xylotism

xylotism t1_j9lez4r wrote

I'm a lot like him, I think. At a certain point I realized that 99% of anyone's potential (including my own) is already gone by the time you're an adult.

A lot of people are multi-talented but how many of us can really be a fighter pilot and a film director and a musician and a chef and know 5 different languages at the same time? And how many less can be the best at any given one of those? Each one is going to take at least some portion of your life to learn let alone master. Can you fit in 50 masteries? 20? Or even just 1? There's always more time to see France, but oh, you have to make sure to fit in India and the Bahamas and Japan and Iceland!

There's too much to do, and every minute you're not doing it is costing you potential. I think once you have that mindset of "time is finite but so is potential" you start to reach out to try and do as much as you still can with the time you still have left. It becomes less about perfection and more about just doing it. So maybe you can't learn 5 languages in a year but if you start now and just do the thing you could maybe learn one. And maybe even learn to cook too before you're done.

For me personally as long as I make some impact on the world before my time is up, I'll consider that enough.

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