Skip to main content

Aging & Wisdom Quote by Andrew Shue

"When we're young we have a very clear vision of how life is supposed to be, and it all seems very neatly packaged"

About this Quote

Youth is the era of life as a boxed set: clean arcs, clear genres, satisfying finales. Andrew Shue’s line lands because it names a quiet delusion most people don’t recognize until it breaks on them - the belief that adulthood is less a negotiation than a syllabus. “Very clear vision” isn’t just optimism; it’s the confidence that wanting something and deserving it are basically the same claim. And “neatly packaged” conjures consumer logic: life as a product with instructions, a return policy, and minimal mess.

Coming from an actor, the subtext is almost meta. Entertainment trains us to expect structure: characters develop on schedule, love stories resolve, consequences arrive with narrative timing. When you’re young, you’re also auditioning for a role you think exists - the successful adult, the good partner, the interesting person - and assuming the script will appear once you hit the right marks. The quote doesn’t moralize; it’s observational, even gently rueful. It implies that the package isn’t just unrealistic, it’s something we actively assemble out of cultural templates: school as a pipeline, career as a ladder, happiness as a milestone.

The intent feels less like warning and more like a diagnostic for midlife disorientation. If you built your expectations out of tidy packaging, mess reads as failure instead of reality. Shue’s phrasing makes the correction sting without sounding bitter: the problem isn’t that life goes wrong, it’s that we mistake “supposed to be” for an actual map.

Quote Details

TopicYouth
SourceHelp us find the source
CiteCite this Quote

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Shue, Andrew. (2026, January 15). When we're young we have a very clear vision of how life is supposed to be, and it all seems very neatly packaged. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-were-young-we-have-a-very-clear-vision-of-144497/

Chicago Style
Shue, Andrew. "When we're young we have a very clear vision of how life is supposed to be, and it all seems very neatly packaged." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-were-young-we-have-a-very-clear-vision-of-144497/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"When we're young we have a very clear vision of how life is supposed to be, and it all seems very neatly packaged." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-were-young-we-have-a-very-clear-vision-of-144497/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Andrew Add to List
Youth and the Unpacking of Expected Life Scripts
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

USA Flag

Andrew Shue (born February 20, 1967) is a Actor from USA.

30 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

Marcus Aurelius, Soldier
Marcus Aurelius
Friedrich Durrenmatt, Author
Friedrich Durrenmatt
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Writer