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Comment by dialamac | Hacker News Reader

Disagree with most of these. Marrying for a high level of intimacy and partnership is by itself often enough — and if followed seriously often more solid - business plans fall through.

Having outsized expectations of children is often a recipe for resentment. Children don’t have tendency to evolve the way you plan before they are born.

Buying a house just to live in is enough for most people.

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In my 55 years of experience and seeing friends, family and others around me, having some kind of mission is critical.

You just have to have something to aim for with your spouse, or you do get bored. Currently where I live, i see families working in the family business all the time and they really are forced to be together working on something.

Whereas their children just want to move from the provinces and live in an apartment with a spouse and they are miserable, because they don't have something to work together with.

They think having the house, the wife and the car is enough. It isn't. It's just the recipe for a midlife crisis after you get all of those things.

Your comments through out this thread make a lot of sense. Thanks for outlining them.

Curious, when did you start thinking about your life in terms of mission (s) and what was the trigger for it?

Actually, it took me decades to put it into stone. But then I realized I was doing it bit by bit since I was about 15 years old.

Now 40 years later, i'm cogent enough to put it into words and mentor it to younger people in an elevator pitch way that they "get it".

What did you find as the top 2-3 things that help in crafting an effective mission once you decided to make it more intentional?

Couples who work together do have midlife crisis. Children who leave the province do it for a reasons you don't agree. Misery, might or might not be a consequence of "moving from the province" or not having a goal. Personally I agree with your overall point and disagree with the presentation. Your examples look like busy work, disguised as meaningful and fulfilling. Something you'd amusingly read in the index of a self-help book, picked up out of curiosity in a dusty box at a garage sale. To sum up, some people pointed out, that this idea might not be transient to others. It requires the dedication, not just to patrol your life, but to patrol the lives of those who might unknowingly be part of your personal mission.

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