There is a particular kind of regret that comes from realizing you were present for your own life but did not fully experience it. You were waiting for something to change. For confidence to arrive. For success to make you feel ready. For the difficult years to end so the “real” years could finally begin.
Roger Waters described that feeling with unusual honesty in a 1982 interview. He said that until he was about 28, he had spent much of his life waiting for his life to start. He imagined himself as a chrysalis that would eventually become a butterfly. Then came a different realization: those years were not preparation for life. They were life itself.
