My impression of this song (and I played it at least four times while I was entering orders in the pharmacy) is that it could represent the nostalgia of an older person who'd 'loved and lost' and 'lost and loved' etc. When a person is young, even as a teen and has achieved a certain amount of charisma, and feels others think they're 'hot stuff', then they might have a certain recklessness in their actions, and sometimes they luck out and don't get permanently damaged, in their interactions with others, or business achievements, or attaining personal goals. I'm thinking of my sister, whose passion was mountain climbing and she held three jobs as a state biologist, ski patrol, and worked at REI to get a discount on her outdoor equipment, and managed to juggle all this and go on weekend expeditions (and everyone worried that she was burning the candle at both ends) until she died on a mountain in a snowstorm, and I'm thinking of my son whose star was rising, high IQ, motivated in learning all he could, scholastic achiever in math, logic, interpretation, as well as an extremely talented musician (violin, piano), won a scholarship to a prestigious school in math and science, and in his first year had a psychotic break and eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. After ten years and successful therapy is recovering his 'being' and personality, but as an onlooker, I wonder how much of his creativity and motivation to 'succeed in the estimate of others' still he might feel he's lost.