This post caught my attention because recently I met a woman I really admire. She dropped out of her computer engineering class, took a vow of celibacy and poverty and became a missionary with a Catholic sect.
The reason I admire her isn't that. What caught my attention about her is that she has a sense of purpose. She has a purpose in life and has devoted her life to it.
I used to have one. My goal was to make the legal system cheaper and more accessible. And I devoted the last decade of my life to that. Now that's fallen apart and I'm a little lost and it hurts me alot.
I hope I'll find a purpose soon. That's what I'm passionate about right now, finding a new purpose or a new way to accomplish my past purpose.
Maybe not to represent yourself ("anyone who represents himself has a fool for a client") but maybe useful stuff.
For example, in california, you have certain online privacy rights you can exercise, and it would be nice to have a form letter to enumerate and exercise those rights.
what i find stupid is that you can represent yourself, but you cant have your non lawywr friend represent you. Despite one being better than the other.
Not stupid at all! There are many things I help others do that I explicitly want others to do if it were me. eg: I am really good at helping other people build websites but every personal website I have tried to build, I've floundered at until I've brought in outside help. I assume lawyers have figured out it works the same way as the common saying goes "Any lawyer that represents himself has a fool for a client".
But in lawyering, people need defending cause they can't defend themselves. It's not preference, it's a need.
"There is nothing more annoying than when you think someone is wrong, but they think they are right". And here's the interesting part, it doesn't matter if you're actually right. This is why people need someone defending them. Cause the resulting optics from defending yourselves, coming off as ignorant, unrepentant, or downright evil, is so destructive.
Ofc it's even worse cause it often is the case that you are wrong, but still needs defending for lighter sentence (which you deserve, in truth). YOu can't do this on your own.
Tangential, but this is also why employees don't come to their manager to tell about all their small accomplishments and deeds that they think are underappreciated. You just simply can't testify for yourselves. Especially if you have some dirt on you, and who doesn't? We dont promote ourselves cause we know instinctively it will be received poorly. AND IT WILL.
But if other employees go to the manager and say things they appreciate of you, then it's suddenly okay. If people catch on to this, we'll have a more healthier workplace.
> And I devoted the last decade of my life to that. Now that's fallen apart and I'm a little lost and it hurts me alot.
You have no contact in your bio but I've run into this with founders a lot and you need to recognize that what you're going through is a period of grief and mourning. I recommend you look up some books on how grief is processed in breakups or deaths and see if you find points of similarity.
Kubler-Ross' "On Death and Dying" is a classic place to start, it's where the "five stages of grief" model was first introduced. Her version of it is a lot more complex than the pop culture, linear understanding that most people have. She mostly talks about the interplay between the five stages and how we ping pong back and forth in interesting ways.
Also, FWIW, I've found ChatGPT a remarkably efficient tool to "read" books in an area you're totally unfamiliar with and want a quick download. You start by asking it to give you a broad overview of a book/set of books and then dive into the areas you find the most interesting until you arrive at an actionable framework.
The year is 2024, and I've just read somerhing like the following comment online:
"Sounds like you're going through a period of grief and mourning. I've found computers to be a remarkably efficient prosthetic replacement for processing meaningful experiences with other real, live people."
It just breaks my heart, and fills me with despair, to see opportunities for human connection so giddily elided. Radio and television were bad enough. Social media has been bad enough. Now we're selling out the last bastions of compassion—grief and mourning—to be mediated by cynical corporate silicon golems? This is the psychosocial equivalent of a catheter and feeding tube. This is an induced social coma.
The wo/man is grieving, for heaven's sake! My advice would be to go have coffee with someone who has read the book! A real live flesh and blood someone. Several such someones! Possibly an entire group or congregation of mourners. We, the grieving, would really appreciate you dropping by.
I certainly found it helpful, even as a basic refresher of the field and I learnt a new thing which is apparently there is no single book that explicitly focuses on helping founders move on which feels like a business opportunity?
But also, you can see how I got to a useful place from first principles with the help of an AI. I stopped where I felt I was sufficiently interested that if I were in OPs shoes, I would have just bought the whole book and read it through and I did it in about 15 minutes although I admit I was cheating since I had an end goal in mind already.
I've left it for anyone else to go further in whatever direction and close the gap between where I ended and specific advice like you have provided.
If you are into the legal system issues right now I am passionate about fathers rights and its been a huge outlet for me. SO many kids and fathers are desperate for help and 50/50 shared parenting is a admirable and achievable goal.
Hey I fell into this, only I tried to improve the health care industry and it fell apart over a decade ago. My tip, be a good person, don't let other people change you. Bring kindness to the world. You aren't god, you're vivekd, which is actually much harder to be. You aren't all powerful, yet your mind can comprehend so much beyond your reach. Read some Sun Tzu, only fight the battles (including those in your head) that are winnable (I.E. the outcome is worthy of the energy). Be a good person. Stand up for others. Give up political dogma, emotional mastrubation, and just be human. My grandfather spent his whole live advocating for better mental health care in a midwest state. Just hitting a brick wall. But he was content, he did what he could do, and what he felt he must.
Time and new life experiences will mend some of your wounds. I had to give up my life's work and its mission. People often talk about regret of not trying, and there's a less-discussed painful experience of not accomplishing a mission.
i believe that the purpose of humanity itself is to advance our civilization.
that suggests that everyone should contribute to that, which further implies that every contribution matters, no matter how small. you tried something, and it failed. that's fine. ideally others have an opportunity to learn from that, but even if not, at least you learned something, and you can use that learning for your future.
the goal is not to create the greatest possible impact, but to learn and make the most of the resources available to you. it could be something small like if you are a lawyer having one out of ten clients pro-bono or for a very low rate for people who could not afford a lawyer otherwise.
find an area/place/people that need help, and then help them.
Not that I find this person's path admirable, although I don't know enough about his personal life to feel comfortable saying much more than that. But you might be interested in reading about this one time wold class climber who left his life to join a monastery and become a priest. And then left that and returned to climbing recently. His story doesn't resonate with me, but there might be something to it that grasps you.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/crack-of-des...
> She dropped out of her computer engineering class, took a vow of celibacy and poverty and became a missionary with a Catholic sect.
It seems the only way to make HN even better is to bring in people that HNers admirer and to interview them on here.
Speaking of nuns, I know two cases of admirable women (one English and one French), who left their studies (and one also left her then-fiancee) to live and serve in a religious order. At least in one case no-one could have predicted that, least the (MIT-educated) brain researcher fiancee.
It definitely makes a lot of easier when having a purpose. On the other hand tying the own identity that close to one thing is the equivalent of putting all eggs in one basket.
The reason I admire her isn't that. What caught my attention about her is that she has a sense of purpose. She has a purpose in life and has devoted her life to it.
I used to have one. My goal was to make the legal system cheaper and more accessible. And I devoted the last decade of my life to that. Now that's fallen apart and I'm a little lost and it hurts me alot.
I hope I'll find a purpose soon. That's what I'm passionate about right now, finding a new purpose or a new way to accomplish my past purpose.