The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality.
The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal.
But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them.
> But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy
I think this is the secret to living well. Find the humor, find the positives, be jolly even in difficult circumstances because life is short, so why not laugh as much as possible? https://moviewise.substack.com/p/facing-lifes-difficulties
We are very rarely the main character in the various stories that would get written about the time we are alive by an omniscient narrator. Most of our lives are much too boring to hold the reader's attention.
knowing this, should we do intentionally lift-and-coast? Get out of the rat-race?
Going to a medical test center in America is insightful. Old folks who drive alone to get tests they know the results to, to take prescription drugs they know don't work. Tax money and or insurance is supporting this right?
Second on John Williams quotes as his novels were my favorite.
I just want to mention that in Williams original narratives he is far from being sarcastic/playing wits or suggesting life meaninglessness. Instead, it is in the sense of indifference (neither positive nor negative).
If you plan to read his novels, I suggest reading both Stoner and Augustus and explore their interlacing
Fatalism. Likely? that we're ants in an antfarm in which the course of every sand-grain, every ant, every molecule in the zephers is decided?
Observation destroyed that deist clockwork universe. There's no comedy in the catastrophic death of 100,000 people, in one man starving in the midst of plenty. We can do better, we can care for and feed and respect one another, as well as the worms. That's meaning we're empowered to create. Not for laughs but smiles. However humble, that is by far the more interesting experiment. And then when our moving finger moves on, no 'Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line.'
Reality does surprise me now and then by reifying a meme I laughed at a few years ago. Usually the physical manifestation is less funny than the original meme though.
I think it was all related to the 2016 US election which is when those 4chan chaos magicians joined forces to elect ‘orange Pepe bad’ to troll normies.
Serious personal tragedy can compress the middle phase into a very short period of time. Comedy is born where hope dies. Devastating disease or injury, a long jail sentence, a ruinous lawsuit, living through a war, etc. Most of the quick routes to lifelong wisdom are not desirable.
For me it came not long ago (just starting my 40s): A film I was just watching had a great quote: "The universe isn't evil but it sure has a nasty sense of humour: I found the person I should am meant to be with, but I can't be with her"
Something vaguely similar happened to me: I suffered from a very strong cronic IBS-C for 20 years, since my University time. Around January 2022, I found a real cure for this 20 year long ailment (a very specific probiotic strain). I spent a couple of weeks really living amazingly, as I haven't lived in 20 years.
Then, on February I got the Astra Zeneca booster COVID vaccine, and as a result, I got long COVID symptoms and a stroke (Transient ischemic attack), and now I'm on aspirin for the rest of my life, and feeling like shit.
Aaah the universe has a nasty sense of humor indeed.
Unfortunately, I don't think you can. I think each phase builds on the prior one; the life experience informing the emotions you feel.
The tragic phase is a result of not living up to the unrealistic expectations one has, and the comedic phase is a result of dealing with those tragic emotions.
And there's always Tony Robbins, Jordan Peterson, and a wealth of other self-help types. Picking any system is better than nothing, and gives you context for selecting good ones once you're familiar. Coast on other people's wisdom until you earn your own.
I despair at the modern trope of dismissing something of worth due to a person's thoughts/actions in an unrelated area (in modern parlance, "cancelling" someone). It seems like an ad hominem attack to me. How will this trend evolve in the future? Will the works of people like Beethoven, da Vinci, Einstein be cancelled due to them being meat eaters? (Substitute someone of equal stature if the people listed are actually vegetarians)
Life wisdom would seem to be an area where you should be wary of following advice from serial sex abusers... (I know nothing of Robbins, I just wanted to discuss the general heuristic).
I would encourage you to read at least the Wikipedia page of Robbins. I’m no fan of cancel culture either, but he doesn’t seem like a good person or someone I’d take advice from.
If a part of person is false, doesnt mean everything is false. If you cheat on your wife doesn't mean you never loved her. Mistakes are part of being human.
Well, no. That's what thinking is for. To separate words from their source and consider them for their content. A reading of Principia Mathematica by Hitler doesn't tarnish or invalidate the words in any way. Context matters.
Basing judgment on the source of an idea isn't a perfect tool for navigating life. If someone is telling you lots of true things but in a way to compromise you, or to sell you something, or to get you to join a cult, then who that person is provides valuable context.
If you want a system, Peterson has a ready-made and inoffensive set of rules to play off of. It has a built in technique to improve on the rules that doesn't compromise your ability to think about new material (whereas scientology or other religious systems cripple you deliberately.) Identifying a collection of true things is the point, and then looking for good faith operators willing to share their model of successful behavior.
Robbins is a typical self help guy, and the value is there, but to me it's been most useful as a baseline against which to measure other systems. Robbins represents the line of hucksterism for me, where if you're playing with those ideas and presentation techniques you might not be legitimate. I think he's mostly just over that line on the side of authentic, but he often falls short.
You can experience heroic drama, tragedy, and comedy all at the same time or all within the same day. Just look for them as they happen. Or think back to what you did yesterday and interpret what you did from the perspective of each of these stages.
Maybe you are closer to it than you realise. I don't think there are age limits to any of this stuff. A decade of life for one man, is but a Tuesday of another.
This is always a tough subject for me because everyone seems to have at least an idea of what they want to achieve.
When I was younger I had these silly dreams of moving to another country, getting married, becoming a programmer to make games, have my own company and get rich (haha).
I did become a programmer and got married, but never left the country or became rich. Now on my 30s I know how limited my options are.
I could focus on my craft. But I don't have the same drive as before.
I could try to progress my career, but I'm already earning good money and I know to earn more I'd have to either start job hopping or study some leetcode to get into a FAANG.
I could try to focus on my hobbies, but you realize very quickly that to get good at anything, you need hundreds/thousands of hours.
I could try to start a company, but I know that's extremely hard to do and also requires a shit-ton of luck to work out.
After all that, I realize that I have no real objectives to strive for. Some of the dreams I realized and they weren't that satisfying. Some I discovered were not worth pursuing.
And now what?
In the end, I'm just a blip in the universe and when I'm gone it will be unchanged, the same as if I had never existed. Yet we focus on these artificial goals set by childish dreams, society or life events.
> I could try to focus on my hobbies, but you realize very quickly that to get good at anything, you need hundreds/thousands of hours.
The point of hobbies is not "getting good at them". It's enjoying them for their own sake. Otherwise they turn into ... work.
> I'm just a blip in the universe and when I'm gone it will be unchanged, the same as if I had never existed.
Yes. The Universe doesn't expect or have any special plans for you.
But hey, that is not that bad. Consider the opposite. The Whole universe having a plan for you. The whole infinite Cosmos. Just thinking about you and having a plan for you.
I don't know about you. But it would give me a panic attack.
It's ok that the Universe doesn't have a plan for you. This frees you to assign your life whatever meaning you want - and to change it at any point! You can also feel gratified about fulfilling your self-assigned potential or feel extremely disapointed if you did not. Or, change them again. Some hold that the secret to happiness is having the right expectations about oneself.
> The point of hobbies is not "getting good at them". It's enjoying them for their own sake. Otherwise they turn into ... work.
For some of us, the point of almost any endeavor in life is to be “good” at them. That isn’t even to say you can’t enjoy it, or you have to feel anxious about whether you’re good enough at it. The point is the go through the process of becoming good at the things you choose to do because we acknowledge that there is something beautiful and admirable about expertise.
Someone who feels dejected — because he can’t see the reason in doing something unless he’s already hit the requisite hours to be ‘good’ at it — probably needs to hear that he needs to unlearn whatever makes him feel bad about being ‘bad’ at the start, instead of hearing that it’s okay to suck at something as long as he enjoys it.
Otherwise, all you’re doing is trading one form of anxiety for another (I must be good at X vs. I must feel good about X), and he’s still going to notice that he sucks at the thing (playing guitar, golfing, whatever) and find difficulty enjoying it from there.
But it _is_ OK to suck at something as long as you enjoy it.
What does "suck" even mean in this context? A composer might still "suck" if they compared themselves to Johann Sebastian Bach, but is that the most important question in the scheme of things?
The one thing we can all become experts at is being ourselves. Nobody in the world, in fact, can do it better. I think it's best to focus on that.
The anxiety you're describing, I think, is endemic in modern society, especially among the professional class. Whether or not we choose to adopt it is up to us.
++ I suck at rollerblading. I look goofy, I can't do any fun tricks, and it's not even practical for commuting. I love it all the same because it feels good and it's a nice quiet activity I can do while listening to music to just decompress.
I disagree on the hobbies I like trying to get to excel on the ones that stick and then suddenly. Once I prove I can do it I relaxed. For example on photography went on the competition cycle and ended with some winners and with one picture on a good museum for awhile.
After that the pressure was off and now I just do dog photo's for instagram from the dog park :)
>The point of hobbies is not "getting good at them". It's enjoying them for their own sake. Otherwise they turn into ... work.
I fall into this pitfall a lot, whether it be working on small personal projects or playing a video game. I think a large part of it comes down to comparing yourself to others.
I took up drawing a year ago and it was completely new to me, as well as the first hobby in a while I went into without caring how well I did. And as a result it was fun and relaxing. A few months ago I started looking at other artists and their work and started comparing my work to theirs. And guess what, I began feeling like drawing was a chore or work.
More and more I am starting to believe the phrase 'Comparison is the thief of all joy'. I try to remind myself of this when I notice that I'm comparing myself to others.
If you haven't already, I highly suggest making a child if you can. It seems to snap all of this into focus - it did for me anyway.
I mean I still have a ton of existential dread and still often wonder what the point is but I do find purpose in providing for my family and trying to raise a human that can do good - maybe better than me and the author of that NYer piece :D.
It's sad that this comment got downvoted. There's hundreds of millions of years of evolution that codifies "you should have children" into our genes, and it's not hard to see that this has something to do with how middle age can feel meaningless if you don't. Just because it's difficult and/or not fashionable to have kids these days, doesn't mean those biological imperatives aren't still there, subtly affecting your thoughts.
I would rather be sad than bring children into this world just for my own selfish reasons. Not to forget the fact that how we are polluting the planet and not doing enough to counter climate change, there's a good chance life is gonna be tougher for upcoming generations.
This line of thinking exterminates itself. It is better to have kids and raise them to actually take care of the world around them, otherwise the sum total of future culture will be shaped by people that don't care about that.
> The point of hobbies is not "getting good at them". It's enjoying them for their own sake. Otherwise they turn into ... work.
Put like this, it is actually mind blowing and betraying the belief of my whole life.
To me, hobbies are activities that you enjoy so much you eventually get good at. My definition of talent is the ability to persistently and consistently improve yourself in a field. This definition includes the ability to efficiently obtain positive dopamine feedback to continue training and effectively curb burnout.
I really wished I can say I am talented, both in my works and my hobbies. But maybe, just maybe. Getting good is not really important after all.
(And about work: Maybe getting good at work and advancing career is also not the point? What is work anyway? Contributing to society in exchange of being let alive? Lol)
> I think his point is that being really bad at something is no fun
Children are terrible at everything but they have a lot of fun anyway. Clearly it is possible, which makes this a mindset issue. Thankfully, that is within your power to change. Start having fun today :)
Looks like you're getting downvoted maybe because of the mean spirit of your comment, but your idea is probably held by many, to which I say:
Therapy can be such a powerful force for self-discovery and mental well-being. To think that believing a given philosophical statement can have the same effect as deep inner work is to completely write off the power of therapy. I would highly recommend it for anyone who has grown up in less-than-ideal social systems (pretty much all of us) and who wants to improve their life.
I think that ship has sailed. Even the word "therapy" has lost all meaning, just like "mental health" and we are all just conditioned to believe that the only way to achieve anything is through group think and therapy.
If you're fucked up, try drugs, (preferably the _legal_ kind, but certain herbs work really well) before you try therapy. Therapy is expensive for a reason; it's 50% a scam.
Your implication that anything expensive is closer to a scam is of course nonsense. An MRI is very expensive, but it is not a scam. An oncologist is expensive, they are not a scam. Therapy is expensive and it is not a scam (because it works for most people, most of the time).
Colloquially "therapy" tends to refer to just talk-therapy. It's useful to the extent that talking out your issues with someone is useful, but at $100/h.
There are forms of therapy as interventions that are generally shown to be effective according to research (e.g. CBT and variants), and I think we'd be rid of a lot of confusion by better distinguishing one therapy from another.
You are describing a paid friend. That is indeed vapid and baseless. Therapy is something you seek for meaningful long-term change in an area of your life that you see as an impediment to living. All health care is (or should be) focused on that question: What do you see as a problem. If your therapist just wants to sit down to listen to you vent for an hour and asks for $100 for it, find a new therapist. Preferably one that went to school.
I am describing what it indeed often becomes, but even clients who describe it as such may still care to pay for the privilege. Ethics aside there's no rigorous standardized approach for general psychotherapy. A therapist can draw from any direction.
If seeing a therapist is to be maintained indefinitely, then it's not triggering meaningful long-term change. You can't chalk up a problem of this scale to a matter of education.
> You can't chalk up a problem of this scale to a matter of education.
Why can't I do that? It seems to me that if different countries have much better generalised psychotherapy results, I can absolutely ascribe that difference to education.
you might be right. But AFAIK, Therapy is a mostly USA thing. Most cultures don't do it. You'd probably say they don't because they are not yet enlightened. I think they'd probably have a different pov
>Therapy is a mostly USA thing. Most cultures don't do it.
First off, that's a bold statement that I need something to back it up, unless it's just your opinion.
For the sake of argument, let's say it is true, though. Is the more likely reason that there are different societal pressures, expectations, and outlets inherent in different cultures, causing different mental health outcomes and needs?
Why? It's just a simple statement of (alleged) fact. Like, say, "Shaker furniture isn't really a thing in Australia"; that can be true or false, but WTF is particularly "bold" about it?
> that I need something to back it up,
Why? That assumes everyone having regular therapy is the default and not having it is the weird exception. What's to say it isn't the other way around, so you are the one who needs to back up their statement?
But OK, let me disabuse you of your misconception: The only place I've ever heard of people undergoing years-long regular psychotherapy are pop-cultural references, film and TV... American film and TV. I get my films and TV perhaps mostly from Scandinavia, Germany and Britain, but as I'm sure you know America exerts a huge pop culture pressure in Europe. But in none of that is "I can't on Thursday afternoon, that's when I see my shrink" a cliché like it is in American stuff. (Not to forget, as late as the 1990s that whole trope was used self-ironically in at least one but I think several films by Woody Allen, making fun of his own neuroticism -- because back then it still wasn't the norm in America either.)
Needless to say, I've never come across the phenomenon in real life either, in any of the Northern European countries I more-or-less regularly frequent. You'd think if it was even remotely normal here I'd have come across a remark like "X couldn't join us today because of their regular therapy session" at least once in the last four decades, but I haven't.
> unless it's just your opinion.
It's a claim of fact, provable or disprovable; it literally can't be an "opinion". And, as per the above, all evidence I've ever seen strongly points towards the statement being true.
> For the sake of argument, let's say it is true, though.
Nah, not "for the sake of argument". Let's say it's true because it is.
> Is the more likely reason that there are different societal pressures, expectations, and outlets inherent in different cultures, causing different mental health outcomes and needs?
Yeah, sure. Mainly, AFAICT, because seeing your shrink once or twice a week like you see your barber every few weeks isn't a fashion accessory necessary for your status in the rest of the world like it seems to be for the American (upper?) middle class. Which IMO seems to indicate that the societal pressures, expectations, and outlets inherent in most other cultures are healthier than those of the American one. HTH!
If therapy is mostly a USA thing why does ICD exist as a completely separate diagnostics structure vs DSM? Why are there huge studies and money towards culture specific mental illnesses and phenomenon that doesn’t exist in the USA entirely?
