Serious personal tragedy can compress the middle phase into a very short period of time. Comedy is born where hope dies. Devastating disease or injury, a long jail sentence, a ruinous lawsuit, living through a war, etc. Most of the quick routes to lifelong wisdom are not desirable.

For me it came not long ago (just starting my 40s): A film I was just watching had a great quote: "The universe isn't evil but it sure has a nasty sense of humour: I found the person I should am meant to be with, but I can't be with her"

Something vaguely similar happened to me: I suffered from a very strong cronic IBS-C for 20 years, since my University time. Around January 2022, I found a real cure for this 20 year long ailment (a very specific probiotic strain). I spent a couple of weeks really living amazingly, as I haven't lived in 20 years.

Then, on February I got the Astra Zeneca booster COVID vaccine, and as a result, I got long COVID symptoms and a stroke (Transient ischemic attack), and now I'm on aspirin for the rest of my life, and feeling like shit.

Aaah the universe has a nasty sense of humor indeed.

I'm sorry to hear that. That's why I never got any "boosters" - there's no long-term safety data whatsoever.

I'm curious to hear more about this probiotic?

Which probiotic helped you?

Unfortunately, I don't think you can. I think each phase builds on the prior one; the life experience informing the emotions you feel.

The tragic phase is a result of not living up to the unrealistic expectations one has, and the comedic phase is a result of dealing with those tragic emotions.

You can't skip to wisdom.

Sure you can. Learn from people wiser than yourself. A lot of them have written books.

And there's always Tony Robbins, Jordan Peterson, and a wealth of other self-help types. Picking any system is better than nothing, and gives you context for selecting good ones once you're familiar. Coast on other people's wisdom until you earn your own.

I would hesitate to endorse Robbins. He’s had a litany of sexual abuse claims against him, among other legal problems

I despair at the modern trope of dismissing something of worth due to a person's thoughts/actions in an unrelated area (in modern parlance, "cancelling" someone). It seems like an ad hominem attack to me. How will this trend evolve in the future? Will the works of people like Beethoven, da Vinci, Einstein be cancelled due to them being meat eaters? (Substitute someone of equal stature if the people listed are actually vegetarians)

Life wisdom would seem to be an area where you should be wary of following advice from serial sex abusers... (I know nothing of Robbins, I just wanted to discuss the general heuristic).

I would encourage you to read at least the Wikipedia page of Robbins. I’m no fan of cancel culture either, but he doesn’t seem like a good person or someone I’d take advice from.

> in an unrelated area

But what his area? If it's living a successful, balanced life like himself, then his person problems are relevant to his self-help franchise.

Now that’s moral relativism gone amuck.

true words spoken by a false man, makes them false.

If a part of person is false, doesnt mean everything is false. If you cheat on your wife doesn't mean you never loved her. Mistakes are part of being human.

Well, no. That's what thinking is for. To separate words from their source and consider them for their content. A reading of Principia Mathematica by Hitler doesn't tarnish or invalidate the words in any way. Context matters.

Basing judgment on the source of an idea isn't a perfect tool for navigating life. If someone is telling you lots of true things but in a way to compromise you, or to sell you something, or to get you to join a cult, then who that person is provides valuable context.

If you want a system, Peterson has a ready-made and inoffensive set of rules to play off of. It has a built in technique to improve on the rules that doesn't compromise your ability to think about new material (whereas scientology or other religious systems cripple you deliberately.) Identifying a collection of true things is the point, and then looking for good faith operators willing to share their model of successful behavior.

Robbins is a typical self help guy, and the value is there, but to me it's been most useful as a baseline against which to measure other systems. Robbins represents the line of hucksterism for me, where if you're playing with those ideas and presentation techniques you might not be legitimate. I think he's mostly just over that line on the side of authentic, but he often falls short.

Peterson is a disheveled, drug addicted, religious nut. He doesn't have anything to teach anyone.

Robbins is a sex predator.

Not role models, not teachers.

Poison the milk, poison the ghee.

Why would you want to skip? To prove your power :)? A bit of irony

You can experience heroic drama, tragedy, and comedy all at the same time or all within the same day. Just look for them as they happen. Or think back to what you did yesterday and interpret what you did from the perspective of each of these stages.

Maybe you are closer to it than you realise. I don't think there are age limits to any of this stuff. A decade of life for one man, is but a Tuesday of another.

IMO it would be something like not trying to skip anything. Really internalizing and enjoying the folly of youth as it happens.

Should you? Can you?

Ah, the sudden school vs the gradual school. The debate lingers (see siblings).

Just do it (tm).

Skipping directly just makes you a clown.