Alt-text:
I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.
Like... if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you're a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.
The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success... I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.
I think the fear isn't simply exiting the pool, its drowning.
The "coffee shop" analogy breaks down when you look at the before - assuming debt, developing skills, building business relationships - and after - owing more than you earn, filling for bankruptcy, hemorrhaging staff, going back to being a wage earner rather than an owner-operator.
Same with marriage. You get older and slower and tireder, you have this shared history that doesn't exist between anyone else, you have shared assets that can't easily be divided up, you have a shared family.
These aren't just whims, they're economic events and deeply psychological ones, too. Bad ones. They are describing a material decline in your quality of life.
Yeah, the fixation on nostalgia and fandoms is bad for us as a society. No, you shouldn't feel leashed to your hobbies... or your job or your relationships. But there's also feelings of stability and reliability and security that comes with an enduring institution in your life. Knowing you can substitute experience for raw energy and you don't have to relearn a trade or another person or rules to a new game from scratch has value. It pays dividends.
You don't want to get into the water and find out you need to relearn how to swim. Especially when you've so far from shore.