Here’s an extraordinary passage from Martin MacInnes’s exceptional and recent novel, In Ascension (2023), that hopefully moves you to pay it the time it deserves:

So many times I had identified errors — in my work and in my relationships — stemming from the original mistake of too many assumptions, of predicting rather than perceiving the world and seeing something that wasn’t really there. I noticed this as I got older. Age was, among so many other things, the realisation that you couldn’t correct this, that the pursuit wasn’t meaningful, there was no perfect clean reality on either side. You’re flawed, and the world you see corresponds to these flaws. Weaknesses define you, drive new and original strategies to cover them, and they make you who you are. You don’t exist without them. Correcting the errors — seeing perfectly and objectively — is neither desirable nor possible.

Wisdom often gets by on a quip or a rhyme—an inwardly revolving cute and all too neat parable—but this, this is a complete thought. It’s devastating—and, it’s true.