What a powerful observation.
(Having said that, restarting a game over and over in order to force your one perfect linear optimal plan to eventually work out can be lots of fun. But this is not an option in real life.)
While I'm on the cheesy aphorisms, I'll throw in "life is what happens while you're busy making other plans". But that one's too pragmatic, I think. It's not as if we have zero control. Maybe a more accurate statement would be "life is what happens while you're busy making loosely similar plans".
It is possible to lessen the effect of these things if you put effort into it.
People like him are horrid traps for optimisers. They’re pointing out errors, and being so desperate to improve you’re encouraged to keep listening and value them greater instead of tuning their overeagerness out.
There’s an irony that actually getting hung up on minor comments and suggestions is in itself poor optimisation since the error becomes a distraction instead of a learning point.
Which isn't to discount the author's point. Their writing is introspective. But our perceptions are not always right, and it screws with our self-perceptions, especially of what success means and looks like. We are drawn to exceptions and anchor our expectations for ourselves within their stories.
Not everything I did with this power was smart. A lot of my understanding of what that stuff is was learned "improvisationally", and major local customers, including the county government, paid the price. But what I did do was very successfully parlay this experience into a big-kid job (and a mega pay rise) in the big city, which then begat more such jobs. I doubt I could have rocketed that high, that quickly, if the small-town ISP weren't willing to let ambitious but inexperienced people like me screw up, in exchange for paying them semi-student wages.
It's not usually the purpose.
Young people are good at developing talents involving physical skills, but rarely do you find young writers who produce any great literature. And of those young people who happen to be amazing writers, their skill only improves as they get older and wiser, they don’t really hit a peak until they have mental decline in old age.
So if you hit 40 and you’re not good at anything in particular in life, you might still find there’s time to be a great writer, the journey has just begun!
The point is, of course, that age is a necessary, but insufficient condition for wisdom. I know of philosophers who claimed to only grasp their subject matter in their 50s.
- Neal Stephenson (My favorite fiction writer) published his first book in his early 30s
- Hemingway published great works in his early 20s
- Almost all of the most notable scientific breakthroughs in the 20th century were from individuals in their 20s. Schrodinger was the Old Man at 37!
- Most famous musicans started releasing their first, and often best, albums in their early 20s-early 30s. When they tour into old age, they're mostly playing their hits of youth.
You can find exceptions, but the exceptions are often not that old, and in the anecdotes I think of (Favorite authors, writers, musicians etc), it's hard not to notice the trend of youth. I want to find this trend to be untrue because it can be depressing, but can't. (This is at the core of the article)
There are probably roughly zero 20-somethings that are more interesting than the most boring 50-year old you know.
Is it maybe the case that 20-somethings have nothing to do so they futz around with science and writing and can do that. As they grow older they find better things to do?
Instead he took up a job at the mint. The job had some technical bits to it like designing coins that were harder to counterfeit, but is was mostly a managing people and society job. The coin clippers were literally debasing the currency to near worthlessness. Had they continued they would have been the internal cancer that took down the empire, as the state could no longer afford to pay for the ships and men needed to create and maintain it. Newton almost single handedly turned that around. It's not an exaggeration to say he saved the empire.
You say the older Newton could not do what the younger Newton did, and that's probably true. But it's also true the younger Newton could not have done what the older one did. He needed the experience and understanding of how men and society work that only decades of live could give him. So yes some abilities dim as you age. But other abilities grow stronger.
Crystallised intelligence increases with age.
Your comparative advantage changes.
Before global media, for the most part if you were comparing yourself to other people it was largely comparing against your friends, family and community. Sure, there may have been that one outsized success, but it still wasn't presented as the norm - you knew all the other friends and family that just had average lives. And for most of human history where social ranking was explicitly classed based, it's not like if you were a peasant you would think "Darn, if I only worked harder I could be a noble".
If you want to feel "less hard on yourself", I highly recommend disconnecting from digital media. It's hard for our human brains to deal with the constant onslaught of stars/celebrities/moguls/exceptions and understand how rare those examples truly are.