I think they were implying that if they are horrified that the universe doesn't have a plan for them that therapy could help relieve them of that pain.
Taking therapy does not mean that the person failed to realize his dreams. Successful and unsuccessful people both might feel the need to therapy at some point in their life.
It's this kind of attitude that turns a lot of us off the field. When I hear an absolutist statement focused on ingroup versus outgroup I feel an immediate revulsion for the memeplex producing it. To be optimistically curious towards something that other people find brings them mental and emotional stability I need to see some acknowledgement that they have not tried and are therefore not qualified to dismiss every alternative.
This happens to everyone in their 30s. You realize that "dying someday" -- which seemed like a big distant hypothetical when you were a kid -- is actually a thing that will happen on a timescale you can reason about. Your career gets hard and you don't really know the point of it. It takes a while to get over it.
Then you hit your 40s and you realize that since you're going to die anyway, why waste the time and die bored and mediocre? So you start appreciating things and choosing to do stuff that interests you, whatever that is.
YMMV obviously and N=1. But unless you have a terminal disease "I've hit 30 and my life is basically over" is just BS you're telling yourself.
Well into my early 30's now, and can identify a fair bit with this, especially the "dying someday" being an actual time that will happen. Whilst it isn't massively interfering with my life, I do hope some of that dread and sadness stops popping up. It all started during lockdowns so might be to do with feeling like missing things.
One thing that has changed is how things seem more transitory, instead of something being THE thing, it's just the thing here and now, and it will all change before long. Which whilst it always made sense, I never really internalised it.
So is this the famous mid-life crisis everyone talks about?
I never assumed this was it because I don't explicitly think about mortality all that much. I don't particularly mind that I'm going to die.
I also haven't bought a Harley or have the will to do anything of the sorts.
Guess I just have to figure out how to come out of it. It's been a slog and right now I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, hehe.
> So is this the famous mid-life crisis everyone talks about?
It sure sounds like it. Regarding "buying a Harley" I think that can act as a shorthand for "realizing life is short and doing something for yourself now that you have the means and while you can enjoy it", which is a good idea in my opinion.
Oh, life is far too short for a Harley. Buy a Ducati or something. ;)
No seriously though the other reason 35-year-olds buy a motorcycle or convertible or similar pleasure vehicle is that they actually can afford it, unlike new grads just out of school? (I differentiate the pleasure vehicle from the utility vehicle; if you buy a little 125cc motorcycle as a car-alternative for zooming around town that's quite different than the speed machines, or the massive touring motorcycles that get SUV-grade gas mileage.)
Anyway, this is one of the positive parts of middle age — maybe you're not actually rich, but you're usually much better off then you were in your twenties, might have a good start on a home or a retirement, and can afford a few personal luxuries, or children.
In earlier decades, the mid-life crisis years were likely also about the time most parents' kids had either just left the house, or would very soon. If you have a kid at 20, they're (hopefully) leaving at 38....
> If you have a kid at 20, they're (hopefully) leaving at 38....
The "(hopefully)" is interesting! Living in an Arabic country and having many Mediterranean colleagues I recently started to appreciate that different cultures have a very different point of view on when kids should leave their parents house. For them it is perfectly normal to stay with their parents until the age of 25-30, while e.g. in Germany this would be considered quite weird already.
Midlife crisis is when you realize that 'midlife crisis' was a lie and there's nothing 'mid' about it, and that you have only 10-20 more years left of denying that you are mortal.
I don't mind dying really and I am in my 40s and haven't accomplished much of what I wanted. However, my life is getting better and better. Better job, better pay, working from home, got a few cats that are amazing for stress and bought a new place for me. As I love to learn new things everyday, life is just getting better and better.
I speak only for myself, but the closest thing I've felt to a 'mid-life crisis' (I'm 48 now) is more of a realization that there are a number of life choices that I can no longer make because they simply aren't available to someone at my stage in life. If I dwell on them, I feel a bit sad. I suspect some people try to grab something that serves as a talisman of those lost opportunities and cling to it for a bit, and this is the manifestation of their mid-life crisis.
>"I've hit 30 and my life is basically over" is just BS you're telling yourself.
I wouldnt categorize my internal struggles this way. Because I have already hit this point (below) despite being in my mid 30's now.
>you realize that since you're going to die anyway, why waste the time and die bored and mediocre?
That said, the struggle I find is its all a sliding scale. That I am butting up against realistic time limits.
That pushing more here (ie: career) means i have to sacrifice something else or re-prioritize a hobby, family, etc. And I have a good equilibrium. So how do i do it while no upsetting that and maintaining the things that keep me grounded and from burning out.
Ultimately i KNOW patience and waiting for the right time is probably the right answer. But life happens, and a buddy of mine, same age and kids and all just passed, and it again will make you reconsider perspective (for me, on several different "planes".)
One thing i have realized is that many that are very successful in a traditional sense, dont always have the best equilibrium and have achieved that at a cost. And I am not sure if thats a cost im willing to risk.
Definitely have been struggling with stuff along these lines since my late 20s or so. It's been kind of like a revelation-onion, slowly peeling back the layers of expectations from myself and from others and realizing "Hey maybe I don't have to try to keep up with the media that everyone else is watching," and "Oh, if I want I really can pursue <obscure hobby>!" and developing into "You know, maybe this managerial track really isn't for me and focusing on developing into an effective senior IC would be more satisfying" and "Screw it, I'm sick of living in this area with its traffic and its noise; time to see whether my job will support me as full-time remote or find one that will, and find a house in the midwest"
Given this trajectory it seems like there's maybe a risk that I'll end up as a hermit in the woods... but would that be so bad, if I were an extremely fulfilled and satisfied hermit?
Best of luck with that! I'm a little too close to 45 for that to be likely to work for me, but in the meantime I am pursuing working arrangements that are more sustainable and fulfilling!
I was diagnosed with cancer at 30 and the initial prognosis wasn't great. Turns out it wasn't that bad and I easily beat it but it certainly changed my view on life. My 30's have been great. I get a lot of satisfaction from my family, my social life, my work, etc. I've made peace with where my life is at and I feel like I have control (to a degree) on where it's going.
You (and I) are incredibly fortunate. We have our basic needs taken care of. We have more than that. There are many, many, people in the world who have problems that you can help solve. That could be - spending time with a lonely elderly person, volunteering with the homeless, building a website for a charity that can't afford to pay for a great one, building a startup that solves a problem for people... teach someone a skill. It can be anything.
Live to help other people. They need you. If you don't get much out of it - don't worry, they will. So if you're not particularly bothered about what you do, go help them. The world is full of important problems and people that need help, there's a vast number of things to work on that will make a difference to other people.
It's noble, but for me it's once again... pointless.
I don't have the money or power to enact any meaningful change. I can give my time or some money to others, but I'm not really fixing anything. I'm just drying ice.
Maybe I'm not selfless enough? I've never tried anything like that, so that's at least something new. Might give it a try
Is it possible you’re setting your threshold for meaningful change to high?
I have friends that have made it their life’s work to get their city to install more bike lanes. They’ve been pushing for a decade and the city has installed a few lanes in particularly dangerous places. They have likely saved a bikers life.
I have friends that volunteer at a crisis center and all they do is talk with people who need help. They aren’t making big changes but are positively impacting the lives of people around them.
There are so many meaningful ways to improve the world around you that don’t require you to have millions of dollars or to go into politics.
Yeah I think this is a problem with modern life. Our ancestors knew only of their surroundings and their tribe. Helping someone near you was obviously meaningful.
Now the scale that our minds grapple with is infinite: We know we’re a tiny part of an infinite universe, our tribe is billions of people.
My solution is focus. Reduce the scale of your concern to where you can have an impact. You can certainly have an impact on the people around you. If that doesn’t seem worthwhile, try to figure out why the people you’re close to matter so little to you.
> You can certainly have an impact on the people around you. If that doesn’t seem worthwhile, try to figure out why the people you’re close to matter so little to you
And if you dislike that, you can work on solving that! It doesn't take grand gestures. Start by reducing the level of plutocracy where you work, for example. People will remember what that feels like and bring it over to their political opinions.
Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta was once asked during an interview how did you manage to help so many people? Her reply was: "I just started with one person".
You don't need to look far to find someone who is hungry; sure many people on this orange site may not be hungry of food but I bet there are many who starved of love. It really doesn't take much to offer an ear to someone in this lonely day and age.
Perhaps it's part of my religious background but I personally find that if the foundation of one's life is based on material things, then one is in a constant state of unhappiness. I come from a country that is considered poor but Western standards, however looking back I realize that the West is wealthy yet poor at the same time. Most are just busy worshiping money, sex, status or power. It's like we forgot about our humanity.
So yes, you may not be able to change _the_ world but you can change _one_ world at a time.
Mother Theresa has caused a lot of pain and suffering. She would get world class medical treatment, while people would be dying in severe pain in her hospice and she would tell them some bs about suffering making them great.
They also had poor sanitary practices at the hospices and would contract HIV.
Nice comment. I am in my 50's and a sysadmin for a large corporation. I absolutely love helping people when I can. I am gifted so that I can give. When I'm gone it won't be long before I'm completely forgotten. That's the way it is. Anyone who is finding life too bleak would do well to seek professional help.
> When I'm gone it won't be long before I'm completely forgotten.
_Everyone_ will be completely forgotten. I think the obsession with "legacy" is a fools errand. Making a positive impact yo those around you, big or small, _for the sake of it_ is a more reasonable approach, IMO.
Even the most successful person will be forgotten[1] within a few generations.
1. Forgotten as a person, but possibly reduced to a name and a title without knowing eye color or personality.
I think we're the first generations where this won't be true actually. Micro-documenting your life and opinions, where overtly on Twitter, pseudo-anonymously here, or in emails and countless mobile photos and videos will add historical colour we can only dream of for past generations.
> I think we're the first generations where this won't be true actually
The jury is still out, but I wouldn't bet against entropy. Cloud companies do not yet have a clear guidance on what to do with data belonging to deceased users, but if that data is not profitable, it'll likely be deleted[1]. Phones and NAS devices will end up in the attic or landfill: sure programmer-archeologists of the future may encounter some with partially recoverable files, but most of the present day data will be lost.
1. I missed a payment to a SaaS provider by a week (I was traveling) and irrevocably lost data. When the payments stop due to infirmity or death, the data will be deleted.
Existential crisis with a dash of nihilism. I see you have already gained a number suggestions. It ends up being pretty simple for me when I feel this setting in. Focus on what I enjoy and cultivate deep hobbies. Gain new skills. Turn off the content consumption in your life unless it is making you a better person. Stay curious toward the endless wonder that exists on this planet. You can’t fix the world or other people.
I did sell a company and make a lot of money. Does not change much. Did not make me feel successful or somehow complete as a human being.
HN is a poor substitute for seeing a therapist. You are not alone and millions of people feel the way you do from time to time. If this problem feels “bigger” than you, find someone to talk to about it.
I think your definition of "meaningful" might need to be revisited. It seems it was forged from the perspective of a younger self whose understanding of what was likely or even possible was ungrounded.
You've now adjusted somewhat to the new reality but the sense of what would really be valuable is stuck in the past. It's ok to, and even necessary, to adjust your sense of what's valuable and meaningful. Yes, you probably won't make world scale changes, but that doesn't mean the more ordinary things one can do to serve others is meaningless. It's just different meaning.
There's a book, Ordinary by Michael Horton, the first two chapters of which were instrumental in helping me make a transition like this. That book is coming from a Christian worldview so some will object to that perspective. Unfortunately I don't know of anything like it from a secular perspective that I could recommend.
I had a similar feeling of pointlessness. For me I realized that that feeling stemmed from viewing myself as powerless and small in the face of the complexity and chaos of the world. How could I possibly make any meaningful change from where I am?
I came to believe that everyone is in that same boat. Those we look up to as having made "meaningful" change were just the right people in the right place and time and had relatively little control over that destiny. That probably won't be me or you, but it definitely won't happen to someone that starves to death, dies from a preventable illness or is just fighting to survive each day. So, I came to believe that the greatest leverage I have for making change in the world is to remove barriers for as many other people as possible and just increase the pool of people that might be the right person in the right place and time to solve the really big problems we all face.
Furthermore, spreading the idea that helping others is the best way to help the world can leverage a network effect. You might help the person that helps the person that is then able to solve a really big problem.
You might not have the power to change society or the world, as a whole. But you definitely can impact individuals. If you volunteer as a tutor for kids with learning disabilities for instance, I’m pretty sure you’ll make an impact on that individual.
You're focusing too much on the macro and "the universe". You live one life; enjoy it and help others to be able to enjoy theirs too. Yeah, everything is pointless if you view your life through a cosmic lens. Is it pointless for the ant or bee to exist and work for its colony?
Says who? The tad bit of encouragement you give a younger person could change the entire direction of their life, and you may never hear about it. We don't get to know all the ways we influence others.
Remember to factor in a stint of isolation if you were in any form of lockdown
Don’t forget to give your social batteries a jump start if needed before evaluating long term goals. It’s hard to care when you’ve not had your quota of social interaction filled in a while. Caring about stuff is a positive side effect of ego, and ego needs social interaction for fuel (I might be talking nonsense here biologically, pinch of salt)
Whether this is relevant or not I wish you the best in finding the thing that clicks
Others have said it but I'll say it again. You need to recalibrate what you think of as meaningful change.
Contrary to popular belief, history was never written by great men.
You might associate a few individuals with the great movements of history, but the people you know by name only echoed the popular opinion of their time.
The real wheels of history inch forward when common people influence their neighbours and children to strive for something a little better than the status quo.
Do something. Take the smallest step that is recognisably in the direction you want society to go.
Living for yourself is also real. The point is that if one doesn’t feel meaning and purpose in one’s life due to existential awareness, then moving the focus to other people doesn’t help with that.
“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.“ - Lilla Watson
> If you don't get much out of it - don't worry, they will.
Im very selfish I get nothing out of helping others but I do it anyway and usually it ends up hurting the person I am trying to help, as the help is unwanted or the way I was helping was unwanted. You would think people would just be grateful for you trying but it turns out they are just as focused on themselves as myself.
It seems most people don't really want help they want some one to boss around and they call that help. I have no interest in being some ones lacky for no ones benefit but theirs in the same way no one wants to be my lacky.
Helping people is easy helping people in a way they won't hate you for it is very difficult.
Man come on. This sounds like you've tried to help some people you care about with issues that are down to a lack of discipline (addiction, financial problems, etc), and people resented you for it.
Now you're writing off all charity and volunteerism because of it? Get real. This is just lazy nihilism.
Im not trying to write off all charity and volunteerism, my comment is about myself and the problems I have trying to help others, I simply noticed that how I was trying to help wasn't helping.
For example you'r comment to "Get real" what does that mean? I assume you don't think I am a robot I assume you mean it as genuinely trying to help in the way you might tell an addict to get real or grow up its a platitude telling them to stop doing the thing they know is bad.
A few years ago I would have agreed with you but I have had a realisation about the way I try to help people, does it help them?
Will they stop being addicted? probably not, most likely they have heard it before and will just take offence at being talked down to they will double down on the bad behaviour out of spite.
Does it help me? When I tell people to grow up it boosts my ego makes me feel like I know what I am talking about, like their problems are so easily solved if only they where on my level of understanding.
When I realise that my style of help, helps no one and nothing but my ego is it really help? No it's not, its simply me being arrogant.
When I realise that my style of help is no help at all should I continue to subject people to it? No it's not helpful to do so, I don't need my ego stroked and I don't want to hurt others with my good intentions.
This doesn't mean that I am agains't helping others I simply realised a problem with how I specifically was trying to help others, I was just trying to boost my ego.
I wish I could claim this realisation as my own but in truth it was pointed out to me. If some one pointed out that your idea of help was the same as mine could you accept this realisation or would you become resentful?
