n.
a quiet jolt of recognition that it’s time to become a better version of yourself, sensing that all the strategies that brought you this far are no longer working—that it’s not enough anymore to be cute or nice or righteous or tough—as if you’ve now entered a new phase in the game of life, moving forward with a completely different token.
Dutch puntstuk, railway frog, which is the part of a railway switch where two rails intersect. Sometimes you can feel a little kick when your train passes over it, as if the world is trying to signal you’re missing a turn, having traveled too far on the same old track.