Consider that while the author got good at music, the chumps got moderately good at everything else as well that can be quite fulfilling. And the author missed

Consider that while the author got good at music, the chumps got moderately good at everything else as well that can be quite fulfilling. And the author missed out on life experiences that you can only have during age 18-19-20. With time as a limited dwindling resource, we all make tradeoffs and optimize for what we care about. From that lens, the "chumps" don't seem like chumps at all, and neither does the author.