I have had many examples in my life where helping friends have made them dependent on it and later take it for granted.
I didn't really set out to help them, either. Just kinda kept saying yes until they expected me to keep saying yes and became 'surprised' if I hesitated when they asked for too much. It was easy for me most of the time, having the freedom of being single and tons of free time.
And these are good people. People I like and am still friends with. Maybe not the most introspective people, but then again probably human nature at work.
My selfish motivation for helping was to be liked or respected more. And it made feel good. I got what I wanted but there is also a cost.
> That’s a very pessimistic view. I’m sorry you’ve had such experiences.
It is and I would like to change it tbh but I mostly don't want people to resent me.
I think the issue that cause those bad experiences is specifically I try to help when its not wanted and I find it difficult to figure out when help is actually wanted. Often people will say "Im fine" when they are not and really want some one to show interest and listen to them. Some times they are fine and are tired of every one prying, I just don't have the emotional intelligence to determine between the two.
Its easier (safer) for me to do nothing and wait for some one to explicitly ask me for help which never happens, no one wants to be a burden even tho I would quite welcome the burden.
I recognise this problem is solely a me problem and I would like to improve on this but its difficult to know when to help and when to leave alone. Some one else suggested I "get real" but I don't know what that means or how to do that. I tried touching grass it was wet still no idea how to help people without them explicitly asking.
Thanks for replying I think the differences between helping in work and social is true and something I haven't really considered before perhaps that can help me understand when to help.
The only point of life is whatever you make it. Life's your own video game and you set the rules of what defines winning or losing it. There are definitely lots of external pressure trying to get you to align to what their game is, but I think you've come to realize that those rules aren't the rules you want to live by.
I felt the same way in my 30s. The thing that changed it for me was when my father passed away, my mother was diagnosed with dementia, and the pandemic. I started to realize that life is really short and it made me think a lot about what it all meant. I think you've also come to realize that there really is no point, so you can either be depressed about it and not do anything or you can just do things that bring you enjoyment. Some people find enjoyment in help others and volunteering (I don't) and will say that's the meaning of life. Other's will say finding enjoyment in the process of something is the meaning of life (I don't). I think it's different for everyone and part of life is defining the game. Everyone wants validation that their rules of life are the right rules.
I'm in my late 40s now and I just focus on whatever I want to do that I enjoy - hanging out with friends, spending time with my family, not stressing too much about work, entertaining myself with my hobbies.
On hobbies - I'll pick up hobbies just to try them out now. I have no expectations any longer. If it sticks, it sticks, if it doesn't, I don't care that much. I've come to realize I just really like to try new things, and learning the depth doesn't interest me. If i'm inspired to pick it up again, I do. There's probably some self-help/hustle porn out there that dissuades this, but I enjoy it.
In the end, everything is pointless and it can be either depressing or liberating.
So all you described - just do the things that you feel are enjoyable or meaningful - it doesn't have to be a startup, it can be as much as caring for elderly or even running naked in the forrest, whatever it is.
What you wrote reminded me of this extremely powerful (to me at least) bit by Jim Carrey on the latest The Weeknd album (which is about being in a state purgatory):
Heaven's for those who let go of regret
And you have to wait here when you're not all there yet
And if your broken heart's heavy when you step on the scale
You'll be lighter than air when they pull back the veil
Consider the flowers, they don't try to look right
They just open their petals and turn to the light
I used to feel a bunch of that same pointlessness, and I still do sometimes, but a novel helped me frame what I was feeling. Stoner (1965), by John Williams. It is not about drug use.
It essentially covers the life of an assistant lit professor born in 1891 that ended up not living up to his expectations in all areas of life and how he handles them internally. It really helped me draw meaning from my life again while I see friends have their money making them money and fly upwards in their careers and build their families.
I would add The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham to this list as well.
The problem with 'living up to your expectations' is that too often it's about material goods that are unbelievably fleeting and temporary. This book, followed through to the end, really helps focus in on that.
It was given to me by my dissertation chair during post-grad work. He was attempting to point me to the fact that life doesn't have to be hustle and bustle and break-neck for money. I took it to mean that he thought I should quit school and go back to the farm. There's a lesson in there about clear communication, I think.
Stoner is one of the best novels I've ever read. He dedicates almost his entire life toward studying literature because he had a passion for it in university, despite never achieving resounding success (not a spoiler, as this is revealed on the first page of the novel).
There are wonderful passages like: “In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.”"
I can't disagree more with this. Absolutely do not bring a living person into this world in a coin flip over whether or not it might mean something to your own fulfilment.
I am a parent, and absolutely love it and find it extremely rewarding, but it's a ton of work and sacrifice. If both me and my wife were not going into it deliberately with the expectation of what it would entail, it would probably end up bad for everyone involved, especially the involuntary participants (our kids).
No one can tell you what it's like to be a parent, but do not become one without being prepared to put them first for a couple of decades.
If you are, then kids are amazing, and have brought us more joy than anything previously. Just be prepared for the cost (not just literally). I have seen plenty of regretful parents, even if never explicitly expressed.
Thank you for writing this. There’s an insidious motivation that you have kids for what they can give you (“solve my meaning problem!”) vs what you can offer them. If you gamble on kids giving you meaning and they don’t, now what?
If you go out searching for meaning, you're not going to find it. "Is this meaning?" you might ask, for every choice or circumstance you face. The answer will always be "no". Because you can analyze anything to death. Poke holes in any situation and find some reason it's not full of "meaning".
Finish a big project at work before the deadline? "Is this meaning?" Obviously no. The big project won't impact the mega-conglomerate's bottom line. And if it did, what's it mean to increase the revenue of your employer by 0.001% YoY? For you, personally, that is. Etc.
Just got married? "Is this meaning?" Again, no. Anyone can get married. Most people do get married. It's incredibly common. You're not special for getting married, yet people spend lavishly on weddings to force some amount of "meaning" on the occasion. The day before your wedding isn't different than the day after. I've been to a dozen weddings and can really only recall the details of maybe two of those.
I've not seen a more miserable group of people than /r/fatFIRE on reddit. They have insane wealth, go to retire, and find their life hollow. The mistake is thinking there is some reward is at the end of the journey. I have $30 million dollars, I've retired, now what? You either fill that hole with giant amounts of crap (new Lambo, fancy house, huge TV) or "experiences" (which really translates into traveling to places where poor people are your temporary servants because of the gross power imbalance wealth has granted you). Or, more work. The real secret to retirement is... maybe don't?
Hayao Miyazaki is still working, and certainly doesn't need to. He also doesn't believe that personal happiness should be a goal (it's a very Western point-of-view), and considers filmmaking to be suffering[1]. And I suppose that's the real reward for having kids. The meaning is the work and the pain. You'll change a child's diaper thousands of times. But you'll also get to see them smile and laugh.
Really - you haven’t seen a more miserable group on REDDIT than fatfire? Come on.
It seems you’re saying there’s no meaning to life if I understand that text right.
I don’t know about you - but am a regular reader on fatfire fwiw and I do find my life immensely meaningful. I like finding goals, working towards them and possibly achieving them even (sometimes) or refocusing again. I look at the human experience as the meaning. Money definitely allows for varied experiences while I can pawn away the grunt work of living. Take it for what you will!
I think I get your point, and to thread the needle:
If you look for external sources of meaning (big house, cars) are really just looking for validation. You want others to think of you a certain way.
But if you genuinely enjoy cars, and driving/working on them puts you in a flow state, that’s great.
Most people suffer a lack of engagement at work and should retire to work on what they actually enjoy. If Miyazaki enjoys his art (he enjoys it in the average, looking back, glad he did it after all, like exercise) then of course he should continue. A rich, bored retiree is miserable because they realized they were chasing external validation, which is truly hollow, and can now begin the process of doing what is internally meaningful to them.
Asking whether something is meaningful, in your heart of hearts, lets you sidestep decades of chasing the wrong goal.
I suspect our biologically-ingrained make it so kids do give our lives "meaning"... For a while. My offspring will turn 19 in a couple of weeks, and while I still love the fuck out of him -- and probably always will -- he's not the only thing that will give meaning to the rest of my life. (Dunno what is.)
An existential crisis of meaning is a terrible reason to have kids.
Have kids because you wish to raise another human from infant to fully formed adult, and are willing to make the huge sacrifices that requires. Don't have them to try and plug some sort of hole in your life.
What the point? Exceed your potential. Set goals like becoming rich, climb a mountain, start your company, fail many times if it takes it. Take 6 months off for around the world travel. You said you dont have the drive as before. That’s your choice. Drive is something we can choose and cultivate. If you’re happy the way you are then that’s one thing but I for one am not going to lean on my insignificance when compared to the universe to justify why I don’t do things. If you want it, go for it!
Genuine question: how do you find these goals in the first place?
Do you just randomly put them out there and work for it so you can tick that checkbox?
Take for example starting a company. I had that goal before and today I know that'd take an enormous amount of effort and would take me away from my family and the few hobbies I have. All that doesn't guarantee I can make it, since the majority of companies fail and luck plays a huge factor there.
I could set that as a goal, but is it worth it?
Most people I talk to when we dive into why they set a particular goal for themselves, it comes down to a childhood dream or something set by society. That's why I don't see the point.
Another key aspect you need to consider is that (pseudoscience/hand-waving incoming) your brain is very good at taking all of your prior experience and extrapolating it forward, and telling you "if you do this thing, this will be the outcome".
My point is, you're not considering all of the things you don't know, because you can't. It isn't just about "start a company that will probably fail based on the % of companies that actually succeed". It's about "who will I meet while trying to start the company, that could turn into a life long friend", or "what skills do I know so little about that I'll be required to exercise while starting my company that may blossom into a passion I never knew about", or "what sort of example could I be setting for my kids/family/friends who might be on the fence in regards to taking their own leaps of faith"?
We're all too quick to assume we know the outcome of things, and we too easily forget the crazy, spontaneous circumstances of our youth that grew out into huge parts of our lives; that possibility doesn't go away when you're older, it's just most people tend to stop letting their lives have any risk or slack in them that could introduce those sorts of catalyst events.
I think it happens organically, you start increasing your sphere of influence in some area and with some audience and gradually those goals kind of emerge as natural steps.
oh really? How one can cultivate drive if she, for example, has had several burnouts from what she used to had a drive for and it was the only thing that ever interested her for whole life? Or if he reached the ‘plateau of sustainability’ and just bored and, again, it was the only activity that kept him from strong suicidal thoughts? There is a possible case when someone just don’t give a shit about nothing through his life, what’s then? Cultivate a drive along with unstoppable thoughts continuously going to your head like ‘There is no point in absolutely anything’. And please, don’t confuse these examples with psychological diseases
That sounds like hybris. I am not disagreeing that you can alter it to a degree, but it is certainly not something you choose. Just think about how you feel when you are ill and now think of people with allergies for example, that can always feel ill depending on circumstances.
These limits exist always and they are different from person to person and these limits are not always set by (obvious) illnesses, but by the body in general.
Of course you can be more driven (there is of course a limit but most are far from it). I have done it I used to be content with where I was in life. Made decent money, family, friends and hobbies.
But I decided that I wanted more so I let my hobbies grow a bit and changed employer. Sure I'm not a million miles from where i was but I'm not in the same place.
Once I took the first steps the next got easier and I started to look for more opportunities. Find your first step, it should be small but in the right direction. Ask to take lead on something at work or push yourself in your hobby.
What I think everyone with kids should have as one of their goals is to get them one step up the ladder. Give them a slightly better chance than you had. Most successful people have successful parents, very few start from zero. My parents were middle class but I'm upper middle class.
I’m sure it doesn’t make you feel any better but I’m in the exact, same, boat.
I’ve decided to try to just chill out, and enjoy life as much as I can. Stop striving for crazy goals, and accept life for what it is - a lot of working, sleeping, spending time with family, occasionally traveling.
I do what I need to do to make that enjoyable, and stop worrying about making it better / more money / more prestige / etc. This is counter to the American ethos but I found that focussing on things mostly outside of my reach / luck sphere, was mostly just making me unhappy and rarely moving the needle in wealth or fulfillment. Focus on what you can, and forget the rest. Finding peace with this is easier said than done.
Ultimately, it's up to you to decide the point of it. You are the universe made self-aware, packaged in a meat suit with some primitive impulses that just so happens to be living in the most convenient/low friction environment for those primitive impulses in human history thus far.
Our culture biases towards certain life meanings (get rich! be famous! do high class things! be higher status than others! belong to the cool in-group!), and our primitive impulses are very attracted to those meanings. But as we accomplish those things, they don't end up feeling super meaningful or fulfilling.
We will all be forgotten, the universe doesn't care about our lives. But we are the universe made self-aware! How awesome is this? Yeah, we need to balance a lot of the human concerns because we're embodied in these meat suits that have certain needs. But there's so much to think about/discover/appreciate about it all while we can!
> Still, why not follow the goals you feel you should pursue?
I think that's the problem I tried to describe: I don't have any.
It seems everyone has goals that they put aside for one reason or another. I achieved the majority of the goals I had, dropped some that made no sense and now there's no path set out anymore. I don't feel I should pursue anything.
Then don’t. I also think it is all meaningless, a blip of order in a system of chaos that “we” exist and “we” are able to think about it.
Play the game, do not play the game, it does not make a difference unless you want to think it makes a difference. I have little kids, and I am not in any pain, so I like playing the game and seeing what I can do to provide for their future security.
Maybe I would not if I was in much worse circumstances, such as super sick or economically disadvantaged.
My advice. Focus on spending time with friends and family and helping others. Advice I'm not very good at taking myself.
Let me add, "spending time with friends" to me means "find a job where I like the people and want the hangout with them" so that I don't have some 8-10hrs a day of something I want to avoid. Those have been the best times in my life where going to work was fun because it was like hanging out with friends. Friends I would see outside of work as well. That work was also on small teams (< 30 people), on small projects where I had a lot of influence, to the point that the project felt like something I was helping to create and had some pride in how it turned out. In other words, not just a cog in a machine.
> I could try to focus on my hobbies, but you realize very quickly that to get good at anything, you need hundreds/thousands of hours
the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is right now. To continue with the QOTDs: today you're the oldest you've ever been and the youngest you'll ever be, get started.
> I could try to focus on my hobbies, but you realize very quickly that to get good at anything, you need hundreds/thousands of hours.
Be careful. You might regret this, or at least wished you'd done otherwise.
Some years ago I bought a guitar. Worked at it initially - got distracted - and then put it aside. I now realize had I continued to pick it up everyday (or so) for say 20 to 30 mins I'd be able to play well enough by now. Perhaps not Hendrix or Page but enough to enjoy myself :)
What's the point?
The joy you brinb into the world. For yourself, and for others.
Funnily enough I got the exact same situation happen.
My wife got me a guitar as either a nice decoration piece or something I could actually use if I wanted to. I never had the opportunity to learn that when I was a kid, so I tried to learn it.
Quickly I realized I'd need to practice at least an hour a day for years before I could play one single song from my favorite band. It just made me quit after a few months.
Worst part is that I knew that when I started. I told myself "I'll practice just a bit and when I'm 50 I'll be good at it".
The problem is that I realized I did not enjoy practicing it every day. Drills, exercises over and over. It seems to me I enjoy the idea of being a person that can play the guitar well, but I don't really enjoy the journey to that.
Sounds like you need to set intermediate goals. When I started playing the guitar, I asked my teacher „Do you think I‘ll be able to play anything from Muse soon?“ He was like „Uhhm maybe, if you practice super hard? But let’s focus on getting this Smoke on the water to sound absolutely sick!“
For a long time, my only goal was to make the finger exercises sound good. Play them with a metronome and push the number higher and higher. Integrate little licks into the practice routine, keeping pace with the metronome. My guitar teacher was _extremely_ motivated and this was contagious.