Imagine if you had directed those hours towards learning or training some sort of skill. You would, almost certainly, be in the top percents of humanity by now at that skill.
It's not just about innate inability but about dedicating yourself to something of value. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of people choose not to do that.
But the point I would emphasize is that this is a choice.
It's actually quite the issue as well, because it's so enticing to choose to do nothing. Would Einstein in an era of endless entertainment, banter, porn, and so on have nonetheless chosen to spend his days wandering about pondering the mysteries and paradoxes with the speed of light?
I mean maybe...? But there's a strong argument to be made that we haven't done away with meritocracy but rather made it fabulously enjoyable to do things of no real merit.
There is something to be said about solitary (socially and intellectually) activities being bad, but i would not be anywhere near the whole person i am without my online experiences.
Example: the fact that I don’t have the DNA to be an NBA player is not a flaw of character. The fact that I don’t have an eye for painting or the brain for quantum physics isn’t a flaw of character.
This article basically encourages us to punish ourselves for happily existing.
The drinking analogy is not a great one because that’s an obviously detrimental activity. A lot of activities are positive.
E.g., trying to publish a book when you’re 65 after failing when you were 25 is not a character flaw.
We only live so long so we have to pick and choose. Especially as the years remaining clock down.
Abstraction is one skill. It's quite useful, especially in an age of computation. But it's just one skill.
There are many other human skills too. They all have their own value (which may vary across time and space).
Few people are really good at more than one or two of them.
Is it a literal truth that I can’t learn to paint? No. Have I done enough of it to know my progress is extremely slow to the point of not wanting to study it formally? Absolutely.
I’ll do a paint and sip but I’ll never get much better than that even if I put in the hours.
And yes, this is an ancient, ancient dream of mankind, one replete with cautionary tales about the Bad Things that will befall you if you attempt to actually solve it. (One such tale, The Substance, was nominated for a few oscars.) But so was human flight. We yearned for it, and our elders told us what fools we would be for even trying with things like the tale of Icarus... and then one day on a hill in Kitty Hawk, NC...
from what I’ve seen tales against a search for immortality are in regards to enjoy life while you have it, make relations, laugh, love, mourn, and remember, rather than have your entire life consumed in a desperate attempt to postpone the end, sucking all the joy out of it. we still have a long ways to go to avoiding death entirely, so I’d figure the best course of action is to enjoy life rather than to waste it in hopes of getting some extra time.
and yeah bringing up what you've brought up, I see your point. it does seem like the trope has been distilled down to "searching for eternal life is bad" instead of "don't waste everything in the hopes of eternal life".
There are, of course, also examples where the converse holds true. Finding a long term partner who you want to create a family with for example. But all in all the balance strongly favors that the error margin becomes smaller.
This resonates. I'm also at retirement age. And when I look back over my career I realize that it was mostly luck. I was so anxious much of the time (afraid I might make a mistake or make the wrong decision) and I wonder if I would've been more relaxed knowing what I know now? And if as a result of being more relaxed I would've actually performed better. I'm pretty sure I would've felt a lot more at peace.
I have all-too-brief moments where I experience a visceral sense of literally meeting myself, and the joy therein. I believe that is the work I am to do at the moment, and those small epiphanies are the guideposts.
or the moments where I experience a visceral sense of literally meeting myself and feeling aversion because I realize I'm not the person I thought I was and I need to do and be better.
That may be true up to a point. Once you start getting dementia or slip on ice and break your hip, maybe it won't feel like that so much any more.
It's true you can't be a _young_ genius forever but the rest of its not so bleak.
Those things you listed to prove your point can all happen to any of us at age 12, and all of the rest save child-bearing can happen at any age.
All of them are external things that change our situation, sure, but your choice to be "old" or not based on them is still a choice, which was the parent's point.
Conversely, you're young as long as you believe you have control over imperfections.
Last year, I slipped in a puddle on my bike. Last week, my orthopedic surgeon told me I can never be a runner again. There is too little cartilage left in my ankle.
