What If You Could Do It All Over?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
> "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
Jordan Peterson Pick Your Sacrifice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5--W9mhC4zA
I know there are people who hate on him for basically misinterpretations of things he has said regarding transgender issues.
But then on top of that, there are right wing people that hate him equally much and think he's basically a nonsense-spouting sycophant.
I guess listening to the things he has to say, I think they are on par with the more useful things I ever heard from a professor at university.
Anyway, he seems to be someone people love to hate.
So I err on the side of caution by assuming he isn't worth listening to. He also reeks of certainty, like I'm wrong just for asking what the fuck he's trying to tell me because it's so obvious... to him.
I can possibly sift through YouTube to get to the videos where he claims these things, but it will not be the most palatable of chores.
I guess it seems completely unremarkable that someone would have useful things to say in one regard while having less useful things to say in another.
Also I guess I view him in the context of a university professor who wrote a book and has some lectures online, not in the context of the mega-celebrity he became. I think being catapulted to fame like that is bound to mess up pretty well everyone and probably also muddy their message quite a bit.
I mean, at its core none of the things Peterson has to say are really all that revolutionary, they are pretty basic life advice. "Take responsibility for your life", etc.
Obviously there is an unmet need for that basic life advice because people (particularly young men) ate it up.
One article complained about him relaying a story of getting a kid to eat. My only conclusion is the person that was complaining doesn't have kids, because his story was extremely relatable, and I'd guess basically universal among parents.
Anyway, yes if you try putting Jordan Peterson up on a pedestal, he'll probably fall off it. If you view him as someone that maybe could give some good advice while you'd otherwise just be killing time anyway, I guess I think he holds up to that metric pretty well.
Given the yard stick / metric you are measuring him with there would be teeming millions who would qualify -- anyone who is capable of a half decent parenting. In the kind of life advice he offers, Peterson feels quite unremarkable.
I live in the US and not that interested in US politics, so no dog in the fight -- just an fly on the wall observation.
No, he has a long established pattern of attracting a crowd by talking about basic self-help and then sneak in politically charged ideas like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th... , "people are lobsters", and plenty of sexism.
> I view him in the context of a university professor who wrote a book and has some lectures online, not in the context of the mega-celebrity he became.
You can't pick and choose the context: a person is responsible for they say in public.
Besides, even as a university professor a person is responsible for speaking honestly.
> being catapulted to fame ... muddy their message quite a bit.
No, he was playing the same tricks since the beginning. There are a lot of old videos on youtube.
And, it has to be a single specialty. In my particular case, it was hard to accept that I couldn’t be both a successful programming language designer and a successful game developer.
Should you really dig in and focus on mobile, web, server, game, firmware? If so, should you focus on one language?
I don't so much question paths in my life as I feel very lucky to have ended up where I am. I do question on a daily basis, whether I should stop learning and adopting new technologies, and focus on ONE domain for the rest of my life.
It seems I am destined to be a jack of all trades, master of none, if I let life continue to unfold as it has over the last 10 years, bumping around as needed from my employers to new or different domains.
Why not? Jonathan Blow seems to be making a pretty good run at it.
See also this webcomic:
But we’re 29, not 49 or even 39. There’re still figs on the tree.
There are other cultural and societal factors at play, but the greater longevity and better medical care have opened up the time period for the expectations that previous generations had for their 20s.
I also don’t think you’re thinking about things too soon. We’re all slightly different. Also don’t make decisions for other people by writing them off. Just because they present one way doesn’t make that the sum total of who they are. You’ll need to have relationships in order to meet someone to have kids with.
There may be future interventions that correct for that, but generally, quality of ova starts declining after 30 and much more so after 35.
Not to mention the energy to keep up with little ones, and if you ever want the option of more than 2 kids. And of course if you’re 30+ when you have kids, and your kids are 30+ when they have kids, you are pushing 65 to 70+ which makes playing with the grandkids not as much fun and you’re soon to be less of an asset in terms of help and possibly a liability for your kids due to declining health.
On the other hand, you may have increased your chances at having a higher paying career, but I suspect, for many, the extra savings don’t quite make up for the trade offs.
I had mine in 30 to 35 range, but if I could go back in time and had found my spouse, I think I would have opted to have them in 25 to 30 range. However, no one in my social circles has kids in their 20s and barely anyone is married by 30 so we also may have been socially isolated if we had chosen to do that.