Before I knew it, I could easily play most pop songs and many rock songs. I didn’t even notice when I became able to play Muse because my interests had shifted by then. I joined a band and stayed with them for 5 years…
(Addendum)
… until I quit because having two little kids doesn’t mix well with a highly motivated band on the side. I guess I also had kind of a music playing burnout because the band was kinda toxic.
Haven’t touched the guitar for two years now, but I‘ll probably pick it up soon again, and learn new songs. Maybe record a reinterpretation of some electronic music I dig. Or make electronic music with guitar elements, like the late Daft Punk or something.
Your story sounds a lot like mine. I earn good enough money at a laid-back employer, and don't have the drive to job-hop or leetcode into a FAANG, or to do some big open-source software project or anything else like that.
I focus on hobbies. What works for me is to keep the hobbies to myself - don't let it become competitive relative to others. That's a trap you'll never win, as you'll always be comparing to the best and not to any kind of average or typical performance.
Here's a number of concrete examples. I like Rubik's cube puzzles, but what I do with them is get new puzzles of different shapes and figure out ways to solve them. I deliberately don't get involved in speed-cubing or such competitions.
I like juggling, but I don't try to do any shows or competitions or anything; what I do is invent and learning new patterns and tricks for myself.
I learned to sew, to make costumes for conventions; but what I do is walk around to interact with and entertain people; I don't try to compete in shows or for prizes or anything.
I play board games, pinball, sports like bowling and ultimate frisbee; but always on a very casual recreational level and not in any kind of organized league or competition. What's important with these isn't the activity itself, it's the human interaction.
You can find a lot of value in hobbies like these in a range of 20 to 200 hours invested rather than 2000. The key is to find self-satisfaction in bettering your own skills; don't try to compare to the self-selected best lifelong obsessives.
This reminds me of a recent book by a blogger-psychiatrist who suggests "you don't really have desires", that is, he argues that we live in a pornographic society because we trade agency for knowledge, that we can only act on desire by pretending we have no choice. Or something. It's more convoluted than I'd agree with but there's something there.
Personally I think desire can be distilled down to basic things, and we just devise abstractions to satisfy them. If it's no longer clear how x or y would bring any satisfaction, then you won't long for it. Or some other desire is in conflict and you need to resolve it. I think we also become more risk-averse when times are generally good/stable, and excuses are a good defense mechanism.
Given the implied restlessness of your question, maybe you need to mull further on what it is you think is lacking. You mentioned career: maybe money isn't the deciding factor as to whether you should advance. You mentioned hobbies: sinking hundreds of hours by habitually sticking to them is what makes something a hobby, so do you like them or not? You mentioned starting a company: what is alluring about this? What does it satisfy?
Maybe it's easier to answer: do you feel stagnant and bored?
Try to love yourself and enjoy some moments while they are there. Your expectations come to quite some part from the society trying to make you function. Don't let them get you down too much. Go outside on a sunny day, stop, look, close your eyes and like something you saw, or just the air you breathe. There are more people that have cheerful moments because you are there than you think right now.
> I could try to progress my career, but I'm already earning good money and I know to earn more I'd have to either start job hopping or study some leetcode to get into a FAANG.
I know this was not the point of your comment, but trust me that one can pass FAANG interviews without grinding Leetcode.
If you're seriously considering a job search, I would recommend going through jobsearch.dev
When people use FAANG in these discussions. Is it literally those five companies and a handful of other high end growth companies (Nvidia, Microsoft, Tesla?)? The number still being single digit. Or is it representing a handful more companies than fhat?
To me it can have a few meanings based on context, which I'm sure everyone has their own interpretation ha.
Sometimes it means "giant influential tech companies" in which case you could make a good case that Netflix doesn't belong and some others could be added.
In a career focused context like this I interpret it as "any tech company where most devs easily earn $300k+". So the original FANG plus a bunch of others, including smaller companies like Uber or Splunk.
Yeah the last paragraph is what I was thinking when I asked.
For sure Netflix doesn’t belong. Meta doesn’t either as of end of 2021 if it’s also about growth alongside influential. Tesla, Nvidia slide in perfectly.
Then there’s a sizable tail end of $100B+ companies and many under $75B with growth potential. AMD, PayPal, Shopify, Stripe, for $100B ones. Square, Atlassian, Datadog, Cloudflare, some cybersecurity firms like Crowdstrike, Okta, would fit in too. These are too small right now though.
Time is relative. In the end, our planet is just a blip in the universe and when the sun goes it will be gone, and the universe will be unchanged, the same as if Earth had never existed...
As far as the point, well, philosophy is fun. Why is there something when there could be nothing? Why does the universe even exist? What's the point of planets? What's the point of life on planets? What's the point of human evolution? Maybe there are no discrete points, aka a continuum, and it's all pointless. Or maybe there are discrete points, indivisible subatomic particles. Or maybe we're all in a simulation?
For some the point is to continue the evolutionary process by breeding and spawning, like the salmon in the rivers do. For others the point is to amass as much wealth and power as possible so that they can be at the top of the human social hierarchy and enjoy alpha monkey status. Some invent supernatural beings and imagine life without end in an afterlife paradise. For others, the point is to push their minds and bodies to their limits by creating art, studying science, exploring the natural world, inventing technologies and so on.
Probably the saddest crowd is those for whom the point of life has become little more than buying the useless garbage the advertisers tell them to buy. It's not healthy for the mind and it's not healthy for the body, and it's leading to environmental catastrophe. Many people are miserable because they can't buy all the products they're told they're supposed to buy in order to acquire the patina of success (the antidote is to adopt an indifferent attitude towards advertising and its psychological manipulation strategies).
A few hobbies are fun even before you’re good. Baking can be a lot of fun… start with super detailed recipes and pay attention to the details. Eventually you learn to improvise and pick up little bits and pieces of how the ingredients work together.
Running/exercise is one with so many levels you can only truly compete with yourself to improve (and you’ll feel good).
Music is one that is sooo difficult. You suck for a long time, but can make incremental improvements.
Weightlifting has been one of the most satisfying pursuits I took up as an "adult". Progress is so quantifiable (the numbers go up). And the side benefits of greater fitness, physique, and general mental wellness are amazing.
The work itself isn't easy (it can be incredibly tough!), but it's also not complex. You just go to the gym and put in the work and you will make progress.
(I don't mean to say that it's simple exactly, there are plenty of places to make mistakes and get analysis paralysis, but progress can be made with extremely simple programming. Pick something battle tested and do the work and you almost can't go wrong.)
Having kids is the last straw that breaks your dreams. By that point you’ve committed to the parent lifestyle and your life as it has been is over. You now spend the rest of your days providing for your family and viewing everything through the lens of a parent.
My children are now over the age of ten. I find myself in a great place to start doing other things. I can do much more in the evenings, as long as I'm available for their taxi service. And me being out of the house has little to no impact on my wife.
The thing about having kids is that it's increased my drive. I had a few years where I failed to do things in the little time I had, so learned to push myself to do them. That's still there, in addition to having more free time.
So it's great! It only took...ooh...fifteen years?
This doesn't have to be true, though it is for many.
If you can find a version of your dreams that pays the rent and puts food on the table, you can still chase them.
Your financial metabolism does go up though, and the total universe of options shrinks. Ramen profitable doesn't mean actual ramen when you've got a spouse and kids.
I found that I've gotten much further in pursuing my dreams after having kids than before. Maybe it's just coincidence, but I feel a lot of the skills I had to learn to be the kind of parent I wanted to be translated almost 1 for 1 to improving my business outcomes.
It does limit your options, but also helps you focus and teaches you to be patient and less self centered. It opens your eyes to a world that’s hard to otherwise appreciate. It’s not a panacea of meaning but for me, i’ve found myself able to achieve more growth now (two kids) because it’s forced me to confront and attack the thing that was holding me back: lack of focus and most importantly being very selective in what i choose to do.
+1. Having children causes one to be deeply, intimately invested in the future. “What kind of future shall we leave our children?” is just an abstract ideal to one who does not have children.
It's funny you say that today, I was just thinking about it. Family provides a ton of emotional cushion, perspective, and motivation. They're a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. It's far easier to motivate yourself into working hard for them than your own material desires. And you don't lose your dreams to them in the process, they become part of them.
I had my forth child 15 years after my other three, when I was well into my mid-30's.
I find that appreciate/savour/lament his growing much more than I did my others. Maybe this is because I am an older dad or maybe because I have grown 3 children already and I can appreciate how quickly those years pass.
It's certainly true that many parents spend 8 hours a day _not_ looking after their kids, but working on something. We have an enormous power of choice in what we work on, so choose something meaningful and your life will "not be over".
(GP) I actually have a 21 year old.
When I married he was 7, so I probably lost the craziness of the early years. However I raised him as my son the best way I could.
I don't particularly like the idea of having more kids though. Put them on this world?
I think for the average person, having kids might be the best way to have a positive impact on the world. Something like selling a company sounds like a bigger deal, but in 10, 30, 50 years, what will it matter? Some money is exchanged and some customers have some need fulfilled for the moment. Having kids and doing your best to teach them to be happy, empathetic, thoughtful, etc. can have an impact for generations.
Religion is just fiction to make you feel better. Which does have a point, but once you see it for what it is, it is hard to go back to it.
The community is kind of what I miss a bit about it, and that community makes a bit more sense now that I'm middle aged. But I don't know if the rest of the crap that comes with it is worth it for the community that you can achieve with it.
If that’s how a person without kids feels, isn’t having kids just creating another person who has to have kids to find meaning in their life (and on and on and on)?
With the certainty of climate change, it feels like adoption is the only moral/ethical way to do this.
Going to strongly push back on adoption being morally or ethically superior to having children the ole’ fashioned way because of climate change. I don’t see this as a productive train of thought and more likely solutions for climate change exist elsewhere.
It’s ok to have kids. Adopting kids is nice and that’s ok too.
> If that’s how a person without kids feels, isn’t having kids just creating another person who has to have kids to find meaning in their life (and on and on and on)?
OK, so the meaning of our lives is to perpetuate the species. Not too bad; if it's good enough for (the other) animals, why not for us too?
Ya want anything beyond that, it would logically have to be to make mankind of the future a better species than right now. Which of course you do by making your kids better persons than you are. So then you're back to them again.
It's water. I drink water too. I didn't lick my kid clean when he was a baby either, but on the level of having him in the first place your cat and I -- and you -- have more in common than not.
Yeah except as people we have options for how to respond to our needs and instincts.
We can open a bottle of Evian instead of drinking from the toilet. We can cook an Impossible Burger instead of stalking, hunting, and devouring a cardinal in the front yard. We can run a bath instead of licking ourselves. We can realize having kids is a terrible choice given what we know about the world and choose to not have them.
There are some things you can have an impact on. Why not try being a really good person and not an asshole. Nothing matters in the world anyway, you won't get anything by being mean to anyone.
You can try to have good memories with your family and friends. Sure, everyone will be gone after a few years and nobody will ever remember you. But you are here now, might as well have fun.
I have had a pretty good life all along, but it was blips, and spits and starts. And stumbles all along. I just rode through them.
I had the advantage of having no vision, no plans, when I graduated high school. All my friends headed off to college, but I had no money, had no idea what I would even study, even though I scored just shy of 1500 on the SAT. Learning always came easy for me, it still does.
So having no plan, after high school, I left my job as a farm hand and became a motorcycle mechanic. Found my two major strengths there, thinking through abstract problems as logically as possible, and a certain base understanding of electrical and electronics. A result of that was I got stuck with all the quirky electrical faults, and most of the transmission work. I enjoyed both. Should I go to school for electical or mechanical engineering? EE won that decision process, and I headed off to school at 25. Not having much money, I settled on two years first, to nail down an Associates degree, then move on from there.
Got great grades, got a great job offer, went to work. Took additional courses, but never earned a higher degree. Blundered along through a few failed relationships (an early relationship with someone that was bad for me, left scars, and it took a while to figure out how relationships were supposed to work).
Finally met someone I could relate to at age 35. Okay? 35. I still was renting. I couldn't even afford my own apartment until I was 30. So at 35 I met the love of my life. A year later, we bought a house together. Two years later we married. Two years after that, we had our first kid. Age 40 for me.
So my 30s, my life had really only just begun.
So I have been coding in embedded systems now for 38 years. My kids are all grown and out of the house. I never worked at a FAANG. I am not rich, but the women I met, fell in love with, and married, had similar financial goals, so we have saved enough money to retire by time I turn 68. Very small house, we drive cars into the ground (never less than twelve years, my car is now 16 years old). So we have money to do the things we want. Travel and skiing being two of the top things. We raised three kids. Put them through college with no debt (not Ivy league, but no one needs Ivy League for the first four years, that is some heavy vanity BS right there)
Your career is not the end point of your Dreams, enjoyment is. Your hobbies should be something you enjoy that don't break the bank. You should constrain your costs on anything the doesn't deeply matter to you so that you can afford the things that do.
I will leave you with one huge final important note.
The things you 'do' in life are much more important than the things you have. Do not focus on 'having'. Focus on 'doing'.
I am a relatively old man now. I am still working because of two things, both related to me doing everything late in life. I started my career late, and I had kids late. I don't mind that I am going to work until I am 68 or maybe 70 years old. I am doing things, and I am enjoying the things I do.
life coach here. your feeling is valid and there is no 'answer'. It sounds like you believe you have to actually do something in order to have a point
this feeling demands deep personal reflection and / or extended authentic conversation with someone who knows you well -- nothing a text forum will be able to give you so do not be discouraged if you read a hundred posts of advice and none of them do anything for you.
If you want to explore more of the philosophy of this kind of feeling then I have a recommendation. There is a popular podcast called "Philosophize This!" by Stephen West that actually went into a multi-episode dive on "The Creation of Meaning" recently. It starts on Episode 157. The podcast is a casual conversation-style lecture format. The first episode is 25 minutes long.
>Yet we focus on these artificial goals set by childish dreams, society or life events.
In my experience goals are used to resolve unmet needs. Children are very needy and have lots of goals. If you need more money, you set a goal to get it.
Is it possible that you have no goals and see no point in anything you do because you have nowhere to go but down? You are safe. You are fed. You did it. Maybe it is time to kick your feet up and enjoy.
> Is it possible that you have no goals and see no point in anything you do because you have nowhere to go but down? You are safe. You are fed. You did it. Maybe it is time to kick your feet up and enjoy.
I think that's quite possible. In my view to go up now the cost is very high, either energy-wise or time-wise, with little benefit. As an example I could get more money but not enough to retire in the short term (unless I'm extremely lucky).
Looking at expectations put on me from where I came from, I'm light years ahead, so I should be feeling like "I made it", but I don't.
> Maybe it is time to kick your feet up and enjoy.
Haha, I have to find a way to enjoy it somehow. Unfortunately I have this crippling feeling of not doing enough that seems to drain away enjoyment of the moment.
Thanks for the reference, I'll make sure to check it out
>I have this crippling feeling of not doing enough
These two things are not unusual to find in the same person, and a talk therapist can probably help with the details.
Tbh, I had a similar thing. What I resolved in therapy was recognizing that the feeling was a mental shortcut; a mechanism / engine running under the hood indiscriminately. It wasn't wrong, but it was incomplete.
In response, I expanded the wiring a bit. I now feel it as "there is always more I could do" which basically wired my choice into the mix. Then I exercise that choice. "There is more I can do, but this is enough". the part for me that is hard to put into words is that "enough" is a soft line. doing enough doesnt mean i need to stop doing.
I say that last line there bc there was, for me, a related feeling of "Everything I do must be efficient" bc that gets more done and i can never do enough. This needed to be dismantled / rewired as well
Taken together, "never do enough" and "always be efficient" created an impasse where doing more than enough was inefficient. And I could not view my life as being enough without self-implying that it should end. Being busy justified my existence, and if i could not justify being busy then i could not justify myself. Obviously this is not a rational conclusion, but that's why therapy helps. I did not realize this kind of irrationality was emergent from my subconscious heuristics until the right line of conversation bubbled it to the surface. I said the words and realized the issue at the same time. Once I noticed it, I could of course handle the work of correcting it on my own time.
