Everytime you see something that is covetable, your ideal response should be to aspire for it. So as a teenager when you see your neighbor have his bike, you dream of the bike and want to somehow land up on it. Your strong aspirations and belief, definitely plummet you hurling in that direction.
Similarly when you see a hot girlfriend (someone else’s) you now want to reach that point and will do everything in your power to impress the same girl or similar ones.
Somewhere along the way, cynicism kicks in. As an example, in your thirties, as you see someone rise quite rapidly in the corporate ladder, rather than aspire for it, your “realism” is telling “you”, that “this cannot last, something’s fishy, someday the bubble will burst”.
As you have spent a few years of marriage and companionship, and then you see this hot mid-aged couple, all acting lovey dovey and teenagers, touchy feely and very much in love – your response again is “idiots, I would give them 6 months at best. These are the kind of fools who end up getting infatuated. A good marriage is a series of agreed upon compromises.”
You get the drift. With every defeat, (has less to do with age), your mind becomes a little more cynical, under the guise of being more “realistic”.
I think I have entered this phase, where I am past a key tipping point. I am beginning to see the cynic in me, and heaven knows, I am fighting that feeling….but we all know, who shall eventually win 
(In my version, Goliath always crushes David by his balls )
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3 comments:
Before, after or somewhere in between, would come a phase of indifference. Where you don't really care; or are not alive enough to notice, let alone care. Not sure which of these is a better phase to be in...
A rare longer post, but very thoughtful. We do indeed get cynical with time
And then somewhere in the middle of all this, you see a tired 2 year old fall a number of times on a bumpy road, but he quite simply dusts his hands and screams in delight on seeing his favourite car in the world. He doesn't care for what has happened, but is raring to go for the next experience in life...time to step back and learn?
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