But I try to think back to what I did in my 25 to 30 range that I thought was worth delaying starting a family and I can’t come up with anything, other than being a little bit further ahead in the rat race. But all the other rats are thinking the same thing, so who is really benefiting?
It also seems useful to become a parent with that extra decade of life experience. And if we incentivize exercise in the later years, it could offset the "feeling tired at 70" thing? My fiancé's grandpa runs marathons and honestly has more energy than I do!
The bottleneck is the same as it is for any issue regarding children.
The prospective mother must be willing.
They might think they do, but life never unfolds itself according to our plans.
Never compare to others. You don't know what they're going through, or what they're going to go through.
It took me until my mid 30s to realize just how impossible the idea of "having life figured out" really is.
That said, time is ticking and while it isn't too late, now is the best time to start!
42 here, already two major career changes. And I am glad I made both changes.
Beautiful, this is the explanation I was looking for because whenever I'd hear that "it's never too late," I just felt like that enabled procrastination, but your explanation solidified that life is not long, but rather it is short indeed. It's true that it's not too late for many of your future opportunities, but eventually, time will run out.
To be honest I've felt like this since I was 18 and it never went away. What made you realize this wasn't the case?
And I hope you find that path too.
My one life advice: Don't search for greatness, search for peace.
It was the initial stage where I felt I had a death sentence that shifted my outlook on life. When you think you're going to die you re-evaluate some things. I looked at my life, thought about what I'd regret, and made 5 year plans to get things on track. I'm now in the habit of setting plans for 5 years to ensure I don't regret the life I do have.
Since then I've been a teacher. Looking at pivoting into finance in Ireland/Europe (with a masters in Quantitative Finance) next year; was planning on doing it this year but, y'know, corona kinda destroyed finance jobs over there and I'd need a work visa (thankfully it's a high need field so it's a bit easier)...
"Life is funny. You start out with limitless potential, but time is always shaving away the possibilities. Every choice you make is the choice not to do a thousand other things. What's important, when all is said and done, is that you made a difference. Your choices, and everything undone, have to mean something. Otherwise, what is the point?"
We branch out, but we ultimately keep heading towards the very same outcome.
The best I've got these days is that I suspect none of it means anything. But I hope I'm wrong.
"For although in regard of that which is already past there may be some inequality, yet that time which is now present and in being, is equal unto all men. And that being it which we part with whensoever we die, it doth manifestly appear, that it can be but a moment of time, that we then part with. For as for that which is either past or to come, a man cannot be said properly to part with it. For how should a man part with that which he hath not? ... that life which any the longest liver, or the shortest liver parts with, is for length and duration the very same, for that only which is present, is that, which either of them can lose, as being that only which they have; for that which he hath not, no man can truly be said to lose.
-- Marcus Aurelius, http://gutenberg.org/files/2680/2680-h/2680-h.htm#link2H_4_0...
"XorNot" is a title inhabited by many different people over time: the person that held that title this time last year is not you, and the "XorNot" of today will give way tomorrow to yet another person. Each can only be properly considered in the context of the situations they inherited and those left for their successors.
14. Even if you were to live for three thousand years or ten times as long, you should still remember this, that no one loses any life other than the one that he is living, nor does he live any life other than the one that he loses, so the shortest life and the longest amount to the same. For the present is equal for all, and what is passing must be equal also, so what can be lost is shown to be nothing more than a moment; and no one could lose either the past or the future, for how could he be deprived of what he does not possess? So always bear in mind these two points: firstly that all things are alike in nature from all eternity and recur in cycles, and it therefore makes no difference whether one sees the same spectacle for a hundred years or two hundred or for time everlasting; and secondly that the longest-lived and the earliest to die suffer an equal loss; for it is solely of the present moment that each will be deprived, if it is really the case that this is all he has and a person cannot lose what he does not have.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/meditations-97801995...
In reality though you may opt for a career, leave the family but fail. Or you may put your career on a lower pitch only to have your wife and you decide it won't really work out. In reality, it's more like you start to climb for a fat purple fig only to find it rotten, or just edible. At least in some of the cases, and it won't be your fault and your success depends on how you deal with the said fig. Maybe you can still climb to another?
I happened to reconnect with a childhood friend in that crowd of 15,000+ and that got the ball rolling.