Focus on who's going to show up to your funeral and what they'll be thinking about you. That's what matters anyways, far more than your hobbies or career.
I learned at a relatively young age some of these realizations. And realized the biggest thing is WHO you have in your life. Family, children etc. That we arent ancient egyptions and things like cars and boats dont come with us in the afterlife (figuratively). And that a company will cut you as soon as it benefits them and is expediant, that no one is going to write "he was a good worker" on my gravestone. It does seem many have had that realization in the last 2 years, but I had it in my early 20's when my father passed relatively young.
And so over the years i have moved up, realized some goals. Manage a department, lead a team or two, still get to work in weeds etc, but have direct influence on budget, organizational decisions etc (at least to this point). And i make a solid salary and frankly the I could do much of this in a much more efficient fashion, and many of my decisions these days are more based in "am I setting a good example".
That said, it can still be hard to maintain that focus. During this "great resignation" i have faced an internal battle with the realization i CAN earn more, but whether that will come as a cost of being sacrificial to the other ancillary benefits..
Frankly it can be hard to rectify and sometimes i feel my spouse takes advantage of it. For example its known (at least internally) that family trumps work in almost every instance. That I will not miss my kids...halloween, gradauation, whatever for some on call BS. But that has come to also mean that I get leaned on when a kid is sick, or theres some scheduling thing. And sure i can make it work. Heck I can probably even get away with it without much political cost, but that's sometimes not the point.
I also fight with considering offers or "advice" that i should jump ship and move to xyz. I could double salary etc. But does that mean i double benefits if i pay more for insurance or get less days off or am expected to be plugged in or more responsive?
Finally, I still have that internal drive. Lately i constantly find myself still trying to map out the next "steps". Do I move further into management? Its not as rewarding for me but the people I have managed seem to have established a pattern of loyalty and trust despite the environment. And the possibility of again having more "freedom" and the ability to drive organization direction and choices would be really nice. I'm in a spot where i have some say, and even some influence, but would more be better? How do i get there, or recognize an open door or oppurtunity.
Frankly i find much of it exhausting, just like i have come to find people and politics pretty exhausting lately.
In a Lex Fridman podcast with Stephen Wolfram, Fridman observes that in some ways Wolfram and Elon Musk are alike. Wolfram agrees. The similarity is what Wolfram calls "Optimism" - a strong belief that not only can they accomplish great things but that they can do so relatively quickly. This is Elon Musk saying self-driving cars are going to happen by the end of the year, or Wolfram saying he's discovering the unified theory of everything.
The idea they touch on in the podcast is that this optimism helps people do great things. If you realized the thing you want is decades away, you might not even try. If you (incorrectly) think you are on the cusp of achieving some monumental goal then you may strive for it and, throughout those decades, you may keep believing you are on the cusp and keep striving until you finally reach your goal.
This is connected to the idea of "Depressive realism" - which is the idea that depressed people are often more realistic about the world. Perhaps, to be productive, it helps to have a somewhat delusional belief or confidence in your own abilities.
The question you should be asking yourself is: do I want to have good/exceptional/fantastic fun? If the answer is "meh", "whatever", "I guess", you will inevitably be miserable.
I was reading Vaclav Smil's latest book and he does all these calculations about how much energy we have available to us now compared to 200 years ago. And how much less physical labor we have to do to put food on the table and how many more material goods we have available to us now - in my grandparents' day, about 80 years ago, they had maybe one pair of pants sewn together, one shirt that was washed once every two weeks, shoes had holes in them, of course.
Their job was picking tomatoes. Were they living a worse life than the one I had the opportunity to experience? Certainly yes, from a material point of view. From the point of view of internal feelings, the individual variability in life satisfaction within a cohort is greater than the variability in average life satisfaction between cohorts of different generations. They lived their lives, comparing themselves to people living in the same neighborhood, certainly not to people living in generations yet to come.
In the immortal words of Lorenzo de Medici: "Whoever wants to be happy, let him be so! Because of tomorrow there is no certainty". And sometimes, let me add, there is no certainty of this afternoon either.
Let's say you live in the modern Western world, which is more familiar to me. Modern life has endless opportunities for fun, which includes, for some, finding that meaning of life that is so hard to grasp.
You can dump your partner, in case you get tired of them, and people would understand - a hundred years ago, such alleged selfishness would have been tolerated at best. Maybe it is the answer, how many I have seen spending decades of the one and only life they will ever have with significant others they barely tolerate, when not hate.
You have access to an unlimited number of learning opportunities. We know that agency is supremely important for life satisfaction. You can learn to draw, write, do martial arts, sing, write a screenplay, cook delicious seafood. Assuming you have some disposable income, you can take a flight to some places that until a few decades ago had no sign of civilization. Can you imagine? You can be hypnotized, take some psychedelics, eat and drink as much as you want. Find something new in you and outside of you.
What is the point of it all, you may ask. I can only answer that I haven't become rich or world famous, I don't have world-class skills, but in the fifth decade of my life, I'm having a great time living an exciting life - because I do things that excite me -, which includes some overall minor contribution to society (I don't fool myself thinking I am giving a larger than negligible contribution to society), and which I enjoy sharing with others, but only if they have the right attitude. And for me, that's the point of it all.
Growing up, the idea of a career in computing was implausible. The only computing course my school offered was scheduled against doing a full science course, and they had nothing for the 16-18 range. The local night school programming class I signed up for was cancelled because I was the only person who signed up for it. My parents made it extremely clear that the idea that I could ever make money writing software was unrealistic, which meant I was 27 with a PhD in genetics before I jumped ship into software full time.
And maybe because of that, I'm pretty ok with things? Every day I'm aware that I could do more. I know people who could take over my job right now who are 15 years younger than me. And that's ok, because I have achieved so much more than ever seemed possible to me as a teenager, and every time I stare out the window and realise I'm in San Francisco and part of the industry that was so far away when I was growing up I have to take a moment to come to terms with the fact that this is actually reality.
I know this article is satire, but I also know that many people hold themselves against standards that are not realistic. Almost none of us have achieved everything that we could be, and that's just fine. If you're spending a lot of time troubled by the fact that you feel like you're falling short of your potential then this is a great time to find a therapist who can help you work through that. It's ok to want more than you have, but if you're objectively in a basically good place then you really shouldn't be constantly aware of that in a negative way. I'm at peace with the fact that I'm never going to found the next unicorn company or be CEO of Google or even write some software that a lot of people care about. Let's be kind to each other and ourselves about what we've achieved, rather than holding ourselves to a model of what we could theoretically be if literally everything had gone our way.
I always try to keep this Alan Watts quote in mind:
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
What you say is true, yet we should aspire high standards, so that we can find out what we are able to achieve.
If you set your bar too low, you will never surprise yourself with doing what your previous self deemed impossible, but what your current self managed to do.
Most people I meet can do a lot more, by my assessment, than they think they are capable of. Their own thinking then hinders them from trying, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
The trick is to keep a positive-curious attitude about it "let's see if I can" rather than obsessing about others and comparing. Comparing is superficial (people who want to boast do it a lot), and never apples-to-apples, as no-one has the same starting point (parent connections, wealth, genetic disposition/talent etc.).
Aspiring to overly high standards risks viewing yourself as a failure. There's an extent to which being ambitious drives you to achieve more, but there's also an extent to which it just leaves you feeling depressed about your failures and achieving less as a result. I don't think it's possible for anyone to calibrate that level without help from others who can provide a neutral perspective.
While I agree that folks tend to doubt themselves and it holds them back, I would caution against holding that against them though (I know you didn't say it explicitly, but it feels that way when you say "their own thinking").
Folks, like you say, come from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. Those who you think could do more, likely have experienced some "reason" behind their current situation or achievements (trauma, immediate concerns of taking care of family, etc).
And so, unfortunately, not everyone has the ability or opportunity to adopt a positive-curious attitude. I will say that such an attitude does tend to arise when coming from a safe / secure background (loving parents, a safety net, etc.). It can arise without those things, but no guarantees either way I suppose.
I'm getting to the point where I can myself, but it's been a struggle of getting to the point of feeling safe financially. My own situation is unique, no familial support (more the opposite truly), a need to provide enough for myself (I have chronic conditions). And thus while I'd like to "achieve", I must balance that with "survive". One day I'd like to do more, and I believe I'll get there. Fingers crossed.
I love “positive-curious” it’s amazing state to be in & inspire others to take. I enjoy helping people develop into their full potential!
I too used to think setting a high bar was the way to get there. Maybe at the start it is.
But then, when I consistently reached beyond what I was capable of, the cost of downfall became overwhelming. After years of that, I couldn’t get back up again.
Then I asked a new question:
What if I let go of “should?”
The justifications for taking action were masking something very beautiful.
When the “should” is gone, what’s left is intrinsic motivation.
Turns out I’m curious & love trying new things. I also attract people like that & enjoy hanging out with them.
Now I’m doing the most impactful work of my life, but with much less pressure on myself.
Sometimes I worry about all the things I didn’t do that I thought I would. Rather than turn that into “I’ll get back on track” I simply acknowledge that I’m feeling sad & experiencing some fear about the meaning of my life.
The gift I get in return:
I can be open with my team that I feel afraid, breath, and refocus on enjoying the day.
I recognize that this is largely a tech forum, but I find it interesting that you choose being a founder or CEO of Google as your benchmarks as opposed to walking on the moon, curing cancer, or something else. Not a critique, just an observation.
Having spent time in biology, being CEO of Google is a way more realistic goal than curing cancer. As far as the moon, I grew up on Star Trek and the idea of spending my life in space and seeing new things was absolutely what I wanted. But once I found that Earth contained a lot of utterly fascinating people, being able to meet them mattered more to me than spending a shitload of time getting as far away from them as possible to do a fairly small amount of rock collection - I'm going to be exposed to more new ideas staying here than I am up there.
But it's a fair point! Our aspirational goals are influenced by what we believe is possible, and that's amazingly contextual. What we're lead to believe is possible changes what we believe should be possible for us, and that changes the standards we set for ourselves.
Well sure. But if one is looking to find "purpose" in life then neither a unicorn nor being ceo of Google does much relative to curing cancer or space exploration. I guess i found it interesting that the suggested "purposes" were so....meager.
Considering the huge role that Google plays in many peoples lives and in many other businesses, surely the CEO has a huge potential to do good (or evil). Hell, they could decide to invest shitloads of Google money into cancer research and space exploration.
It's not a career path I'm shooting for, but if you made me Google CEO tomorrow I doubt lack of purpose would be an issue.
Walking on the moon (or Mars) likely gets boring very soon.
The experiences as a CEO of a large company seem much more interesting, and you get to hire a team of experts working on those cures (or whatever floats your Boaty McBoatface).
I've always found your technical talks, blog write-ups, and mailing list posts to be interesting and educating. And thank you for all the work you did, and do, in the various FOSS communities — that's already a significant impact for the better.
PS: It was a pleasure to interact with you at a few Linux Foundation events. I still remember the Edinburgh speaker event (2018, IIRC) where you've regaled us with some interesting "security incident" stories :-).
> I'm at peace with the fact that I'm never going to found the next unicorn company or be CEO of Google or even write some software that a lot of people care about.
There's nothing that's stopping you from creating that first personal project, which other people eventually care about.
> this is a great time to find a therapist who can help you work through that
this is probably the best advice i've read so far. Think about how, when faced with a hard technical problem, an SME is a treasure trove of answers. A good therapist is an SME in this problem space.
There's something cross cultural here that just doesn't cross. I can't relate. I'm responsible for me - my success, my failures. I also sure as hell better check on my neighbour and lend a hand.
Fulfilment comes from within, not externally. Results driven fulfilment comes from the gradual achievement of small goals, slowly combining into larger goals. They can be as small, as simple as reading a book.
The best advice I was ever given was 'finish what you start'. Rather than skim articles in newspapers, I forced myself to read (awful) articles from the beginning to end. Eventually that morphed, and I now make choices on when to skim, what to leave behind - what's a sunk cost fallacy and what isn't. But the point was to break the pattern, to achieve small things, and build on them.
I take the same approach with my kids. Get a win, then get another win.
"I'm responsible for me - my success, my failures... Fulfilment comes from within, not externally."
What's external and what's internal?
Where do your desires come from? Your hopes?
Some people think they are the masters of their mind, that what they feel come from them, but what about the influence of their parents, their friends, the movies they watch, the books they read, advertising, music, social media?
We swim in a cultural ocean where things that seem on the inside might have actually come from the outside.
That's if there's even an actual distinction between inside and outside in the first place.
"Get a win, then get another win."
Is winning the point? What if someone doesn't care about winning?
I'm in my 50s and I like to think I've had a reasonable career so far.
However, by far the most fulfilling thing I've done for a long long time is helping out in a foodbank in a nearby town.
So my biggest regret at the moment is actually realising that, at least for me, helping other people actually can be rather more fulfilling than achieving purely personal goals - I wish I'd realised this sooner.
Yup. I am a sober alcoholic and the most meaningful experience in my life—by a country mile—is sponsoring another alcoholic young man and watching him transform into a responsible, capable adult.
It's true that sometimes we find something fulfilling late in life. But we should also factor that our mind (and thus perspective) biologically change as we age. So what you find fulfilling now at 50 may not be something you may have enjoyed in your 20's or 30's. I remember as a teenager I used to consider kids below 10 dumb pain-in-the-asses. Today, as an adult, I mostly enjoy interacting with them and find their perspective and curiosity really interesting.
I guess that's one advantage of age - the lure of shiny things has long since worn off for me. And I've been fond of expensive cars, watches, cameras, ski gear etc. as anyone...
>What's external and what's internal? Where do your desires come from? Your hopes? Some people think they are the masters of their mind, that what they feel come from them, but what about the influence of their parents, their friends, the movies they watch, the books they read, advertising, music, social media?
How about thinking about it with common sense, as opposed to trying to find some perfect rational answer that squares the circle?
There will always be external influences, but we still call most of them "internal" if they gently shaped who we are, as opposed to us chasing after them like junkies and getting overwhelmed by propaganda (ads, unattenable images of success/body/status in the media, unhealthy peer pressure, and so on), or beating us to submission to them (e.g. like parents insisting on instilling their own youthful dreams or desires of becoming X or Y to a kid).
Especially if we mostly care for the trappings (being Elon Musk rich, and having Elon Musk lifestyle), and not the process (making stuff).
Thoughts think themselves, you are an empty vessel and they arrive in your mind by magic, and you have no real idea where they come from. All you do is react to them in one way or the other
My thoughts exactly. I just told people I had a major win this week by getting a buddy of mine who started as an intern at my last job a full-time software engineer position at my current company (big pay jump & next step in his career + he's extremely talented and will be a huge asset for us). If our friend here takes the same approach with their kids, one I think can infer they're including cases like this.
"within" means values which you can hold against those of your immediate local environment; "external" means being driven by your immediate local environment.
As in, if you chase situations in which your local environment is full of applause, then you're only going to be satisfied when you're in those environments. If you chase situations in which you are, eg., finish some project in some area of interest, then you can be satisfied with "resources more your own".
> 1. Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.
Does it matter where our desires and hope come from at the very beginning ?
We have thousands of divergent influences pushing us everyday.
The ones we choose to go with come from within, they come from you, probably ingrained and influenced by your environment, but the only thing that matters is that you take them as yours.
Regarding "Is winning the point? What if someone doesn't care about winning? ", winning here has a wider meaning than the small 'winning a game' meaning, it means succeed at what you set yourself to.