Yesterday, Strava told me I logged my 250th entry. Scrolling down my activity stream past the walks I logged recovering from my ankle injury, I saw the hundreds of runs I went on when I took jogging seriously. One of those runs is now the best run I'll ever do.
Not being able to run is an imperfection that is "permanent" and that I will never "grow" past regardless of how much I care to do so. That's what getting old feels like.
I couldn’t run, I sometimes couldn’t walk. People used to think I was a personal trainer because I was so fit. Diagnosis was 5 years ago.
Went through grief/trauma getting diagnosed with arthritis.
Now 5 years later, from just walking shorter distances more often and processing the grief, I’m back at the gym and started soccer and ran for the first time in ages. Felt very weird but I just work within my limits. I also cycle at least 30 minutes of intense cycling 6 days a week.
You’ll learn to adapt and adjust, it does get better, you just have to become a child again and approach it differently.
I ultimately will still need joint replacements at some point in the next few years, but I’ve had a complete mindset shift. My current goal is to become even fitter than my previous state.
I agree, there is a big mindset shift needed to make peace with our body not being entirely under our control. To me, that mindset change is a big part of what it feels like to not be young.
If think of a lifespan as an arc, it's something like:
1. In early childhood, you are gradually mastering the physicality of your body. Learning to control elimination, getting more coordinated, learning physical skills, etc. I think of it like learning to control a sailboat, harness the wind, operate the sails, etc.
2. When you hit young adulthood, you're at a sort of peak where your body can be an abstraction. You can do what you want in the world without having to worry too much about your body getting in the way. At this point, you are a skilled sailor on the open ocean.
3. Then as you get older and/or unlucky, things outside of your control happen to your body in ways that materially limit your own agency. You may want to do X, but your body means that's off the table. You can still do Y. Now you are navigating shoals. You can still control the sailboat, but there are rocks there and you must navigate around them whether you want to or not. Some places simply can't be reached anymore.
4. I'm not there yet, but assume that as we age, the number of rocks increases and we increasingly focus our attention on the sailing we've already done in the past and make peace with our limited journeys going forward.
That first time you crash into a rock and move from 2 to 3 is hard.
But I agree with the gist.
When you're young, you don't know what you don't know, and usually you have much less to lose by taking risks. As you get older, risks become more costly.
Maybe one way to think about youth in a way that's not self-defeating could be to sit down and think about what youth means to you in the next 1-3 years, and make sure the definition is within reach. The worst thing you can do if you're feeling old is to lean into the feeling. But it's hard not to, because media, TV, etc tries to define youth for the whole of society when really it should be individualized and defined in a way that motivates the person to keep on feeling youthful as far into old age as possible.
> The truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing but does only and wholly what he must do.
Most recently, a significant life event happened, that drew my attention to a pattern of mistakes I've been making for the past couple of years. I've made it a point to reflect upon each incident and take copious notes of what I could have done differently in those situations; and hopefully I'll do better for the next event. While I'm currently at an age where I'd neither be considered "young" nor "old", I don't think any of this can't be applied to someone who'd be 10 or 20 years older than me, for example.
Eg if someone can’t handle alcohol -> don’t drink
Fat? Eat less and exercise
ADHD? Get medicated and embrace the condition and understand it
I think you can pick and choose to work on your flaws. I certainly am after a life event, but sometimes it requires an external strong force to make you realise you want to change for the better
This is an attitude that needs to be excised. Perfection-seeking is a curse.
There's always another challenge on the horizon, always more perfection to be sought.
Is the definition of seeking perfection different? Maybe these words are poor for the distinction between direction and target.
CertainlyI wouldn't want to be an unhappy perfectionist. But slowly perfecting/improving something is a happy thing.
That said, I struggle with the internal dialogue of some people that are never happy with what they do.
