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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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100% I'm on that 1/20 dark growth plan. Internal state is what's important to me anyway (although that may change
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When I read your original tweet this was my main objection. My anecdata suggest that dark growth is more prevalent - dad bands, coaching kids sports, volunteering on a crisis line - all of these can be legit iceberg transformations...
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I think all that is fulfillment not dark growth Growth to me has a distinctive signature of traumatic learning, and that you’re advancing the art of life just a little bit further. Some aspects of parenting and grand parenting and teaching have that but it is kinda narrow.
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If someone in their 40s accumulates high ranking positions and distinctions, do you class this as legible growth or as non-growth?
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