You're of course free not to set goals to your own life, but doing so has long been found to be one of the best way to find happiness and meaning (it's the conclusion for Candid of Voltaire for example, but there's much more). If you're interested in the matter, I can recommend "Man's search for meaning" from Viktor Frankl
Are people's desires and aversions really something they can control? The thought feels alien to me. It's very difficult for me to even tell what I really want, let alone intentionally channel effort towards achieving any such thing.
The largest obstacles I face when it comes to achieving things is really that the things I want to do and the things I feel motivated to do are very rarely the same. Often I am extremely motivated to do things that I really don't want to be doing; I can spend hours fixated on something irrelevant and afterwards feel exhausted and annoyed because I really would rather have done something else, but my brain disagreed.
I am 26 and this is has been the hardest thing for me to come to terms with over the past few years.
I thought I'd be happier with a high paying job. So I got a job that pays at the 99.9th percentile for my age. Didn't really make me happier. Then I thought my unhappiness was because of my weight. So I lost 90lbs. Hardest thing I've ever done. But it didn't make me happy. Today a voice in my head is telling me "you'll be happier if you get muscular," "you'll be happier if you get in a relationship." I plan to do all of those things, but I realize they probably won't make me happy.
What has helped somewhat with fulfillment was placing a fundamentally greater value on myself. Reflecting on my accomplishments has made this a bit easier. And I do value myself a lot more today than I did two years ago - my confidence is higher, even if not as high I hoped it would be...
I can't help but feel a bit lost. My accomplishments did not provide me the concrete, grounding, pervading feeling of achievement I hoped they would find. I wasn't happy after them. Instead, there was... nothing, and now I feel like I'm kind of just floating without direction when it comes to "finding happiness."
1. Maybe steady-state “feeling happiness” isn’t a good goal? Like, so what if you “feel happy?” If that’s all you want, opiates are widely available.
Maybe a better set of goals would be “peak satisfaction” combined with tangible external outcomes that you consider worthwhile.
2. The accomplishments you have listed are mostly about yourself. They feel empty now because you have basically got yourself under control.
What can you improve in the world outside yourself? Can you improve the company where you work? Or your family in some tangible way?
I’ll give you one small example:
My cousin and his wife had failed two expensive rounds of IVF already, and they are comfortable but not in high paying jobs. They were struggling to afford another round. They had asked the family for help with a go fund me but didn’t come close to what was needed.
I had just gotten a bonus, and the total amount needed (several $K) was an amount I could well afford so I just sent it to them. I didn’t make it a big deal, and made sure they understood they owe me nothing.
To this day, I get a warm glow of satisfaction when I see my niece or they send pictures.
Way more than what I get from checking my bank account or reflecting on other “self” accomplishments.
I believe you mistook the path for the goal, or the future for the now, if you want.
Exercise will make you happy, but only while you're doing it. Getting a raise will make you happy, but only for a short time period after that raise. "Having" a relationship won't make you that happy, but the process of building the relationship is highly enjoyable.
The key to happiness is to do those things that make you happy while you do them. Sacrificing your personal now for a better future is one of those church ideals that always struck me as weird. That said, if you work on making the planet better, that work will probably also make you happy as long as you keep doing it. But the "better planet" itself is too abstract to make you happy long-term.
> Sacrificing your personal now for a better future is one of those church ideals that always struck me as weird.
I think in certain ways they're valid, but more for creating circumstances that will allow you to do fulfilling things in the future. Taking care of your body now to avoid health issues in the future, saving now so you don't have to worry about money in the future.
I guess a common baseline requirement for happiness is a sense of freedom. A healthy body gives you freedom to move (move in the broadest sense of the word, meaning also mobility, being able to pick something up from the floor without too many aches and pains), some financial backing means you're not constantly worrying about where your next meal comes from, so you're free to think about other things.
< Exercise will make you happy, but only while you're doing it. Getting a raise will make you happy, but only for a short time period after that raise. "Having" a relationship won't make you that happy, but the process of building the relationship is highly enjoyable.
Hey, thank you for crystallising such a fundamental and valuable piece of wisdom so neatly.
Highly recommend checking out the Wheel of Life[1], to help you understand the different areas that contribute to happiness, it's never just one thing. Writing down what you think will get an area to a 10, envisioning it, then seeing if you feel that would feel like a 10 is a great way to uncover where you may be overthinking what gets you there before doing all that work.
Gratitude should also help with each area that you feel is fulfilled, otherwise you just never have enough
The pursuit of happiness specifically is pointless, and vague. What you need is meaning. Meaningful pursuit is something that you truly, deeply believe in doing because it will make the world better, both for you, and everyone in it.
I mean... it didn't make you happier, but it's better to be unhappy and rich than unhappy and poor, or obese, or physically weak. Single / in a relationship can be hit and miss though; it could work, but it might make things worse. Don't settle for anyone / anything.
That said, having a relationship helped me out of my funk, which was not dissimilar to yours. I - and my girlfriend - are now more content with mediocrity.
I also like that approach, but I get sidetracked. For example I have to wait for a CI build to finish, or for the compiler.. then I come here.. and write comments..
I worked on a lab, wait times < 1 minute were the worst, too long to actively wait, too little to go do something else. Now back in dev work it's even worse, because there's too many opportunities where you 'think' you can bridge that time, but you get lost way too easily.
What somewhat worked for me was time tracking based on my screen's focus (I use Timing for Mac, timingapp.com, no affiliation whatsoever). If anything it makes me aware, but since I use it for billing my hours, there's an incentive to minimise it to keep the day (at least somewhat) short.
Today's for working on my own stuff, so no tracking, hence me falling for the same traps again, and writing this comment. Probably should do it on a day like today as well.
I take it this writer would agree with that. It sounds to me like he can’t figure out why he can’t just do that in his own life.
I also cannot relate. My parents drilled into us the ideas of discipline, hard work and an absolute refusal to quit. I’m not super successful. I’m not a CEO. But I’ve accomplished more in my life so far than I thought I would.
I think I need to take up this practice.
I've largely given up multitasking and this seems like a good next step on the way to healthier life and higher productivity.
Personally, I’ve done some of my best work in my 40’s and 50’s. And so different to anything I was capable of doing in my 20’s and 30’s.
The funniest thing is that I chose not only my university degree but also my optional modules based on a career choice that I moved on from well before I was 30. I don’t generally do regrets, but older me would tell younger me to relax a bit. There’s plenty of time and lots of things to try. Be prepared to be surprised!
Yes. I'm 43 and I'm feeling that I'm only now just hitting my stride, career wise, with good idea what I'm actually good at, want to do and can contribute. 20-40 was basically floundering around, trying things, learning things and working out what I wanted to do when I 'grew up'. And looking back, I wouldn't want to have had it any other way.
For sure. When I was 15, I looked back on my 10-year old self as someone who didn't know anything but now I had learned a lot. When I was 20, I looked back on my 15-year old self as someone who knew nothing but now I was an adult. At 25, I looked at my 20-year old self in the same way. Repeat for the next few steps. I'm now 35, pretty happy with how it is going life- and career-wise and I look back on my 30-year old self as someone who was starting to get it but was still rather young and naive.
Today I feel like a proper adult who does adulty things and has life figured out reasonably well, but no doubt 40-year old me will think my current self was still pretty young and inexperienced.
On the other hand, now I am 32, and when I look at back at my 15-year old self, I just knew everything back then. I am only regressing since then in all ways
Maybe in feeling but certainly not literally. A 32 year old working in a field is going to know far more than their 15 year old counterpart. Of course you may be getting into the "I know that I know nothing" regime. While your 15 year old self subjectively thought they knew everything.
It's like the stopping problem or "secretary problem". When you have the time ( 20s, 30s) try as many different things as you can. In your 40s and 50s narrow and cash in. "cash in" doesn't have to mean literal cash but could be a metaphor for happiness or contentment.
Yeah but if older you had actually told younger you to relax a bit, would you be where you are now talking about how things are going well, or would you be like OP in the linked article? Sure it is true that opportunities usually never come from the places you are searching, but they don't come at all if you aren't searching.
For me, it was about stress. I never did and still have trouble enjoying good things in the moment, because I’m always thinking about the next thing and how I need to prepare for it. Even when it’s unnecessary…
Our younger selves would never listen to us now anyway, but I’d probably tell my younger self to meditate and be more positive. It’s free to have a positive attitude and it helps a ton.
I’m not sure about others, but I do think I’d be roughly in the same spot if I relaxed more. I’m skeptical how much doing that extra 1% effort really helped me get further when it cost me sleep or joy.
I can relate to this sentiment. I recently turned 40 and 2021 was the most successful year out of the 20 years of career in IT, and I feel that's just the beginning.
I was expecting to resonate more with this article, but found that the writer really hadn't been doing much.
I often complain to my girlfriend that I've got nothing done, and then she asks what I've done... and it turns out I've actually done a lot. I'm currently splitting my days between regular contract work producing videos (first two hours of the day, 7am-9am), and then after a short break I spend the rest of the day (until 6pm, with an hour for lunch) working on my house extension. Today I'll be doing more of the roof (weather permitting), or putting in central heating pipes.
Then, after dinner, I'll be working on YouTube content.
But still, I've done nothing, in my mind... because I expected to have the extension finished by now (I'm 9 months in, and about 6 months behind, mostly due to external delays).
I'm 50. I did expect to be much more successful than I am - I'm not in the slightest, financially. I never expected to be a millionaire, but I'm below average earnings in the UK. But I'm (mostly) happy, and I think that's what matters. I hope so, anyway!
If you can DIY things that would cost someone else tens of thousands of £s/$s then imagine how much you'd need to earn to get that money after tax, and then add that total amount to your salary. That's the equivalent of what you're earning.
One reason why I don't like using salary as a comparison is it doesn't reflect people's life circumstances, except at the extremes. It's just easy to measure.
This is what I would consider a significant measure of success - people wanting to talk to you (assuming they're actual messages, and not robocall spam). Whether they're from friends who want to chat, contacts who want to work with you, or just random updates about interesting things that for some reason someone thinks you should know about, having people out there think about you enough to fire up the dialler on their phone and try to reach you is pretty cool. There are so many other things they could be thinking about.
I found my zen when I was told that, "always know you are the best". No matter what, you are better than everyone by some metric.
I also figured out quite recently that, never compare yourself to anyone because there is always going to be someone far better than you. Far luckier than you.
I was binge watching a YouTube channel called "Geoguesser". Self explanatory. I was mesmerized by how skilled he was. Even if he was thrown into a literal no where, he was fairly accurate in his guess.
Then I watched him compete with other people. He is good but he was no where as good as the other competitors. My reality was shattered. He is not a miracle but he was just skilled at a niche, that's all. There are better guessers but they were not miracles either they were more skilled AND more lucky.
So the pursuit of skills and ambition never stops. It is not a thirst, it is greed. So stop comparing, embrace the mediocrity and convince yourself you are better. Start by finding the small things that makes you better than most.
Not sure I understand - it seems to me that your first two paragraphs contradict each other (and the second (pessimistic) one is correct, not the first).
So either the author has a midlife crisis or they genuinely hate where they are in life. TBH, since they have no family/commitment and sound like they dislike where they got in life - I'd say discard the image of yourself and start doing radical things moving forward, sounds like a no lose situation to me, worst case scenario you die doing something risky - but that always sounded better to me than surviving in a hole.
Just to note, this piece is in the humor section. Like most humor, it’s likely a constructed story based on real events or feelings. And also like most humor, it’s relatable. I think your advice to move forward is still relevant though.
I actually thought it was a serious article at first, as it resonated pretty strongly with me. Haha. But then I definitely got a satire feel from reading it.
True. My understanding is that comedy isn't really allowed here, unless maybe it is tech focused. This isn't some new phenomenon, this isn't tech focused, there isn't really any content in the article (not much to be gleaned from the satire even). It doesn't seem like it's something that's even interesting to hackers. There doesn't seem to be enough content to satisfy intellectual curiosity.
The author seems to on the one hand have a lot of ambitions, but on the other a case of ADHD (or modern-day tech-caused attention deficit) where they end up hyperfocused down a rabbit hole on a regular basis. I have no answers for that, because even medication probably won't make people focus on their mid- to long-term goals. That said, being a New Yorker writer, theater troupe, and all the other things they mentioned, they're probably fairly successful in their life beyond the lofty goals they've set themselves. Which may not be their true calling actually, but more of a "this is what people I look up to have done".
This is an interesting description of ADHD. I've long wondered if I met the diagnosis. I have an incredibly difficult time knocking out small tasks, but very prone to hyperfocused rabbit holes. They're just generally rabbit holes about topics totally unrelated to me "real" responsibilites, job, etc.
Is that actually a part of adhd? Obv not asking for a diagnosis online, but curious about the phenomenon.
Not having a family sounds like a good thing for them. They mention neve having lived in Morroco. Since they're single, they could just drop everything and go do something like that. That wouldn't really be possible with a family.
It's what we might call "self-observational humor" or poking fun at one's self. It came out a couple of years ago and I had a good chuckle when I read it.
Oh hey, it's ADD/ADHD/laziness/whatever the fuck you want to call it. Goes great with (or causes) anxiety and depression.
"Daily humor", yeah very funny, haha. Except when you live it.
If you're thinking "well, that's normal for a lot of people", yeah so was unable to see without glasses or dying from a burst appendix, lack of insulin or just bad food. Some people have it mild and get by, but for some, it's hell on Earth.
More healthcare pros need to recognize it's a problem, recognize it's fixable and fix it.
I know it's cliche to say but for me, I was always driven by personal fulfillment. My definition of personal fulfillment changed almost every year since I was 20.
At 20, I wanted to be a VP at a company by 25. At 21, I wanted and then bought a motorcycle and then later crashed on it. At 22, I wanted to and got to work for a startup. At 23, I got married and got to six figure salary and was hoping to buy a house. At 24, I bought a house, got a dog, and wanted to start a company. At 25, we had a kid and I started a company. At 26, I wanted and got into YC. At 27, I pivoted the company and we ran out of runway. I'm turning 28 in a couple of weeks and decided to slow things down for a couple of months but ended up accepting a cofounding offer to build something else.
Every year brought many sad and happy days. There were slow days where I felt I was wasting my life away and there were many fulfilling days where I felt like I accomplished a lot. I really believe that life is what you make it. Having dreams is fine but unless you're working towards them every single day, they will remain as dreams.
Today I woke up, took paper-and-pencil, and wrote a poem about taking time for oneself, as some kind of gratefulness for being able to enjoy self-awareness. A bit later I red it to my daughter, and she replied with a poetry learned at preschool (she’s 5).
Now, what I didn’t make was to work on some of these digital projects I have, or looking for some new career opportunities. And part of me was a bit upset for this, to be transparent. Reading this article though, sent me back to the words of my little derisory poem, and recalled me how the most rewarding things can come from the tiniest endeavours.
I dropped such worries when I was 25 and started working for a startup, the founders of which were roughly my age for the most part(only the CEO was 34, which happens to be approximately my age at the moment). Eventually they built a successful company employing hundreds of people.
Since then I started measuring my success by comparing to my past self - I think it's healthier that way.
I've also found that it's a lot like breathing - you need to, ahem, "exhale" from time to time - take up a less ambitious role just so that you can focus on other aspects of life.
I've done that; after the first year, I had to go from 36 to 40 hours because cost of living was increasing while wages stagnated (due to covid). This year I've decided to move on, because the company itself is stagnant and yes, cost of living is increasing.
That said, with the latter point, me and my girlfriend have long-term goals of moving someplace bigger and more out of the way, which is a nice goal to have. Staying at my current employer would have been stable, but ultimately stagnant and ungratifying.
"Since then I started measuring my success by comparing to my past self - I think it's healthier that way."
That's certainly better than the one the author is using. Current day me would still fail though - I've made no progress and my opportunities/abilities are slipping away.
If most people feel this way, does it mean that it's "normal" to feel this way?
