The difference between insanity and genius is success
“The difference between insanity and genius is success.”
–Bruce Feirstein
When you stop and think about it, life is a drug. At some point, the best experiences are behind you. Every new experience is measured against not only the actual past but your perception of it as well. Think about your first kiss. Go ahead, take a minute. I’ll wait.
What do you remember? For me, it happened in a darken hallway in my high school near the vending machines. I remember the days leading up to it I talked with several of her friends to make sure I was doing the right thing. The entire time, I was so nervous I was exploding and imploding all at the same time. Then the moment arrives and everything else falls away. Nothing else matters and the two of us shared that experience. In cliche phrasing, it was magical. In reality, it was a couple of inexperienced kids each working up the courage for their first kiss. They were taking one of life’s many “hits”.
Now think about your second kiss. What do you remember? I challenge that you probably have no idea what you were thinking at that moment. As soon as you finished your first hit of life, the second and third (and more) hits were inconsequential. I’ll even allow your first kiss with a new person to substitute. I’ll wager nearly anything that you didn’t have the same experience as your true first kiss. There may be many other first kisses with new people, but none of them will match the intensity and terror of the very first one.
Substitute any of life’s repetitive experiences and the same pattern holds true. Jump out of a plane? The first one is still more exhilarating than the second. The hit of adrenaline you get from it doesn’t quite peak to the same level as the first time. Your tolerance builds and you can’t quite hit that same level of thrill/euphoria/whatever. Whether that is due to physical tolerance or just the expectation of what an experience should produce is hard to guess at. Our minds keep track of what the experience made us feel and over time it distorts those experiences into unobtainable recreations.
I think that’s what makes us some people extreme thrill seekers. They’ve become “life addicts”. They’re tying to attain that same level they had before so they need bigger and badder “drugs” to get there. But there’s a point in your life when nothing will get you there. For most people, I wager that it’s somewhere in their mid-30’s. It’s different for everyone, of course, but it happens at some point. Looking at suicide rates for the past 15 years, there is a statistically significant jump after age 25. And it only increases with each age bracket. Now, correlation isn’t causation. There are obviously more intricate reasons for suicide than my theory. But I have to believe that it’s a factor. A someone who has entered their 30’s, I want desperately to be wrong. (Anyone that knows me is aware of my own difficult past and the very real actions of some of those close to me. Needless to say, I don’t take this topic lightly.)
In the end, I guess I really don’t know where I’m going with this. When I started this, I had hoped it would reveal a long standing hidden truth about why people leave us. Instead, all I have is a vague new thought that makes me kind of sad. Maybe when we start to see the signs of the “tolerance of life” we can harken back to this theory and help our friends through the tough times.