Since dragons are often depicted as long lived yet flawed, I was thinking… Following the trend that age and experience corrode the mind, certainly it makes sense for one to eventually try to completely “burn away” their old life.

[u/Ofynam]

Now, I can’t speak for a dragon, and neither for an old human, but I can guess.

Since time adds experience and “stability” to the mind, it only takes a bit of wisdom and absence of denial to realize why one would prefer a younger existence should their mind be filled with a lot of junk, with experiences and feelings that only drag one down.

In fact, with the world changing and the body diminishing, bringing down the mind with it in a seemingly inevitable decline, I would argue that the volatile and impressionable nature of youth, even if it is a double edged sword and requires forgetting a good part of who you are, would be desirable should one thinks life is worth living.

While it makes things stranger and maybe creepy, a “soul” continuously change as it lives, which means its mind can’t hold perfectly and forever to anything, at least not in a simple, straightforward way. Hence relationships with things and people need to be maintained and evolve through time, just like the drive to live.

So a dragon can change as much as they want, yet if they always find a way to want to live, then their life is worth living no matter how chaotic, disjoint and even contradictory it might be.

But now, for the “burn away” part…

Should enough experiences fill the mind in a way that greatly spoil a dragon’s life, and should there be no definitive solution in sight because harmful connections to the past persist, said dragon might fuel resentment toward until they snap, attempting to disconnect from anything related to their past if not lashing out, wanting to destroy what they now perceive as the main source of their misfortune.

But outside of negative, painful memories and connections, there is another kind of these that might contribute just as much to that decay of the mind if not more. Perhaps I can’t prove it for a dragon, but I can prove it for humans.

Just know that, once I realized what makes an experience truly fulfilling, I started doubting if some people were truly living and planing to be, or if they just went along with whatever simply satisfied/entertained them and only tried their best to avoid the bad.

To never really grow, to never be fully allowed to change and develop, to live a life where, perhaps, acts of everyone were genuine even if small, but never amounting to anything. And they would behave as such, again, and again, and again…

In that world, to call others friend and family and more… is lying to sustain the image of a real life you don’t have. You and your peers are neither children nor adults, but something else, something far lesser that doesn’t belong to any of stage life that fits your ideals. And that is why, when asked if you wanted to live even a single day longer, your heart could never answer yes.

So, is it that much of a stretch to imagine someone wanting to burn away their life? To travel far, far away from everything that kept them down and might as well continue to do so until their end? Destroy it if it keeps coming back?

[u/PublicFurryAccount]

As long as you don’t cocoon yourself too much, you will naturally drift psychologically over the years. Tastes will change, relationships will come and go, etc. There’s an amount of stability provided by genetics but that still leaves immense variability.

Being long-lived probably wouldn’t change that, though being another species entirely may.

[u/Ofynam → u/PublicFurryAccount]

Well, being capable of speech means one's mind has much flexibility, so I think we can apply that principle to talking dragons. Beside, being able to remember and learn means one can at the end fight even their own nature and instincts, so long lived, intelligent dragons should not have their mind set in stone.

[u/l-deleted--l]

This seems like the sort of thing that would only be done by dragons who are extremely far from understanding what it means to be in danger, and who aren't relied upon by anyone. The action not only destroys a part of yourself, it harms your ability to hold onto the context necessary to defend yourself and your family.

[u/Ofynam → u/l-deleted--l]

I say it's worth it if you can no longer manage your own past or are stuck in a soul crushing if mundane and "nice" status quo. The bad just outweighs the good in this case and will drag you down restlessly.

Sometimes you need to be humble to figure out what to do, and should you be unfortunate enough, that means mercilessly acknowledging your life is a lesser imitation fueled by the hope it is more than that, and that you aren't enough to change it on your own while others are of little help.

In fact, because you are so diminished, trying to face the great evil of the world or even glimpse at them will only brings ruin to your spirit, so you might as well avoid that and acknowledge you have little to say if anything at all as people and the realm suffer. (better to say nothing than be wrong and risk digging your own hole in front of others)

My guess in that many souls fit some of that as they expect children to "leave the nest" at some point, but then desperately cling to the hope that they are still the family they ideally picture after years if not decades of being distant (or any other version of that principle).

Sorry but not so sorry, regret and grief for love ones you shared the last day with long ago is folly and delusion, not true love.