I torment myself with similar thinking.
1. Objectively speaking I have achieved a lot in my life, from where I started to where I am now, I am living the American dream, and then some.
2. I KNOW that I have a lot of unfulfilled potential. No, it's not the sugar-coated way to say that I am a loser, my "problem" is non-crippling anxiety: while I seem to be perfectly functioning on society, I procrastinate A LOT, and I suffer fro "failure-to-launch" syndrome.
I am getting better but not better enough.
Case in point this morning I was thinking about starting my own "100 days of rejection therapy" in order to improve. The kicker? When Jia Jang's TED talk came out in 2017 I told myself I was gong to do it. Today, 5 yers later, I am still thinking about it, and NOT doing it. FML.
Steven Pressfield calls it "Resistance", I call it Anxiety. Regardless, I can't help but wonder if:
1. The economy must lose trillions of dollars in loss productivity and loss opportunity due to resistance/anxiety
2. Is there a business to be made addressing this problem. It is a problem, but how to address it and monetize it?
I think people that were told that they were special and that they'd amount to something great as children are the ones that suffer most from this mentality.
The expectation of performance was artificially inflated which leads to difficulty dealing with failure and constant feelings of dissatisfaction.
Maybe. I have mixed feelings about your statement.
Growing up the messages to me were quite the opposite (without going into details), and now here I am, fully grown adult, full of doubt, uncertainties, fears, full of Anxieties that prevent me from achieving my full potential.
I guess your overall principal is correct, we all know people that fit your statement; at the same time individual experiences and reactions to those experience are also big contributors to outcomes.
rang a classic age milestone bell this year (within last 12mo) and the internal dialogue has given much cpu cycles to "personal fulfillment" and what that means. The author of the article spends the majority of their time comparing themselves to others(a very narrow band of humanity at that) and as such derives guilt shame and regret. Ive found that comparing oneself to another is a core behavior of fostering personal discontent. Its a behavior weve trained for since we began being social beings so its a very hard thing to conciously negotiate. I try my best to be reasonable about when and how i need to "compete" and when i do not. Getting over my ego (work in progress) has lead me to discover very much of my waking awareness does not need to approached as competition (either directly or as a general underpinning). this realize, each and everytime, is freeing and, as the bumpersticker admonishes: bark less and wag more. Note - spelling and grammar in loose internet bb post sqaurely does not meet "competitive" litmus (my performance certainly wouldnt win any medals had it qualified anyway)
The beginning of the article mentions a few examples of distractions. So much of the modern web is developed by people who've made a scientific study out of gaming your emotions and vying for your attention.
Focus is a priceless resource.
When I need to put my head down and concentrate, I try to shut off distractions. Like many developers I know, sometimes it means I gravitate to working late at night when the rest of the world leaves me alone.
> So much of the modern web is developed by people who've made a scientific study out of gaming your emotions and vying for your attention.
I just figured it was an evolutionary (sort of Darwinian) march to where we are now. Throw enough stuff at the wall and you'll quickly find what sticks.
But to be sure, when I saw I was wasting away flipping through the 100 or so cable TV channels (around about the year 1999 or so) I cut the cord.
Of course, the web was not nearly as intoxicating then. I have the new cord around my neck now.
My disillusionment is not on a personal level, but rather, on a societal level. I thought that I would become successful enough to, well, make a lot of differences in how the society works. Now being an actual part of the society, I don't see how I could accomplish any of my childhood ambitions. Even if I'm 20x richer, with a much higher social status, they are beyond me.
I suppose that the younger version of me have gone too far in pride, and too little in understanding. Which I've made peace with. But a lingering consequence is that I really don't know what to aim for anymore, not inspired by any visions, not particularly excitable. From a day-to-day point of view, I settle for being helpful to my fellow human beings. On a grand scale, though, I'm quite lost.
Yeah, not much you can do on a grand scale unless you devote you career/life to it I guess. Due to recent events/war I wanted to do something, not sure what, as I realized I’ve been focused on my own little life for too long. Except I see there’s not much I can do, as you said, except talking with family and friends. It feels like the boat is slowly sinking, nobody really cares, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
A small note - This podcast with Amanda Litman of "Run For Something" was inspiring for me. I know you aspired to make big change. But I wonder if running for a local political office would help scratch that itch? Those roles have direct impact on the lives of your neighbors, and don't have to be full-time gigs. There's whole orgs that provide resources to help make it happen.
Our amazing global technology allows us to compare ourselves with almost every other human being. We spot someone who’s a better programmer, another who’s a better athlete, another with a bigger family… and soon we start to feel inadequate across a multitude of dimensions which all start to flatten into a single dimension of worthiness.
When I was a teenager, I saw the stories of exceptionally strange internet personalities like Chris Chan and Ulillillia, and felt a paranoia that I'd spend my life in my overprotective parents' basement. When I look at my life, I've accomplished so many things I never would have expected I could have. I'm still missing a handful of things my community members remind me they expect me to have, the biggest one being marriage. In spite of needing to slog through tiredness and bouts of ressentiment, I can see I've beaten the average trajectory, and I've beaten the trajectories some people have put me down by saying I'll end up on. I actually have a slight chance of doing one or two more things in life that mean a lot to me. I am grateful I've been lead out of the basement, spared from literal prison; not hospitalized nor shut into an asylum (though some dear readers may think I belong there ;P). The world's a disturbing place, but I'm on a road to freedom and joy.
The problem with many people today, is that their only measure of success is whether they are a success in the eyes of others, often strangers or people they don't even care about.
Find out what you really want, don't care what others think. This way it's much more realistic to have success, and you will probably also be much happier. I don't think many would want to be a CEO if they didn't care what others think.
I really only stopped caring what people thought after I got divorced (I was 43 at the time). Before that, it was 'the big house', 'the bmw', 'running the cool business'.. ostensibly, showing off to everyone else how impressive I could be (I wasn't). I felt like a fraud because I hated what I was doing. Others still had more money, a bigger house, and a cooler car. It was an arms race and I was losing. But when all of that was stripped away after the divorce, it was again, just me.. along with my three young kids in my two bedroom apartment. I realized that all of that was stupid, and really didn't contribute anything to who I really was. I was forced to do only what was absolutely necessary.. to stop being selfish and focus on my kids and rebuilding my life. Although I was struggling, it was liberating. Now I could regain what I lost: money, sure..I was always pretty good at my job, but mostly my humility. I didn't come from much, which I used to wear as a badge of honor when I was younger. Losing a lot of 'stuff' made stop caring about where I lived, or what I drove. I could just simply 'focus' on what I personally felt was important, not someone else's arbitrary standard. Now I drive around my neighborhood (in my 12 year old honda) looking at all the late 30-40 year olds racing inexorably towards their collective mid-life crises, doing their home improvements, driving their Teslas that they can't afford, berating their kids because they're not impeccably perfect in every way and I think to myself : 'yeah, I know.. it's coming for you too'..
Your comment is packed with wise advice. Once you lose too much and you must rebuild one's life, there is a fascinating perspective shift that happens auto-magically. For you, it was going through divorce. Mine was becoming refugee. Still, we all came out on the other life with similar lessons. Glad that you shared your experience. My best wishes to you cmollis.
>The problem with many people today, is that their only measure of success is whether they are a success in the eyes of others, often strangers or people they don't even care about.
I think the real problem is the pool of people they can compare themselves to is so much larger. No matter what your interests, vocation or career it's easy to find someone on social media who appears to be an order of magnitude better than you are.
This plagued me for a long time. It felt like the only way to validate my value is based on what someone else said about it. However, what really happened was that relationships are fleeting, attention from others tends to be weak and a lot of the time, no one really does care. Also, I overemphasized process, that certain things must be done in a certain way for them to have a certain truth to it. It is and was crippling.
One thing that changed for me last year was that I finally got the passion to get through that list of random topics I wanted to get through without the pretense of trying to prove anything to anyone. It really did work, even though the feeling towards those pretenses still linger a bit.
Here on HN, there was once something that stuck along with me, on an article about how people found success in one-person companies. One said that he did what he needed to do and then just find what could be sold from that. It's a simple statement, but what it says lacks that pretense of finding the truth in something, like finding success in other people or even unattainable quality of work.
I don't have this problem. I feel like I've achieved loads. I just don't see the point of any of it and it doesn't make me happy. I've spent my life working hard and now I can look forward to my body and mind deteriorating in a world with not a soul who cares about me.
It could be worse, for example, you could be thinking those very same thoughts at an even younger age, before you even accomplished the things you set out to do.
I had a conversation with co-workers once. The question is: Do we really want to do what our engineering manager does? I thought maybe I would want to, but as an engineering manager, he has the gravitas and attitude to do that work. I would think that I would have to do that and have been slowly gravitating towards that, but that was never my original motivation into getting into software development. Though, I think the fact that I don't have that position right now is a testament of how rather successful I am of what I originally wanted.
When I was in my 30s, I felt like some colleagues had a bit more luck even for what they wanted to do: joining the right company, getting to work on the right projects. Maybe they slid into them or maybe they struggled to get the best projects. The fact is that I don't know. I never asked but it doesn't matter because I think that very few things from people are insightful enough anyway.
It's not just that I thought of accomplishing more, but I also believed the world would be stable and things wouldnt change too much. How foolish that was. A stable world is a dream and at any moment something somewhere might impact us so hard that it changes everything. My parents lived through that, had their jobs replaced with automated systems halting most of their dreams. And now we went through a pandemic and are going through a possible world war....
It's true that the pace of change appears to have accelerated.
I grew up under the threat that the USSR would nuke the U.S. and 70's culture was beginning to wake up to problems of oil shortages (embargoes), over-population, pollution. I am not sure I perceived the world as a stable, predictable thing even then.
But the Boomers had the rug pulled out from under them when the Summer of Love rolled in and suddenly the gender roles and marriage contracts of their parents generation "Ozzie and Harriet" lifestyle were shattered. Women entered the workplace, the decline of the blue-collar living wage, automation...
And I suppose the generation before began with the Great Depression followed up by the rise of fascism and WWII...
I agree with all this. Times are changing and its happening so fast that not everyone can catch up.
All the problems we had in the 70's did not get fully resolved, but seem to be getting worse, just look at global warming or oil and gas prices jumping sky high. Not to mention housing prices.
Will see where the world goes in the next decade.. I sure hope it gets better.
I just wrote a whole book on this topic coming out soon. I had a similar crisis at 29 last year going into 30.
As a former overachiever and perfectionist, I gave myself till 30 when I was 18 writing down goals for some life accomplishments like:
- Get a Master's degree by 30
- Build a successful company by 30
- Be financially independent by 30
- Get married and have kids by 30
Needless to say, I accomplished only one of these things. I have a beautiful family I wouldn't trade the world for. But the others? Failure.
I lived my life with the social conditioning of the modern world that I lost my sense of happiness. I looked to others to define my path of value and purpose. I kept losing myself to shoulds.
What I didn't realize was that I was on my own path of fully expressing myself. I had to turn my attention back inward. I was the only person on this hero's journey to find happiness.
I am always quite surprised to see these as being labeled "overachiever" goals (they are pretty commonly expressed similarly).
Being an "overachiever" means : benefiting from the work of others (food, clothes, transports, ...) for roughly 23 years (time it takes to complete a master degree), then contributing to society for roughly 7 years (until the "successful company is built) by working extremely and then benefiting from the work of other for 60 more years (assuming death at 90) once financial independence is reached.
This is absolutely not sustainable for society as a whole, if more people managed to do that, mankind would not be better off. The fact that you have been able to complete your last goal, and that you are still contributing to society in a meaningful way, hopefully for many years to come is a much better outcome for everyone than if these self imposed goals had been reached. And the fact that you are content with your achievements so far a reflection of that.
You are absolutely succeeding at life, and you actually have overachieved those goals.
Me too. I got mentally ill in 2001 and got burned out. I found out the hard way when you are the best most efficient worker they assign you tasks that other people can't or won't do. The stress builds up from the extra work and burnout happens.
I am 53, I should be a manager or CEO by now, but I am disabled and out of work instead. Learning all over at home with new technologies and languages like Python and Dart/Flutter.
Some people your age are managers or CEOs but most people are not, and there's nothing wrong with that. If that is your goal, keep pushing towards it in spite of your issues, but you should also consider focusing less on career and more on just enjoying life.
Folks like you who are passionate and have an innate strong work ethic are worth their weight in gold, and need to be nurtured and protected from burnout by their managers and peers.
I've been on both sides of this equation. As a consultant with my own business I've done stints of 80+ hour work weeks, wrestled RSI and flirted with the edge of burnout. I've also managed teams with superstars sprinkled in who take on visceral ownership of a project, working to the goal not the clock and doing whatever needs to be done to achieve success. Some here will criticize that as an artifact of poor management / corporate culture, but in my experience different people have different priorities in life and some come with a very strong professional drive and crave the opportunity to outperform. There's an incredible multiplier effect that can raise the productivity of the whole team. But if they're underappreciated, taken for granted, or blindly loaded up with ever-increasing responsibilities as you described it's disastrous. I liken it to using a rare, hand-crafted sports car to haul manure then leaving it out in the rain to rust.
I've learned how crucial it is to stay keyed in to the pulse of your team. Communication is key (simple questions like "How's your workload?", and paying attention if someone who's usually cheerful seems agitated or irritable). At times I've had to force reports to take a few days off in between cycles to regenerate and make sure they stay fresh.
Have also spent some years volunteering in emergency services, and watching ordinary humans placed in high-pressure situations you gain an appreciation for mental health and not being cavalier about it.
I hope your activities playing with those new technologies you mentioned rekindles that spark of wonder which first led you into tech, and you land a career with an employer who knows how to take care of their people. Look forward not back, you've still got years of professional opportunity ahead of you if that's where your desires lay.
I like to joke I have type B personality with type A ambitions which is the recipe for perpetual unhappiness. When the switch is on, things move quickly, but its been getting harder and harder to find the switch. I'm in early soon to be mid-30s and I've been trying to figure out if having grand ambitions is still necessary to overcome inertia or is it something else.
I thought I would have accomplished a lot more but I also:
- fail to recognise my accomplishments to-date
- cross-compare with others around me (even if they’re not in the same situation)
- have to recognise the variability created by choosing to have others in my life (spouse, children)
I reel when I think about some of my decisions - e.g. not buying a home for my family and continuing to rent but I have to accept that some of that is not all my fault - housing is increasingly expensive and I’ve not been blessed with the same 5-figure deposit contribution from family that my friends have had. I also need to recognise the concept of home ownership is an ideal informed from the previous generation and may or may not be as relevant today.
I do resent the increasing encroachment of work into the home. The delineation between home and work today is tiny and it becomes very difficult to maintain separation between personal / family / work. This becomes especially hard when work expectations ramp up and how we’re all international now. At times I’ve felt like a vessel for family and work duties with no time left in the calendar for personal pursuit.
When it’s difficult to nurture your personal self and develop that internal satisfaction and success, I feel we try to seek that same satisfaction/success in the other domains of family and work which monopolise our calendar and as such look at the measures of success there (a nice car, a decent career, a lofty job title, great family holidays, etc…).
I read a two thousand year old book this morning that said we shouldn't measure our life by our wealth.
I just watched the news article about the dinosaur, extinction event, find.
And still, many will make wealth their goal and waste their time pursuing success. I wasted enough headspace on it myself. Work hard, be grateful for what you have, enjoy what you have while you have the health.
I think that pretty much everyone feels this when they reach a certain age and it doesn't really matter what you've accomplished. I think humans just have an innate desire to have more.
Yeah, I think it's just "moving the goalposts" or the "hedonistic treadmill" or "comparison is the thief of joy." When I turned 34, I made a list of (fairly attainable but significant) things that I wanted to accomplish before turning 35 last year. I mostly did those things, and I know that I objectively have more to my name than most of humanity at this age, and I'm in a better place than I imagined being at 20, 25, or 30... college degrees, seniority in my career, married, kids, 7-figure net worth, still healthy and fit... but it just doesn't feel like it. I mostly just notice the people who have accomplished more, or have a nicer house, or have more time to do what they want, or have a better family situation in some way.
