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Comment by sfgweilr4f | Hacker News Reader

There's a ship. It has no captain, no crew. Where is it going?

There's another ship. It has a captain and crew but no destination is set. Where is it going?

There's another ship. It has captain, crew, destination but no course is set. Where is it going?

There's another ship. It has captain, crew, destination and a course set. Everyone is ready to go and intends to go. Where is it going?

Only one of these ships will set sail, leave the harbor, reach a set of map points, follow that course and arrive at its destination. Regardless of being driven off course due to bad weather or other circumstance, only one has a real chance.

"Perseverance cultivates a sense of purposefulness that can create resilience against or decrease current levels of major depressive disorders..."

Sort of. Purpose means perseverance is useful. Lack of purpose means perseverance, resilience or even the least effort can be wasted.

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There's another ship. It has captain, crew, destination and a course set. Turns out the destination sucks, but it is too late once they arrive.

There is another ship that comes across some depressive and anxiety provoking spots on the course. The captain consults with other captains and finds out the destination was foolish. But through this process they are able to iterate on setting better and better destinations.

The problem space of life is combinatorially explosive. No one knows the exact best destination, and best destinations both differ from ship to ship and also change over time. Anxiety and depression gets a bad rep but in their non-toxic forms they want us to ask "can I do it" and "is it worth it" respectively. This helps us setting better and better courses.

Chronic anxiety and depression are the ones that are sticky. They tell us "you can't do anything" and "nothing is worth it". Then the right approach (as this article aligns with) is to accept and commit (ACT), and balance them with the participatory knowledge of life, aligned with our values, which in turn (hopefully) informs us that we can do some things pretty well and there are still many things that are worth it.

Destination and course aren't really that important.

"Lets head out - somewhere - and find somewhere interesting, or some people that are interesting, and stop when we find something that fits. We might fail a few times, but it'll be an adventure"

The middle two ships can do this just fine. It just depends on your perspective and what you want from it.

I've been told much of my life that I should be following the ways of the last ship: But to tell you the truth, the only way I'm going to get some of the things I really want is through luck - and to a point, work that I don't really want to do, if we are being honest. But following that 'interesting' thing? It has worked out really well.

It means that bad weather isn't really an issue either - that just leads me to different things of interest. Hopefully, I don't get a surge of ship-destroying plagues. I'm unfortunately close to that - I was diagnosed with MS 1.5 to 2 years ago. But hey, my stuff is pretty mild right now (and I'm over 40) and hopefully it stays that way.

Nice analogy. Goals are important. But don't forget to enjoy the journey.

> Sort of. Purpose means perseverance is useful. Lack of purpose means perseverance, resilience or even the least effort can be wasted.

That's taken care of right in the title: "perseverance toward life goals"

"If one does not know to which port they are sailing, no wind is favorable" -Seneca

I mean one can paraphrase Lewis Carroll as a response to that - If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

If you don't know where you're going no wind is unfavourable either, and you get these much more often :)

The crew thought it would be a smooth ride. But then came a storm and they all gave up hope.

It is known that if you think the way to your goal is a smooth ride you can end up in a very big depression when things don't go as planned.

This is key. Many years ago, I learned while reading Julian Simon's Good Mood that happiness is basically the ratio between your reality and your expectations. When your reality is immutable, adjusting your expectations is the path to happiness.

I've had great results applying this principle to day to day annoyances. For example, when I go to meet someone, I always expect a 5-10 minute delay and go prepared (e.g. with a book). My loss (time) is the same, but my mood remains mostly unaffected. What's more, if the person show's up on time, it's a pleasant surprise.

Success is getting what you want.

Happiness is wanting what you get.

So the fourth ship has cpt, crew, dest and course set - but ... what if instruments determining the course are broken? (that aims towards a distortion of perception - maybe due to schizophrenia). Take that previous ship assuming the instruments are sufficiently fine - so it will reach a destination - great - but how was that destination chosen to begin with? Was it maybe just the result of what parents, peers, society expected or led you to believe to be the right destination? Like working a lot to finally retire in a house next to a lake (just making something generic up here) - the cpt will see the destination long before they reach it and before that she'll have had plenty of time to overthink the endeavour - and it dawns on him she's on his way to somewhere she actually doesn't want to go - what now? She's too old to change course somewhere else - at least that's what she thinks - and anyway where would he go now? What if the map is basically bullshit? What if the destination is destroyed by a typhoon (<> illness) during course? What if the appeal of the destination is its uniqueness but b/c TV tells every cpt to go there it looses it and becomes overcrowded by disrespectful and obnoxious people?

Maybe the cpt was actually - in hindsight - coming from a pretty decent place. She was just too impatient and immature to realize it. Then she watches a biopic about Jeff Bezos and his "regret minimization framework" (aka FOMO) - so she thought she has to take that risk just because she might regret it. should have never set sail anywhere. in another alternative universe she does everything above (the wrong thing technically) but his home town got nuked and she thinks - good that I left. better live in a boring house next to some boring lake with a husband that I don't love anymore than being dead or crippled by cancer due to the radiation.

Theoretically it's all good but if in your quest for your life goals you meet others to whom those goals came easily or even naturally (Third World citizen working hard as an immigrant to get a better passport and be able to travel easily for example), you can get disheartened and depressed rather easily.

The metaphor is a little tortured but finding a crew and charting a course are also towards the goal so at least in this metaphor it doesn't really matter what the current state is. There are clear goals to move towards. Said another way, choosing a goal is also a goal to work towards.

Agreed. Getting in/out of the harbor is the pilot's job. That's their part. I think the metaphor works well. The limit is when you dig deeper into the impact of depression/anxiety. Then it starts to break down. But even then - still useful.

I think having a destination does help with depression. It certainly helps with knowing when you're off track or are having issues.

And there are the people who stay on the beach surfing(possibly even in bad weather), building sand castle hydro dams, or looking at crabs in the rock pools.

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