read another opinion that it was a warning of the dangers of being too single focused.

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I simply take it as a description of reality. As a child, you are nothing yet, but you have the potential to become almost anything. As you get older, you trade in that potential for something specific. It's up to you to choose. You can trade all your potential for one thing only or you can divide it up to become multiple things. The right balance is debatable. The real danger lies in taking it to the limit. If you try to become everything, you divide your potential up into infinitesimal pieces and end up remaining nothing at all, a child.

In any case, there is some real wisdom in Peter Pan, but it was completely lost on me as a child.

I don't claim to be well-read on the topic, but this reminds me of Kierkegaard's infinite and finite.

"A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis."

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