Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being.
You must never believe everything they say about a person. Generally speaking, most of it will be lies, half-truths at best.
You can step in the same river but the water will always be new.
The great thing about writing compared to life is getting to tie things up.
(although anyone with half a brain must surely be mired in existential gloom all the time)
My father was an autodidact. It wasn't a middle-class house. Shopkeepers are aspirant. He paid for me to go to private school. He was denied an education - he had a horrible childhood. He got a place at a grammar school and wasn't allowed to go.