Comment by anoplus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anoplus | Hacker News Reader

I explore passion because I think there are things more "economical" to be passionate about.

I am now a software developer. When I was in high-school I didn't get the point of computers beyond playing pc games all summer long. I just heard once in a while "if you pick cumputers major you will have a descent job". I was a painter in high-school. I wanted to create amazing and realistic paintings to wow everyone. And I wowed everyone. The passion to wow people was beyond school grades, parties and sleeping hours. After high school I lost my art passion immediately (art is not practical) and explored my passions again. I want to solve real problems and finally got the "purpose" of computers in the world.

I found that I enjoy almost everything I do if stress free. I love working, cleaning, cooking, shopping, fixing, gardening, eating slowly, as long I am not rushing. Cleaning and gardening are great "exercise" you activate a lot of muscles with a reward at the end. Clean house and nice garden. When I do it I try to forget about time which turns it to an ecstasy almost.

There is one thing that is obviously worthy to be passionate about which I am struggeling to crack for years (although improving much).

Passion for people. Many tasks that involve people are often a pain for me. I love people but its hard to "just call someone". Just "invite someone to hang out". Maybe is because "just hangout with someone" is not clearly defined. What is the point? what do we want to talk about? I don't socialize a lot outside of work. Why people prefer video games over socializing? I find this topic facinating...

> Maybe is because "just hangout with someone" is not clearly defined. What is the point? what do we want to talk about? I don't socialize a lot outside of work.

I felt this way for a very long time. Never had many friends growing up for much this reason; it didn't feel rewarding to spend time with anyone except my stepdad (my mentor, because I was always learning with him and he was one of the only people that made me feel safe) and my sports comrades (but only when we were practicing).

In adulthood, though, there's several people I enjoy so much that it seems worth it to spend a fair bit of effort just to be in their presence for some time. We don't even have to do anything particularly interesting. I don't understand why I want to be around them so much, but I do, and I wonder if this is the connection I've been missing the whole time.

The other weekend I took a six hour flight just to go on a hike with some of these people (there's plenty of hiking where I was already) because I missed them so much being away for work. It's like being hungry. Being around them is a dopamine hit.

For a while I only felt this way about a tiny handful of people I met in grad school so it seemed like the same sort of thing where you spend a lot of time and effort at a hobby and then find that you are passionate about it. Spend a lot of time (and college type bonding experiences) with some people and you'll find you're passionate about your friendship. But then in my early thirties I met a couple new friends and the same feeling happened within days of meeting them, so I don't understand the dynamic at all. What makes someone fall in love with their friends?

Apologies for going off on a tangent here. It was a thought provoking comment.

I love hanging around with people who think differently than I do. Bring a different perspective on things. Have good stories to tell, seek deeper theorems on why things are the way they are. The ideas need to have sex in order to birth even greater ideas.

Hikes and long drives are a great way to foster relationships. There is something about being around places that you haven’t been before that provoke new ideas.

> Now if we examine our life, our relationship with another, we shall see that it is a process of isolation. We are really not concerned with another; though we talk a great deal about it, actually we are not concerned. We are related to someone only so long as that relationship gratifies us, so long as it gives us a refuge, so long as it satisfies us. But the moment there is a disturbance in the relationship which produces discomfort in ourselves, we discard that relationship. In other words, there is relationship only so long as we are gratified. This may sound harsh, but if you really examine your life very closely you will see it is a fact; and to avoid a fact is to live in ignorance, which can never produce right relationship. If we look into our lives and observe relationship, we see it is a process of building resistance against another, a wall over which we look and observe the other; but we always retain the wall and remain behind it, whether it be a psychological wall, a material wall, an economic wall or a national wall. So long as we live in isolation, behind a wall, there is no relationship with another; and we live enclosed because it is much more gratifying, we think it is much more secure. The world is so disruptive, there is so much sorrow, so much pain, war, destruction, misery, that we want to escape and live within the walls of security of our own psychological being. So, relationship with most of us is actually a process of isolation, and obviously such relationship builds a society which is also isolating. That is exactly what is happening throughout the world: you remain in your isolation and stretch your hand over the wall, calling it nationalism, brotherhood or what you will, but actually sovereign governments, armies, continue. Still clinging to your own limitations, you think you can create world unity, world peace - which is impossible. So long as you have a frontier, whether national, economic, religious or social, it is an obvious fact that there cannot be peace in the world.

