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by gibbitz
10 days ago
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It must be nice to choose this approach to life. For most people it is hoisted on them. You want to have a place to live you take a job the job doesn't pay enough, you take another. Your parents get old you take care of them. You have a child you need more money, you get another job. That job takes your time you don't know your kid. Etc.etc. Having no agency is the dream of people who waste having agency. Not surprising there's no explanation of what "achieving all my goals in my 20's" means or the lack of explaining how they got there. The author likely doesn't realize how privilege influences their worldview and I don't fault them for it, but as readers we do need to bring this awareness with us. Giving up agency is a concept that somehow has traction today in a country founded on every citizen having agency that can only work if we have a complete lack of self awareness. |
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A good pop-culture analogue is the movie Mr. Holland's Opus. Mr. Holland was a struggling but talented young musician; he dreamed of composing his magnum opus and leaving his mark on the world. But he has take a job teaching music to support his wife and young son, who turns out to be deaf. The job requires long hours and he finds himself lacking much time to connect with his son. 30 years later, he's laid off. His former students come back to stage a performance of his symphony in the high school auditorium.
The point is that the students were the opus. Not the music, which is thoroughly mediocre. The music was just the vehicle to bring the students together. A lot of critics wonder why symphony at the end isn't more impressive, it being Mr. Holland's life's work, but don't realize that that's the point of the movie. Your actual life's work is in the decisions you make, day in and day out, in response to the constraints that your life actually presents you, not some image that you may have formed based on a platonic ideal of no constraints.