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Not because it becomes impossible but because rising expected effort exceeds falling expected reward — you care about it far less than you thought. You start accurately pricing how much you care about all sorts of things once you’ve accomplished a few things and are calibrated.
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Like, at age 20 when I went on a 10-day high altitude hiking thing at ~13k feet I thought I might want to climb Everest I could *possibly* kill myself training and still actually do it, it’s never too late yada yada yada, but…
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Small change: I’m in 3x worse shape than at 20 Big change: I know I care 100x less Windows of opportunity close not when you can no longer do X, but when you realize you don’t really *want* to do 90% of things you casually thought you might want to, when young
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Specific options close faster than generalized desire to do undefined “stuff.” And meaningful new ones that are not warmed over Act 1 sophomore desires of 20y olds are few and far between. That sense of vacuum from general/specific purpose mismatch = midlife crisis
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It’s a kinda interesting via negativa experience to clinically go down a list of things you once thought you wanted to do and cross them off with “doh wtf was I thinking, I clearly didn’t know myself at all when I put that on the list” Not that I have an actual list but many do
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A good proxy is selected books from your antilibrary some of which represent aspirations that never were Books that have transitioned from “antilibrary” to “willneverreadary” are a pruning of life adjacent possible
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All this feels like midlife crisis but only as long as resist it. Once you accept that an option has closed, it’s liberating. Realizing you don’t really care enough about X to want it is liberation from everything X represents in life’s greater phase space
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Options have to close at the right time though Closing out an option too early is almost certainly sour grapes, not self-knowledge, and you’ll not really be able to let go, and keep justifying it to yourself
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