You probably expected this, but I'm going to push back here. I take the point that everyone has their own set of experiences that lead to their own development journeys, but it would be inaccurate to equate all experiences or minimize the importance of timing. There are indeed times during a person's life where it's more important to have specific experiences; for example, it's important for children to learn to read at a certain age. Sure, if they miss or delay this milestone, their life isn't over, but you could hardly deny that it would have a major impact on the rest of their life. This is something we concretely see with the generation of COVID kids who missed out on years of schooling during their formative years; we've found that they can't just "make it up" in the same way.
Similarly, someone who doesn't get romantic experience during their teens and early 20s has been robbed of crucial learning experiences. For example, knowing what it's like to feel wanted by another human being can be massive for self-esteem. Knowing what it's like to be safely held in someone's arms can give someone the strength to push past tough moments in their life, and a simple kiss on the cheek or hug can recharge someone's batteries after an exhausting day. To not have these experiences for years on end, especially when you so desperately want them, can be painful and disintegrating. And unlike something like reading, whose value is entirely socially constructed, romantic love is, for most people, a basic biological necessity, and as such, being deprived of it can exacerbate or even trigger poor mental health. Self-love, perseverance, and most other healthy traits, cannot be built in isolation. And even if you can build them later, you can never get back all the years you suffered without them.
I'm not saying that they're not necessarily useful, not at all. I mean, I'm making the point that they're used for development of the self, of course it's going to have some use, and of course there's going to be a time and a place when that event is most useful to an individual. The point I'm pushing here is that life isn't just magically over because you haven't experienced this or that or the other. Children who grew up during COVID might have issues with their education in the long run but they aren't completely incapable of getting a job with a high bar of entry, maybe something in STEM for example. People who never learn to read or write, yes they may be incapable of, well, being able to do that, which might affect their job opportunities, and maybe they even end up not being able to do the job they desperately want, but again, life isn't over - there's many jobs out there in many countries where they don't give a rat's ass whether or not you can read or write. If you don't get romantic experience in your teens and early 20s, sure, self-esteem might not build and consequently you might struggle with your mental health during these years if you feel particularly low due to not having these experiences or when having had multiple shit events in your life happen without that safety net to fall back on. At the same time though, you still have, what, 60 years to go? Probably even more than that, to be honest. Yeah, you didn't experience it for 1/4 of your life, but you still have 3/4 to go. Giving up that early on that particular desire is something I can only describe as immature, or naive more accurately.
Just think about it this way; if we experienced this "experience FOMO" towards everything, we would all feel suicidal if our mindset was like yours. You didn't hack into your parent's computer when you were 6-12 and buy Bitcoin and other cryptos so now you have to sit here working to make money, you've missed out on an experience that would have changed your life for the better. You didn't go to Iceland or Spain or France or whatever for a holiday when you were 10 - this would have been an experience that might've changed the perspective of the world for little you, and you can never have that specific experience at that age again. I can't really think of any more examples because I'm tired, but you get the idea. Despite all of this though....you can still make money. You can still go to Iceland or Spain or France. They haven't disappeared as places, as concepts, as activities because you didn't chase them when you were younger. But if you were to assume this defeatist mentality over your missing-out of experiences, then you would've felt absolutely miserable, but both you and me can see that, when you put it like that, down to such specific, retrospectively irrelevant experiences, it just
doesn't matter. Sure, your life would have been more perfect if you experienced them where and when you did, but nothing's perfect. That's just how it is, and that's how it is for
everyone. Even with something more 'important' like romance or learning, they still don't disappear as concepts when you get older. You still learn, and you can still love. There might have been a 'best place' and a 'best time' for it, but there's also a second-best for both as well, and a third, and a fourth...life cannot coexist with perfection. It's as simple as that.
And while this example might not be the exact same, think of the people who enter the prison system after trials where they got it wrong. They're in there 10, 20, 30 years, some even longer, and by the time they come out a good chunk of their life has completely disappeared. Technology is new and baffling. Society has changed to an insane degree; it's almost unrecognisable. The person coming out of prison probably has no money, either. But do you think they just give up and CTB because they missed out on experiences during those 10, 20, 30 years? Of course not, because, despite the amount of things they've lost access to, that they can never get back, there's still so much to do and see. Technology is new and baffling - they best get to learning it and enjoy the luxury that comes with it. Society has changed to an insane degree; it's almost unrecognisable...so they should catch up with society, see what's happened in the last couple decades or so. The person coming out of prison probably has no money...fine, they can go and get a job, or maybe use whatever compensatory funds they received from their wrongful incarceration to do the previous two things. Point is, there are so many more experiences you can, well, experience. Yeah, formative ones probably went out the window, the 'best' ones are behind you, long gone. But there are second-bests and third-bests as I've mentioned, and given your lack of experience with the best, one could argue the second- or third-best times for those experiences are actually the best for you, given how the concept of a best time for an experience is purely theoretical, and something no one can accurately predict.
Then that leads onto - how do you know you would've had a good experience with that at the time? Maybe your first kiss would've been at 16 or 18 or whatever, but what if you weren't in a healthy place then? What if romance and attraction would have only made things worse for you, given how many conflicting things might have been going on in your life? You might guess that the best time would have been at these ages but that's purely theoretical, as I've said. You can never truly know when your best time would have been, it's all just a guess based off of the typical societal 'path', which leads me back to what I was saying originally. There is no set path, no set events where if everything happens at this order, at this time, it's all sunshine and rainbows. That's just not real. Anyone can see that. Society instills this notion of a time when everything should happen into everyone, myself included, as well as you by the looks of it, and it's nigh impossible to remove every trace of that way of thinking, so I don't blame you for thinking about life in that way, as purely pessimistic as it is. You just have to try and remember that
it's not real. None of it is. It's just a guesstimate, nothing else.
To move to your first comment on your thread as a little bit of a closer for this monumental yap:
This is one of those "hard truths" that I've found most people have a lot of trouble accepting, and so if you ever talk about this in real life, they'll get uncomfortable and spout platitudes in response, like "It's never too late!" or "I know x person who didn't do y thing until they were 30 and they turned out fine!" Ostensibly these slogans are supposed to reassure you, but I think in reality they reassure the other person and serve to save them the mental burden of accepting our powerlessness in the face of the inexorable march of time.
This isn't really true in most instances. I find that the way you describe the reassurance as being is only really prevalent in those who hold that same initial pessimistic "What if I did this earlier" style attitude/mentality. Contrary to your belief, most people don't really put too much thought into it. Once in a blue moon, they might go, "I wonder what my life would have been like if I did xyz 5/10 years earlier", but they don't really put any further thought into it because they are sufficiently happy. They don't care. Why bother caring so much about time's marching onward when you're happy as it is? Maybe there was a better time to have done it but you still got it done, and you're still happy with the result - why be so greedy and desire your absolutely perfect life when you're happy with what you got? The answer is that there is no reason to do that, other than if you hold the same mentality that you do. Basically everyone will be happy with it in the end. And then there's the fact that it matters less as you get older. 5, 10, 20 years time, and you'll probably forget what age you even did the first instance of xyz at. It won't matter to you.
The present and the future matter more, why dwell on the past and sacrifice both present and future when it's just straight up unnecessary, and only serves to drag you down more, in some sort of snowball of misery?