For sure, however it is better to have tried and experienced than not have. I have tried and failed at picking many of those figs, and it is worth it, the good and bad. Don't stand there, give yourself a time, and then chose freely.
She struggled with mental health issues and depression most of her life. She excelled academically and she was driven to write, but at the same time, she struggled with her own self. Her life is marked by several suicide attempts.
She married the poet Ted Hughes and moved around frequently during their short marriage. While she was ambitious, a deep sense of anxiety kept her from exploring and expressing her own identity through her writing.
Most of her poetry was written during a short burst of creativity, over the course of a few months, in late 1962. She died of suicide in 1963. Her famous novel, The Bell Jar, was published a month before her death. Major themes in this novel include "socially acceptable identity" and mental health. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Jar
Your criticism is a certainly correct, but would have been removed to the author of the quote. As Plath received treatment and openly discussed her mental health issues, undoubtedly she was told this many times over.
My understanding is that Ted Hughes' contribution to Plath's mental health went beyond "mov[ing] around frequently during their short marriage" [1].
> In 2017, previously unpublished letters written by Plath between 18 February 1960 and 4 February 1963 accuse Hughes of physically abusing her months before she miscarried their second child in 1961.
Hughes also began an affair with another woman, Assia Wevill, in 1962 and (apparently) had a kid with her in 1965. Plath knew about the former and committed suicide in 1963. Wevill also killed herself as well as her child with Hughes in 1969 after, you guessed it, "Hughes began affairs with Brenda Hedden, a married acquaintance who frequented their home, and Carol Orchard, a nurse 20 years his junior, whom he would later marry in 1970" [2].
It might be too reductive to say Hughes just drove two women to suicide, but it seems like we can be confident that he had, uh, extensive personal failings?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Hughes#Death_of_Sylvia_Pla...
You might find someone climbing the tree and ask them if they could tell you how they taste up top.
Sitting in the crotch of the tree lamenting your situation is a fig too. We all bite into a sour one every now and again.
When I came back from Afghanistan I had to scratch, claw, and climb a ladder without a degree thanks in much part to people who saw in me what I could only hoped to have seen in myself. I looked around me when I arrived and I saw Ivy League and top school graduates with multi-million dollar homes, Teslas, and their own literal fig trees in their back yards that complained about everything in life. I've now had the opportunity to live in multiple cultures with varying degrees of prosperity. These things taught me to know my value but to have perspective on what I'm really asking for.
Here I am considering selling all my belongings, buying a truck and an RV to go embrace the new open road that is remote work. Life isn't about looking back. It isn't even about getting what you want. It's about navigating the road in front of you and making the best of the opportunities in front of you and for everyone around you. All that to say, I've embraced the idea that whatever lies ahead is where I'm supposed to be and I needn't look at what my neighbors value or what they have because I don't care. This life is mine to live.
I'd agree with your conclusion and encourage you to sell everything and go have fun.
That said, my point was really that if you can afford a house with a fig tree in Silicon Valley then in some way your stars aligned and to see people unhappy over frivolous things was an enlightening experience that taught me something. My stars didn't align, until they did, and I had to learn to appreciate that. It doesn't mean those people didn't need to overcome adversity or have a story worth listening to or admiring.
> This isn't as uncommon a path as you might believe. I was enlisted in the USAF from 2005-2010, spent months and months Iraq and Afghanistan etc.
I'd be interested in knowing the statistics on veterans in Silicon Valley and tech in general. I've met some, but I wouldn't call it common. I might agree that it's somewhere between common and uncommon, but who knows? If these statistics are collected they are not published or widely disseminated. When I usually meet veterans they're not enlisted, they're officers. The most public activity I've seen is a group at Google that has 2,000 members, I do not know how many of those work in engineering roles.
That said, I'm happy to fanboy one of my favorite authors and Silicon Valley veterans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Fick
I think you both may be right. I would imagine that the formal education makes it a bit easier to "get your foot in the door" in the first place, when you're competing "on paper" with others. But once you are in the industry, performance and track record counts for a lot more.
In other words the degree probably does make it easier. But it might be only 20% easier and perhaps not 80-90% as some might assume.
Depends on your chosen specialisation too of course. I managed to pick a career in just the right area of software development where I could get away with having had a pitiful amount of education :-)
But outside of that world, I was honestly surprised how little it mattered that I didn't have a CS degree. In a lot of ways, if I saw how friends in other fields were progressing and what it took for them to get there, it was objectively easier to be an uncredentialed developer.
