Empirically people don’t really seem to grow much after 40. Maybe 1 in 10 will adopt a truly different mindset. Maybe 1 in 100 will develop a new life-shaping ability (not a hobby). Maybe 1 in 1000 will take on a fundamentally leveled-up Act 2 that will top Act 1.
-
-
I think what breaks is not the ability to learn but the ability to care about what other people think about you (which is of course predicated on the ability to maintain the delusion that they’re thinking about you at all).
Show this thread -
Of the 15% who continue publicly legible growth, maybe 1% are growing in a generative way, while 14% are in arrested development, stuck in Act 1 ruts. ~85% stop visibly growing. Of this, 80% stop growing, period. But 5% are in “dark growth” visible+legible mostly to themselves
Show this thread -
Of that 5%, the dark growth is visible to intimates in most cases, but rarely legible. So most intimate relationships are likelier to grow apart than grow together. Dem’s the odds. Divergence is the default, not convergence.
Show this thread -
It’s mostly cordial acceptance of growing mutual inscrutability though, rather than growing stress. Otherwise divorce rates would be far higher, and far fewer friendships would last as long as they do. That’s how/why loneliness increases with age, *without* social unraveling
Show this thread -
I have this growing impatience with the framing of the 40+ life experience as “slowly failing youth” unless you’re in the minority that stays on an obvious extension of the under-40 script. It’s like this annoying fog obscuring the truly interesting life-stage challenges.
Show this thread -
Imagine if at 30 you had 16 year olds constantly asking you about what grade you got on the test, taking your reticence to mean you got a bad grade because they don’t get that school ends and there’s a different life beyond, and judging/shaming you loudly for not studying harder
Show this thread -
That’s kinda what 40+ life can feel like except that a) most people don’t even notice that there IS a different life stage b) a lot of people actually get confused and start thinking they should be actually taking tests and worrying about grades like they’re still in school
Show this thread -
For the record, with “dark growth” I’m not talking about traditional later life foci like parenting and grand parenting and community service. That’s fulfillment rather than dark growth. Nice if that’s what you want and get, but if that’s were it, later life would frankly be hell
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
I can no longer manage the mixture of credulity, narcissism, and fixation launching a second career would take. Your loser-clueless-sociopath pyramid illuminates too well the eventual outcome.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
No. They've succumbed to their disappointments, and accepted their limits as externally imposed. "Their terms" are rationalizations and responsibility avoidance, bleeding off excess agency as if from an opened vein in a medieval hostel. Pathetic.
-
Hustleporn, Geriatric Formula!
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.