He not busy being born is busy dying. — Bob Dylan

He not busy being born is busy dying.

Author: Bob Dylan

Insight: Most of us think of "being born" as something that happened once, decades ago. But Dylan is pointing at something stranger: growth itself is what keeps you alive. The moment you stop learning, changing, adapting—the moment you decide you've figured it out—you start calcifying. You become a museum of yourself. This hits differently now than it did in 1964. We're all supposed to stay relevant, keep up with technology, reinvent our careers. That's exhausting. But the alternative isn't rest—it's irrelevance, bitterness, the slow fade of becoming less interesting to yourself. The people who seem vital in their sixties or seventies aren't necessarily the busiest; they're the ones who still ask questions, try new things, admit they were wrong about something last year. The subtly uncomfortable part is that this applies whether you want it to or not. You can't coast into safety. You're either becoming something new or slowly becoming nothing. That's why people often feel most depressed not after failure, but after they achieve stability and realize growth has stopped. The discomfort of learning is actually the feeling of being alive.

Source: It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), 1965