f you marry badly — or marry at all, when it isn’t for you — don’t assume the damage is recoverable. If you make the wrong career choice, and realise it as early as age 30, don’t count on a way back. Even the decision to go down a science track at school, when the humanities turn out to be your bag, can mangle a life. None of these errors need consign a person to eternal and acute distress. But …More
f you marry badly — or marry at all, when it isn’t for you — don’t assume the damage is recoverable. If you make the wrong career choice, and realise it as early as age 30, don’t count on a way back. Even the decision to go down a science track at school, when the humanities turn out to be your bag, can mangle a life. None of these errors need consign a person to eternal and acute distress. But life is path-dependent: each mistake narrows the next round of choices. A big one, or just an early one, can foreclose all hope of the life you wanted.
ft.com
The myth of the second chance
The self-help industry suggests all mistakes in life are retrievable. Middle age teaches us otherwise
True that - but often people today, particularly the young, are paralyzed by a behavior labeled F.O.M.O. = fear of missing out. So they defer marriage or children, or religious vocation, or conversion to later, so they can experience all options open. This 'tyranny of choice' keeps them from making any life commitments at all. Hence the feeling of giving up that permeates the Western world.
'He that rises after his falls, with confidence in God and profound humility of heart, will become, in God's hands, a proper instrument for the accomplishment of great things; but he who acts otherwise can never do any good.' (St. Paul of the Cross)
