Burning out at twenty-two doesn’t prove you wanted it more. It just means watching the finish from the stands.

Intensity is not the same as commitment, and treating exhaustion as evidence of seriousness ends things early. The people still going at forty were not less driven at twenty-two, they were pacing. Effort you cannot sustain eventually removes you from the thing you were trying to do, which is the opposite of what it was meant to prove.

Look at whether your current pace is something you could hold for five years. If not, the plan is wrong rather than you. Build the recovery in deliberately, because the body takes it eventually whether or not you scheduled it.