— From The First and Last Freedom by J. Krishnamurti, Chapter 14: Relationship And Isolation

That sounded a little preachy!

I think the greatest value of meeting other people and cultivating friendships is that it provides a mirror that lets us learn more about our own selves, so it is worth doing so, from time to time, even if it makes us uncomfortable.

It is also important to stay away from [toxic people][1].

[1]: https://www.miltonglaser.com/files/Essays-10things-8400.pdf

I love this perspective on passions and finding joy in the practical. As a former smoker, I used to get a nicotine rush while having conversations in person or over the phone (while smoking). Once that went away, 5+ years ago, I found that I enjoyed conversation less and really needed to make an effort to initiate and continue it. That hasn't gone away, so I'm hoping to get some other good perspectives on the later half of your comment.

Elaborating here with following thoughts. The approach I try to apply for "socializing" which I really unsure about - and perhaps that unsureness is exactly the point - is be a little like some machine learning algorithm. When "training set" is scarce and confidence is absolute zero, it still makes a "guess" to train. Another metaphore is playing an insturment. When you play an insturment you don't want to stop and think. Perhaps "socializing" has a unique and varying tempo to it, something between "skimming quickly over a quicksand" and "manueuvering carefully in a minefield". The only key I have to operate is to think that if I make an unwanted impression I can always make up with another impression.

Do you ever get scared you could get "too good" at socializing? To the point of manipulation?

I think if you get to influence people by your charisma, you may fear of misleading them into a bad route and feel responsible. I personally rarely feel this one.

It’s fascinating how similar your experiences are to my own. I wonder how many of us there are.

I’m also in the same place in my life where I’ve realized that I need to develop a passion for people and relationships. I have been out of balance in recent years focusing far too much on my career and technology. I think it’s an easy thing to do and offers a more measurable and explicit reward, so I gravitate toward it.

Some games are very social. I get the chance to meet people playing online games I never would have had the chance to meet, from all over the world. I've spent whole Sunday mornings discussing life, the universe, and everything with people I just met, all while we completely ruin the opposing team.

I've been programming as an adult for something like, 15 years, but I've always had a bit of a difficult balance with formalism and creativity (as well as personal opinion / preference). Have MSc in CS. But I've been hacking away at computers since since I was very young.

I lost something of myself through all my education and in work - namely - be creative. If you grow into that top .1% or whatever, everything becomes 'so serious' in maintaining that position because you effectively become an authority figure in it.

HN recently introduced me to INTERCAL and something just clicked where I was like, this can all be completely ridiculous, AND well done??? It was like all the rules of consistency, analysis relaxed, heavily. I don't have to have a mind that is perfectly structured for all things. I can balance a perspective that is diametrically opposite to all the rules and something can still be built really well.

There's something so serious about programming that has often kept me a neurotic mess about it, always keeping my sense of humor about it cleanly compartmentalized away from my code. I started working on a PhD and the pressure to make everything perfect got to me. I work as a software developer and the pressure to plan code everyone can learn and grow from turned me into an asshole!

There's always plenty of learning to be done but there's not always going to be someone whose going to be able to tell you how to get out of a 'passion rut' for you, and I'd imagine over a lifetime of passion you'd wind up experiencing plateus like that with a fair amount of frequency. Whether you find your passion early or late, maintaining interest for all that time you have can be really tough. It's something people sometimes have to help one another with and sometimes it is something one has to work hard for independently as well.

I really agree with the stress free aspect. My first solution to reduce stress was 'go really slow', tortoise versus the hare mentality. I found myself in a sort of social competition puzzle that wasn't fun and was draining me all of my brain resources automatically, as one side effect. Funny that INTERCAL is that bit of radical novelty dijkstra was talking about, for me. It's just all done the opposite, but for me - it's exactly what my mind and social life turn into when code has to be 'perfect'.

> Maybe is because "just hangout with someone" is not clearly defined. What is the point? what do we want to talk about? I don't socialize a lot outside of work.

I don't socialize much myself either, because sometimes it seems like there is supposed to be a point, but - nitpicking over that mentality in the way one might nitpick over code ... I think that's the wrong way to view relationships.

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