If you’ve realized your dreams, you ask yourself, “Is this it? Is this what I’ve been trying to reach?” And if you’ve failed to realize them (and it tends to be around this time that such discoveries are made), you have to face what the existential psychologist James Bugental called “the nevers”: “I guess that I’m never going to be the head of the firm… never going to have children of my own… never going to be a great writer… never going to be rich… never going to be famous.” For many, this is when they come to terms with the recognition that they have been chasing a carrot on a stick.
