The Version of You at Twenty-Five Would Be Impressed

Most men measure themselves against a man who does not exist.

He is the man they should have been by now. The one with the bigger company, the leaner body, the cleaner financial position, the discipline that no longer needs enforcing. He lives in a future that keeps moving further out, and his job is to make the current man feel insufficient. He never tires of that job. He has been doing it for a decade.

What gets forgotten in this arrangement is the other man. The earlier one. The version at twenty-five who did not have any of the things now being taken for granted.

That man would walk into the current life and not believe his luck.