The disappointment of manhood succeeds to the delusion of youth: let us hope that the heritage of old age is not despair.

Each stage corrects the one before it, usually by subtraction. What you believed at twenty turns out to have been partly invention, and what replaces it can feel like an accounting of what did not happen. That sequence is common and it is not the whole picture, since the same years hand over competence, perspective and people who know you well.

If you are in the disappointed stretch, it need not be the final reading. Look at what has actually accumulated, not only at what was expected and never came.