The broader point about stars aligning is absolutely correct.
I’ve met quite few while living in the Bay Area. I moved to Austin a few years ago and there are even more of us here. You and I have made some similar choices in life though. I enlisted in 09 and got into tech after returning from Afghanistan as well.
> My twenties were filled with stress, frustration, confusion, and at times anger.
Similar for me, but like you, I'm a different (I think better) person as a result, so it's difficult to wish I'd had an easier time.
> ...climb a ladder without a degree thanks in much part to people who saw in me what I could only hoped to have seen in myself.
I will be forever grateful to the people I had in my life that did this for me too. I've been exceptionally lucky in this respect.
> Here I am considering selling all my belongings, buying a truck and an RV to go embrace the new open road that is remote work.
This sounds awesome. Good luck!!
The thing which bothers me is upbeat comments about living here and now and planting the seeds for future changes. It feels like current problems (and desire to wish them away via woulda/counda/shoulda) didn't happen entirely randomly. These problems are a result of systematic behavior/decision making.
As an example, it's too easy to say to yourself, "I will start doing sport tomorrow". However, you wake up tomorrow and notice that your day is so busy that you don't have time to do sport until 9pm and by that time you are exhausted and can't do sport. And you repeat the cycle saying, "maybe tomorrow". You start teasing your day apart and find that to squeeze in sport won't require you just to add it, but also to kick something out. And that all the things you have the energy for in the day, you implicitly regarded as more important than sport. And as a result, you are stuck in the loop wishing to do something better but being limited by your other priorities.
And frankly, this bothers me way more. The immutability of the past is normal. Being so set in your ways that you can't change the future - this is what scares the shit out of me.
For me it's been helpful to understand who benefits from my actions in that particular moment, and then prioritized the ones where I benefit too.
In personal finance context they say to pay yourself first. I think this also applies when e.g. prioritizing health. And when paying yourself first, this also means doing things when most energy is available and leaving other things for when you're tired.
Other things could be a _higher_ priority than a new thing. Just to give you an example (for huge amount of people priority to earn money to be able to have food on the table trumps almost everything else).
I answered below. I chose sport activity, because it's so simple and clearly benefits everybody and still only 30% of adults do it.
If you go to more complex things and on the opposite side of scales put a lot of complex and tangled priorities, it becomes very unclear what benefits most and how to pay yourself first.
I wonder why "Less than 5% of adults participate in 30 minutes of physical activity each day; only one in three adults receive the recommended amount of physical activity each week." (https://www.hhs.gov/fitness/resource-center/facts-and-statis....) happens?
The answer is that there are so many other things that can stand between "desire drives you" and reality. Just to give you several examples: financial needs, physical or mental health issues, other priorities (kids, family, friendship, etc).
BTW. I am not saying that change is impossible. However, I am not buying "You're on the cusp". Over time you accumulate priorities, which you got by sacrificing a lot 5-10-15-20 years ago. These priorities are dear to your hard. Sacrificing (or even chipping away) from them is way harder than when you are a blank slate.
In my mid-50s, I started listening to Alan Watts and learning about ancient Indian religions / philosophies. My world-view today is some kind of cross between Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. I'm a free will skeptic, as well.
While I'm not paralyzed by it, I've come to think that we can't know how any decision we make is going to turn out. We can't know with certainty if doing X is going to be good or bad for us in the long run. All we have are our own estimates of probabilities, and I'm not sure how well we can estimate them, either, honestly.
I also don't know who "I" am, or where I begin or end. In infancy and childhood, I think we come to accept a belief that "we" are individuals, each residing in our physical bodies. Yet I understand the Universe to be a single thing (a quantum field? a simulation?) and so the idea of us being individuals seems a bit off to me. I think we are far more connected and interdependent than we usually recognize.
One good outcome of my world view is that I don't really worry about passing away. A less pleasant outcome is that my world view is so out of the ordinary that I don't often connect with people that I can talk about this with in any serious way.
One of my foundations of belief is that life is entirely about probabilities and chance. It's a sort of guiding force that I follow. I view everything similarly to how you do, in that we cannot possibly know for sure it's outcome. By extension, we cannot possibly know what the right choice is for us. Sometimes, you have to close your eyes and roll the dice.
