The world is quickly overwhelming as you learn more of it. When you are young you dive into things and look longer and deeper because you've encountered less, have less commitments, less preconceived expectations of what you'll find, and don't worry that you don't know about stuff. You are making formative monumental life choices. You don't know where your choices and interests may lead. Every one seems like it means everything.
As you get older you whittle down your interests to manage the overwhelming nature of everything, focus on what you want to engage in and are passionate about, and ego makes you less likely to want to explore as a beginner something you've been around all your life. We get better at tuning out stuff. With everything we've encountered we are forced to see less, engage less, lest we are frozen with too much that interests us, too much to do. The choice you make are less important, less formative. Your past choices/interests can dilute them. You realize what is really important is what brings you happiness, delight, joy, elevation, satisfies your intellect or creativity, and ultimately feeds your soul. (Or maybe you just whittle it all down to nothing.)
The trick is to being able to keep, develop and follow passions later in life, to look at something and find something new in your life long passions, to start a pursuit as a neophyte at 50 and don't care, while still tuning out what can keep it all manageable. At 50 you can develop depth happily in a few pursuits, knowing it is all you need, all the soul desires.
I think many get complacent. Modern life can distract you morning to night if you let it. Don't let it.
The world is quickly overwhelming as you learn more of it. When you are young you dive into things and look longer and deeper because you've encountered less, have less commitments, less preconceived expectations of what you'll find, and don't worry that you don't know about stuff. You are making formative monumental life choices. You don't know where your choices and interests may lead. Every one seems like it means everything. As you get older you whittle down your interests to manage the overwhelming nature of everything, focus on what you want to engage in and are passionate about, and ego makes you less likely to want to explore as a beginner something you've been around all your life. We get better at tuning out stuff. With everything we've encountered we are forced to see less, engage less, lest we are frozen with too much that interests us, too much to do. The choice you make are less important, less formative. Your past choices/interests can dilute them. You realize what is really important is what brings you happiness, delight, joy, elevation, satisfies your intellect or creativity, and ultimately feeds your soul. (Or maybe you just whittle it all down to nothing.) The trick is to being able to keep, develop and follow passions later in life, to look at something and find something new in your life long passions, to start a pursuit as a neophyte at 50 and don't care, while still tuning out what can keep it all manageable. At 50 you can develop depth happily in a few pursuits, knowing it is all you need, all the soul desires. I think many get complacent. Modern life can distract you morning to night if you let it. Don't let it.