This gem, from Ethan Hawke's mouth to the collective universe's ears, comes to us from Corduroy magazine:

"There's this idea that a person's life is like a staircase… A mistake happens, a lesson is learned, and you're constantly growing and growing until you become older and wiser and then you die…

Life doesn't seem to work that way. I think I believed that it would, that I would try these different things - writing, acting, theater, directing - and somehow it would all make it clear where to go. And instead here I am in the middle of my life, completely lost."

Emphasis ours. Perhaps Reality Bites was a documentary?