F. Scott Fitzgerald is known to have written that "there are no second acts in American lives."
It's a line that makes people scoff, but it's also a misnomer; Fitzgerald wasn't naïve about the ability of people to change (and in fact, the line continues and notes that he was wrong about New York City specifically), and the point that he was making is that Americans exist in a society that's trying to simultaneously look backwards and forwards at the same time. That push and pull of history can make life difficult for anyone, whether you're driving a taxi or laying asphalt or notarizing a car title or throwing a football for the enjoyment of millions of fans.