As they say, youth is wasted on the young. Reaching my 40s, I feel I am, almost, at the end of the tutorial of life. Sure, if you dedicate yourself to something

As they say, youth is wasted on the young. Reaching my 40s, I feel I am, almost, at the end of the tutorial of life. Sure, if you dedicate yourself to something as soon as your brain is reaching maturity in early adulthood, you might be a master by the time you reach middle age. But the common trajectory is that youth is not usually spent advancing the arts and sciences, but to learn the circus of society, its rules, its demands, to the point that we have the very real concept of midlife crisis when these individuals, after learning what the hell society wants from them, ask, “is that all? I got my degree, my job, my career, now what?” Only after answering this question, in your late 30s or 40s, the road to self-realisation opens. I think rather the fact that we don’t see many Vonneguts is that the vast majority of people never make this step, and just continue to dance the monotonous rhythm of work and family, learned in their 20s, to their grave, without ever developing their full potential. A lot of Carl Jung’s career as a therapist was dedicated to the topic of self-actualisation for middle-aged adults.