why your dream dies at 25?
Everyone's dreams start to wither by the age of 25. Ambition fades and be replaced by exhaustion. Someone said it's just you adapting to the reality that you are perceiving. When you’re young, you believe in the goodness of people and the idea that anything is possible. But this optimism often becomes a breeding ground for false hope and naive idealism.
After a considerate amount of suffering and harshness, you start to feel numb. Every shred of optimism will get chipped away from you, little by little.
With time and age, you learn:
- Shit happens. Good shit and bad shit that are out of your control will happen at some point. Things won't go your way. You’ll get knocked down repeatedly, and eventually, you’ll realize how incredibly difficult it is to achieve your dreams. Luck plays a huge role. Sure, luck comes in many forms, but you still need a lot of it—like being in the right place at the right time (e.g., joining Meta early). You can’t wish affluence into existence. Your hard work does not guarantee success.
- For every dream that you dream of, there are thousands of other young, ambitious and naive guys like you also compete for. As insecure as ever, I once took an online IQ test (silly me). Not sure how much trustworthy it was, but it said I ranked in the top 19% of world population. For a brief moment, I felt validated—until I realized that 19% of the world is still hundreds of millions of people above me.
- Your body is far from a well-designed invincible machine. No matter how determined you are, you’re not immune to burnout. After a year or two of relentless effort, you’ll start to feel the strain. Your body will remind you it has limits. You'd rather lying on your bed for some days.
The list goes on, but I think you get the idea. Life sufferings will tear you down and teach you that our dreams, though still feasible, but it won't be on the scale that you once imagined.
But keep going, you will get there, wherever you want to go eventually. Just like Google Maps always adapts your route to your destination if you missed a turn, but it never changes your destination. And just like that, you are never off-track. Be like Google Maps