Wit & Attitude Quote by Neil Finn

Neil Finn’s line lands because it refuses the easy victory lap embedded in most “I’m less anxious now” narratives. He gives you the first half like a self-help before-and-after, then undercuts it with a shrug of realism: maybe nothing got cured; maybe the brain just upgraded its menu. That pivot is the joke, but it’s also the coping strategy. Humor becomes a pressure valve, a way of admitting vulnerability without asking for applause.

The phrase “stupid things” is doing sly work. It’s not really about the things; it’s about the disproportion between event and emotional response. Calling them “stupid” isn’t cruelty toward the self so much as a reclamation of scale: anxiety inflates, adulthood deflates. Yet Finn won’t pretend maturity is enlightenment. “More complicated stupid things” suggests the anxiety doesn’t disappear, it professionalizes. You trade adolescent catastrophes for adult ones: mortgages, careers, relationships, reputations - higher stakes, better vocabulary, same nervous system.

As a musician, Finn is steeped in the public myth of the tortured, sensitive artist. This line quietly resists that romantic branding. He’s not selling pain as authenticity; he’s normalizing the messy continuity of being a person over decades. The subtext is oddly comforting: progress can look like swapping one set of irrational worries for another, and that still counts as living, adapting, staying in motion. The laugh isn’t dismissive; it’s recognition.