[NOTE: I’ve been traveling, but I’ll be back on my regular Wednesday schedule soon. As always, you can submit an anonymous question right about here.]
I think you said somewhere that you were 50, so maybe you can relate. I’m almost 50, and I feel like I’ve missed out on everything. I exist. I go from one minute to the next with not a lot of problems. I’m pretty healthy, but that’s the most I can say. I don’t have kids, but I’m ALSO not enjoying the professional or creative life or friendships that someone without kids (or a wife/long-term gf) could have. I spend a lot of time these days thinking about the day I realize once and for all it’s too late, and I fucked up my one life. Obvious question is what now?
Fulfillment seems like a pretty late entry into the story of homo sapiens. For most of our existence, we entered this world, realized we occupied a pretty fucking suboptimal tier on the food chain, and spent our 30-year life spans hoping today would not be a bad day vis-à-vis a leopard. And to be sure, there are still plenty of people globally who in 2024 live in an upsetting state of vulnerability. But many of us in the well-fed West have the luxury to “go from one minute to the next,” our basic needs met and scant risk of succumbing to lethal diarrhea or being gunned down by some no-good death squad. So we have the time to ask ourselves if we’re doing it all wrong because we have the option to do it another way. Or another. Or even another.
You can’t go out and find fulfillment itself. You won’t find it abandoned in front of someone’s house like a one-legged table or a detached toilet seat with a note taped to it that seems to state the obvious: ‘FREE.’ I think it’s embedded in action that can help you see yourself and your potential differently.
To start, maybe focus on a single experience, a modest one. Maybe it’s running a race or tackling a challenging book or participating in some TikTok chili pepper challenge that’s not fatal in most instances. Anything, really, to get your brain into the rhythm of intention and attainment, and out of the rumination quicksand. The starting is as important as what you’re ultimately doing, so don’t cogitate too, too long on the latter.
I don’t know if you have time for everything you’ve missed out on because I don’t know what you wanted. Age does limit us, and part of being an adult is accepting that we’re going to be penalized by time for no good reason. Hell, I can barely do five bronto-style1 push-ups anymore. However, I think you have time enough to do enough, enough to make you feel as if you made something of this life after all.
Like a brontosaurus, you eat hundreds of pounds of vegetation as you lower yourself to the floor.