Does anyone remember back when they earned their private pilot certificate, the examiner saying something along the lines of: "Think of this as your license to learn..."

When I got my CFI cert (after the private, after the instrument rating, after the commercial cert, after the ME add on) after a few hundred hours of CFI flights, I though to myself, wow, I didn't realize how much more I had, and still have, to learn!

Passing a 121 ride is certainly a big achievement. However, it doesn't mean you don't have room to keep on learning, and learn a lot lot lot more. Most of the learning a pilot has to do is from real world experience. The classroom stuff is there just to give you a framework through which to understand the experiences you have out in the real world. I know that I still have plenty of room to learn more.

So, in actuality, the 121 ride you have at 1000 hours is NOT the same as the 121 ride you have at 3000 hours, or 5000 or etc. The boxes on the paper might be the same, but you are a different, more experienced pilot at each one.