My wife and I were talking about making considerable life changes (career and living) in about 6 years as both my boys will be through HS then and out of the house. So these changes, whatever shape they take, will happen in my mid-50s. That's 10 years from my planned retirement (I'm in the US). Any mistake made in those decisions has dire consequences to the rest of my life (and my wife's life for that matter).
As for dealing with imperfections, I've told my therapist "i am who i'm going to be. If that's not good enough for you or society then you all are just going to have to deal with it."
And it turns out that you get better at calculating these risks, so...
Realistically, though, I've experienced falling short of all sorts of internal and external expectations for many years now, so I don't know what's special about this time.
"I'm not a millionaire. I thought I would be by the time I was 30, but I wasn't even close. And then I thought maybe by the time I was 40. But by 40, I had less money than when I was 30."
Some people are wired differently and take calculated risks their whole life.
Read the life of Louis Pasteur if you need an example.
And a child prodigy at forty, That is a sorry case. Who could have been so much, yet Will never leave a trace.
(The song is based on the life of the poet Halbo C. Kool. Dutch lyrics here: https://genius.com/Boudewijn-de-groot-een-wonderkind-van-50-... )
"[to be human] is to be constantly on the precipice of perfection – just a little further and you’ll get there – but you never get there."
Understanding that the path of refinement and growth does not lead, even eventually, to perfection frees a person to do better, to be better, fearlessly.
Perfection is a cardinal direction. It is not a destination.
I think the article is just existing to be negative and inject punishing thoughts about age, to make sure we all have these anxieties even if we don’t have them naturally.
The funny part about the young author example, how older authors are not exciting to discover? Yeah the richest and most successful author of all time was discovered when she was 32. J.R.R. Tolkien published The Hobbit at age 45. Little House on the Prairie? Published when Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65.
I just don’t understand the point of this article other than to transmit bad vibes.
For instance:
> 45-year-olds aren’t discovered, they’re uncovered, like toxic waste, or a political scandal, or the murderer at the end of an Agatha Christie book. My god, that 45-year-old was lurking among us this entire time!
One way to read that is as criticism of people who think that way. It certainly seems like a complaint: the author is complaining this attitude is unfair. But whose attitude is it? Is this really the prevailing way of thinking about 45-year-olds? Or is the author just pushing paranoia to the readers?
I understand it’s about coming to terms with these feelings and uses these specific examples.
But the examples used in the article seem unrealistic to begin with, as if the article insists that a plurality of people feel this way about youth and aging.
I just don’t think that’s really the case.
Like a soap opera dramatizes and exaggerates emotions, this article is a little too insistent on itself.
Agreed. I felt like this article was grasping for something good, but remark that "45-year-olds aren’t discovered, they’re uncovered, like toxic waste, or a political scandal" is ass-backwards.
Tolkien and Wilder and both great examples of writers who produced landmark works basically as a byproduct of leading full and interesting lives -- not by orbiting the publishing world and champing at the bit to churn out some flashy yet forgettable novel at a record young age. When this happens, the only embarrassment is for the establishment "publishing world" which pretends to represent "literary greatness," not for the author who is "uncovered." Personally, I suspect that "uncovered" authors will endure at a higher rate than the "discovered" ones.
Also I have to add that I rolled my eyes at the "evidence" of Emily Dickenson killed herself. So did Hemmingway, who was first published at 26. What's your point?
Despite all this, the core insight that "suddenly you’re old, and find yourself in a permanent state of imperfection, which you must reckon with" I believe is very true. Even those who succeed in one area of life (being published) have to grapple with it. What options did they leave on the table in order to have that success? What options have been lost due to fame and success (only a fool would believe there are none)?
Becoming a particular (and necessarily, imperfect) person instead of a potential person is a kind of horrifying first taste of death. I think that the healthy way to deal with it is to make peace with the fact that our ability to change ourselves is limited and our ability to change the past is even less. The serenity prayer and AA-adjacent ideas do this.
As a last note, I thought the movie "The Weatherman" did a really good job exploring this.
I am the master of my fate.
I am the captain of my soul.That doesn't help one bit in trying to figure out where it lies.
Always keep climbing.