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
Isn't life merely thinking you'll accomplish something big in the future when you are young (from by a bias that shows people accomplishing grand things more than others), and then basiclaly being too busy just living for a couple of decades, and finally accepting that merely living is accomplishment enough?
This panic over accomplishment must be a cultural phenomenon. I can't relate. Is there a wide group of people who are in panic over that their life might end up being merely "lived" without companies founded, books published, mountains climbed?
>This panic over accomplishment must be a cultural phenomenon.
Economic pressure. Look at the housing market and the dystopian reality of our political processes, social divide, etc. -- TONS of people feel like they need to become free by means of economic accomplishments. This is even more so the case in countries without universal healthcare etc.
It's coming down to Maslow. If you work in tech, chances are you're smart enough to have and smell opportunities. People who don't have that opportunity because they are occupied with family or day-to-day-jobs can be content with less, just because there is no material dream to pursuit, or because they have other intrinsic goals (art, social connections [...]). The rat race we're forced into drives people mad, and we can't really blame the people. It takes a lot of mental progress to dig yourself out of that. Highly (!) intelligent people, think the top 1% of the chart, may be otherwise occupied, for example by the drive to contribute to scientific progress, but the top ~10-2% (I'm just throwing numbers here) feel trapped in material pressure and forced to "make it", where "it" isn't an actual target other than economic freedom.
I think that's probably the cultural difference. When I think "accomplishment" coming from a country with a large social safety net, I'm thinking self-realization (writing a book, climbing everest, reaching the olympics, founding a company, making a scientific discovery) - but accomplishments in this case are independent from economic security. In fact, in order to accomplish I'd probably have to give up some of my economic security.
Meanwhile in my case, sending my kids to college or paying for day care is a non issue, even on a low paying job. Getting a nice degree, even a PhD isn't an issue (because higher education is paid for and PhDs are paid positions - but not one you take for future economic gain).
So if I want to maximize my economic security and worry about house prices, then I have to accept that I probably need to give up the thought of personal "accomplishment" of the Everest kind, and Instead I'll just work 40h a week and raise a family.
What! Did you fail to set "S.M.A.R.T. goals" for yourself in your personal life? :-)
If it _really_ mattered to you, you would have done it no matter what, but you got distracted by other things in life. That's OK. There is no HR department for your job as a human being. You don't have to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to whatever.
If someone assigns their worth in life by material things or external measures, they will NEVER have enough. There will always be "unchecked boxes" that will override any satisfaction for the "checked boxes".
I think a lot of older people really don't understand this, but our generation (late millennials, or at least middle-class late millennials) were genuinely fed the lie our whole life that we were special and could do anything.
At some point, you have to admit to yourself that you're just an ordinary human being and Elon Musk has something special that you don't have.
Only when you're in this mindset can you reason about your own limits, what you can achieve and discover that you're actually a pretty decent dishwasher technician.
Every immigrant has starting capital, be it money or knowledge or courage. What you make out of it is totally uncertain. Do you know there used a time when he was a broke teenager, in a foreign individualist society, scrambling for cash to pay rent or take a shower?
Let's see what that Prince from England will do in the next five years in North America. He's got all it takes to succeed in a capitalist country. So, can we expect for him a much brighter financial success than Musk's? I have many doubts.
> you have to admit to yourself that you're just an ordinary human being
This sort of thinking comes from place when you see that to achieve anything ahead in your life you need different skill set than you got and also most of time influence over people. I myself am victim of this thinking, it seems rational but it is demotivating.
What I found comforting in this thought chain is there may be limited possibilities that really can happen for me but can I find the best one of them, if I could that would still make me a Elon for so many people around me.
Thank you for a good laugh. I feel exactly like that, although I work a cushy tech job instead of fixing dishwashers, I know I don't have what it takes to make the history books. Hell, not even a history blog.
>Elon Musk has something special that you don't have
I think this kind of determinism is not only wrong, but damaging, should you choose to believe it, especially when it's used as a failure coping mechanism, because then it ultimately leads to forfeit, which removes any chance you may have had.
>He is successful. Therefore, it must be the case that he is able to bend The Laws Of The Universe. It is certainly not the case that Good Fortune and social effects were the major factors in his success.
Even if it were true, I'm not sure why one would want to believe that. At least fool yourself into believing either: (1) you're also special, and success can also come to you through your own "specialness" (2) no one is special, and success comes from tenacity and luck. What do you lose from believing either of these two things?
> Elon Musk has something special that you don't have
I believe that there are many Elon Musks in the world but due to various circumstances (born in the wrong place at the wrong time, bad luck, terrible parents) they never get the chance to shine.
I read the comment above yours as implying the inherited wealth being one of the things that Musk has and most people don't. Might just be my own bias 'reading in'.
Only relatively speaking. There are a whole lot of people grew up with a hell of a lot more "privilege" than Musk and who have accomplished far far less.
Of course. As someone who ticks most boxes on the privilege checklist I can witness first hand how much easier that has made my life compared to several of my friends and colleagues who ticked far fewer boxes. At the same time I've known people from even more privileged backgrounds than me completely fuck their lives.
So while coming from a 'privileged' background is important, and perhaps even necessary, in becoming the next Elon Musk, it is far from the determining factor.
As Bourdieu presents it, there are the economic, social and cultural capitals from your parents. I believe more and more that the social and cultural capitals can vary wildly even among seemingly privileged families. We can only gauge the economic capital from the outside after all.
I saw it firsthand where rich parents educated their children way too softly, which made their children unable to cope with challenges of real life.
Maybe Elon got the luck to be born in a family with very good capitals on all axes. It does not mean that he has no talent, just that his initialization may have been particularly good.
Pick one. There is a reason why low class kids are heavily underrepresented and high class privileged kids are highly overrepresented among VC-backed founders.
You must be at least 'this' privileged to succeed. However there are a lot of people that are at least that privileged and most don't "succeed" either. And among that cohort predicting their chance of success cannot be done by simply looking at their relative level of privilege.
Also I feel like you just moved the goal for success. Getting 1 round of VC funding for your startup and getting your startup into the Fortune 500 or two wildly different levels of success.
If we're defining success as "1 round of VC funding for your startup" then, yes, I will happily concede the 'privilege' plays a much larger role.
One could argue that Musk's achievements are nagative net sum to human race.
Better car? With all this money and influence personalities like that could shape for much better future - livable, walkable cities, public transport, social guarantees.
Private cars in private tunnels for the rich? Is this what we call "achievement"? "There will be no traffic jams in LA because I will be riging my car in private tunnel"?
Rocket's are super cool. Then again a lot of people would argue that instead of aiming for the Mars we should aim to fix Eath's problems - climate, pollution etc.
Depending on how you look, Musk is actually who accomplished far far less. Just made the world better for individualist rich men not much more. Growing up rich and just spending inherited money on expensive stuff might be better for the human race in the end.
>Private cars in private tunnels for the rich? Is this what we call "achievement"? "There will be no traffic jams in LA because I will be riging my car in private tunnel"?
It's kind of amusing how Elon Musk has to discover the car problem his own way. The tunnel is basically only lacking rails and an appropriately sized tram. Maybe he will catch on?
I focus on the time required to accomplish something and it dictates where I want to be at a certain age, as opposed to picking an age and arbitrarily setting goals to hit by then.
Related to his conclusion: in one of the areas I train in, there is a famous saying where celebrating achievements is just admitting and accepting your level of mediocrity. Somewhere along the way I acquired a voice that asks, "Was that your level? Was that your price?" It's kind, but knows there's more.
I do a lot of things, but have learned to achieve nothing. The high points I had where I got some fame and recognition are mostly embarassing now, because they remind me of my conceits that get in the way of ideals I intend to spend a lifetime pursuing. Looking back on the thing you were famous for, was it your best? Does it define you today? Have you left your peak behind and you are less now than you were then? Probably not. To me achievements mean nothing unless they were humbling and converted ignorance into appreciation and humility. It's a tough way to be, but it yields a pretty interesting journey.
Sure, I have breakthrough moments. Getting code to work, getting a new piece of music under my fingers, winning a contract or solving a problem, forgiving the person I was who believed things I don't anymore, etc. But I've found expereriences are meaningless unless there is a way to share them to improve the lives of others, even if it's just to make them laugh, or perhaps to serve as a warning, often at the same time. Life isn't in your future and the reflected glory of your achievements, it's now, and you need to breathe it all in and exhale it, over and over again until you can't. I hope the author gets the opportunity to laugh at himself for thinking that his achievement of writing this for New Yorker was the best he could do. I'm pretty sure he's got so much more:)
This resonates. It feels like a cliche, but I genuinely feel like I've peaked in life. I excelled in HS. Top of class. Award winning marching band. Full ride to a decent state school. Helped run some student organizations, did great in classes. I took a total detour post-undergrad for a few years to do service work.
But now I'm in my 30's and 5 years into a "real career". I work long days in Operations at a tech marketplace. It's fun problems and I like working with data/product, but it hardly feels like I've living up to the potential I had thrown on me earlier in life. I'm far from the top 1% performer I was in High School / College.
I play a lot of video games and read a never-ending stream of miscellaneous articles. I go to the gym a few days a week and . Maybe once a month I pull out my guitar. I checked off my "adult" milestones -- Married and have a house. But seems like lots of days I just wake up, work, then stare at a TV. It's not all bad -- But reading this list and the failure to start, so many possibilities but I never do anything idea just rings true to me.
To me, it sounds like the author tried to be everything to everyone. That's a recipe for disaster.
If I had to give advice to my younger self now, I'd probably go with:
1. Celebrate your science reading habit, instead of awkwardly apologizing that you like mathematics. 1 paper a week might seem like it'll get you nowhere, but in 20 years, that compounds to in-depth knowledge of the field. It'll pay off, but on a time scale you and your peers don't understand yet.
2. Don't compare to Gates, Zuckerberg, or Elon. The 1st had resources you'll never have because of his rich parents. The 2nd is now universally hated as a sicko psychopath whose products drive teens into suicide. The 3rd can't seem to keep a stable enough relationship to have a family. You'd hate being in their shoes.
3. Get more comfortable saying no. People are going to ask you for favors all the time, but your time is very limited. Only help friends or those where you predict they'll reciprocate. Make people get their own hands dirty first, it'll help them learn. Stay away from "energy vampires" who ask for your help for everything but won't help you back.
That's unreasonable expectations for most, to be honest. I don't know if it's just because it's the HN bubble where everyone seems to be a USD millionaire and run their own successful startups, or if it's a general thing enabled by modern media trends (or something else entirely).
Regardless, it's perfectly possible to succeed at having a happy and fulfilling life without being financially independent. #2 can be achieved if one moves out of the more attractive areas where housing is often far cheaper than in the more hip areas. It may have consequences like an increased commute, or a lower salary, but again, having enough money to never having work isn't going to happen for most of us.
No. 1 can be solved by adopting a conservative life style, ideally two "steps" below what your current income would permit you.
2. and 3. are totally independent from each other, both are made easier by No. 1 so.
Just a general advice, if I may dare, stop putting those things in order, relax and let some things in live just happen. And enjoy the journey as much as possible.
Obviously, that advice only works if you are living in a stable environment. If you don't priorities are going to be topped by, worst case, living to see the next day.
I don't know where do you live but it's definitely not necessary to own a home for having a family. Assuming you are a male, just having a stable job and actually wanting to have a family gives you a great chance of success with many, many women.
Also mid 30s is so young, you still have at least a decade to find a significant other and build a family if that's what you want.
In the song, he acknowledges his lack of accomplishments as he gets older. There’s ambiguity as to whether he’s more regretful that he never achieved the heights that his younger self envisioned – or if he’s coming to accept this. While he wrote the song in his early twenties, I guess this is a sentiment we can all relate to: there’s always some age-related milestone looming ahead of us.
It’s maybe not uncommon to have dissonance between enjoying an accomplishment versus enjoying or finding meaning doing the tasks that lead to the result/accomplishment. This is one very scatterbrained outlier of that dissonance.
The ironic thing about this post is that the author sounds like an awesome dude. Heck, I just read his work in the New Yorker. I wish he could realize he was killing it! And same goes for you, dear reader :)
I’m currently in a transitory period between moving from a rental into a house. I just want the next 3 months to fly by. But I have to keep telling myself that if I don’t focus on my life in the present, then I will effectively just have lost 3 months of my life because I’ve been so focused on what’s at the end of it, and not what happens in between.
People often ask me: why am I always preaching life extension and immortality research?
Here is why: so you can be 41, 441, 1041 and still have millions years ahead.
Once 41 years old no longer means you wasted your youth away, you will be able to concentrate on one thing per day and don't feel tragic if this thing fails.
unfortunately the life expectancy once we remove aging is only about 1000 due to eventual death from trauma . Once we remove death due to aging, nearly every death will be relatively sudden and unexpected.
Well that was quite apt. I just turned 36 today and a lot of it resonates.
Perhaps the more you learn, the more pressure you put on yourself to perform. Most of those people who he quotes probably thought a lot less but ended up doing a lot more.
Say yes to more things, don't conform and never regret.
I turn 40 tomorrow and can’t help but think how I got my dad over the hill gifts when he turned 40 and thought he was so old. While I have accomplished most I have wanted to do 2 things have still alluded me.
Reading through this thread makes me wonder, what are achievements really? If it's not something that brings something to your life and helps you or others grow, then I don't think it's that much. Sometimes those things can even be things where the outright goal failed, because what really matters is something else, excellence of character, enjoying your life and helping bring that out in others as well.
I think of someone like Steve Jobs, I remember when he was alive how much he was idolised and how everyone wanted to be the "Next Steve Jobs" now it has been some years that has passed, I feel like that light is a little less and people have moved onto the next thing they want to be, the next Elon musk, mark Zuckerberg or just some level of crazy achievement.
But I wonder what it is worth really? Even those people that have achieved so much more than I ever have, did it really matter so much anyway? If those people were not around, everyone would find someone else to idolise, if those people were not around, the problems they solved in the world would likely just be solved by someone else or perhaps they would be solved in a different way at some point in a future and who is to say that that other future is not somehow better than what we have now? Due to the butterfly effect, we just cannot know what crazy alternative realities would happen if the people that we assume have added to humanity and given so much did not exist, somehow life would have continued and the fields in which they came would be just fine or perhaps even better as something else would have come along at some point, something that doesn't have to happen now because of the work they did, you cannot know that life itself is actually better because of them. You could cure cancer, but then the next evil dictator survives cancer due to the treatment and then nukes the entire planet into oblivion.
When you think of it like this and see that 1) It is very unlikely that you would be able to achieve at that level and 2) It doesn't really matter anyway, your perspective is forced to change on these things, you start to look at just enjoying your life, doing things in a more localised way than trying to change the entire world.
As someone with ADHD - our society places a high value on being a “focused worker bee.” Individuals with ADHD do not fit this mold, even if they bring value with increased curiosity, inquisitiveness, and creativity.
I think ADHD is a genetic trait that was evolutionarily selected for, and individuals with it made effective explorers, inventors, and creators, providing substantial benefit to humanity. It is an explorer's gene, though society today finds little value in that.
It's so frustrating and incredibly heartbreaking because I think people with ADHD are 100% totally valid in their own right, as it is likely an adaptive trait [1, 2], and yet our society has abandoned them as disabled.
I managed to read the first two paragraphs before being quite certain the rest would be a waste of time.
As far as I can tell (not a psychiatrist), this individual is suffering from mental illness and could benefit greatly from cognitive behavioural therapy.
The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal.
But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them.
- John Williams in Augustus