I'm deeply interested in the random nature of the world / life. When you stop to think about it so much of our existence is truly random in nature right down to our conception. It boggles the mind to think how little control we had over even our own existence.
As for identity I'm also a free will skeptic as you put it.
Anyways, just thought I'd let you know that people like you are out there. I also find it a bummer that we're a huge minority, but such is life I suppose.
As you also indicated I genuinely struggle to find people with similar frequencies and views.
Even with things being predetermined, our conscience minds still desire to optimize our existences with what we ultimately see as choices and decisions.
I’m this case, free will can then be preserved as an ideological concept that emerges within a deterministic system that breeds consciousness.
I definitely agree people way overestimate what they can predict about their choices. There are a few choices you can't take back but most of the time you're continuously choosing (mainly on auto-pilot) along a path, it's not a binary choice. Like most of us could, tomorrow, stop working in software and/or move to a different country for example. It would be hard but it's not like you chose once and now you're stuck forever.
Normally I can get friends to agree with most of the propositions, even that 'they' don't ultimately exist in the conventional western sense, but I don't think they buy into it emotionally, which is probably where it counts.
I'm in exactly the same boat, and I am only 28.
Reminds me of: "The man quite often knows what he does, he never knows what does what he does." (P. Valery)
>I also don't know who "I" am.
"Only the shallow know themselves." (O. Wilde)
While it’s important to know logic systems have limitations (somewhat of an analogue to our understanding of the world), it’s important that we make use of that knowledge by trying to find different mental frameworks that are useful to us and help us move closer to our desires (whether it be a framework for the discovery of more math or a framework that guides us further along our pursuit of happiness)
I consider my life to be much the similar: even the negative things or the things I wish would change have helped shape qualities that I would not give away.
[1]: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Tapestry_(episode)
It does not mean that you live right, but people’s opinions are often reflections of their own insecurities.
I would be happy to remove the trauma that I experienced in my past. I'd take the risk of being a different person - with different good qualities.
Also, I don't believe they portrayed Picard's "unremarkable" career negatively, except in Picard's own view (and Q's I guess).
“No.”
“I suppose we’d have settled down, had children, grandchildren, that sort of thing…”
“What about the fire?” she said.
“What fire?”
“Swept through our house just after we were married. Killed us both.”
“What fire? I don’t know anything about any fire!”
Granny turned around.
“Of course not! It didn’t happen. But the point is, it might have happened. You can’t say ‘if this didn’t happen then that would have happened’ because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say ‘if only I’d..’ because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you’ll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking about it. So I don’t.”
In my personal opinion it is one of the worst Discworld books, which still makes it pretty good mind you.
Perhaps because I was inculcated fairly early in a competitive environment, it's hard for me to look back and not woulda/coulda/shoulda it. Mainly I'd like to ask some of my successful ex-colleagues and friends (some of whom I'm still in contact with, so wouldn't be too hard I guess) if they have any significant regrets. One on hand they must know how incredibly lucky and fortunate they've been, but of course their lives have their own trials and tribulations. And my life is good, I have close friends and family, quite mundane, though at least a good mundane. But still, I find it hard sometimes to not at least wish for a future reincarnation, one where I have the natural talents or extra drive or whatever that is needed to grab that brass ring.
It's interested that you didn't explicitly list "luck". I get that it's considered distasteful, but it's the reality of the world we live in - much of one's success comes down to dumb luck.
That said... I feel the same way as you do. For some reason I have always wanted more than I seem able to achieve. I strive, and I strive, but because of this or that short coming, or chance, I don't seem to reach the "brass ring".
I'm trying these days to just find peace and happiness with my life. I haven't jumped off the treadmill entirely, I've just turned down the speed. If I start a company and make millions some day, great. If I don't... if I end up a career man my whole life, but live comfortably with my wife... well, that's great too. I'm going to let go of the rudder a little bit and let the boat sail itself for a while.
While it's probably impossible to prove one way or another, I've personally grown to accept that I will never be fully satisfied with everything in my life. Accepting that fact has given me some kind of peace, because I no longer dwell on the what-ifs as much as I used to. It doesn't matter if I reach the goals I have in mind right now, as I'm bound to come up with new ones that are just out of my reach. I believe bettering oneself is good, but I also believe it's important to accept that there's never a goal to be reached there.
For most people this is a very bitter pill to swallow.
I could have been a millionaire many times over if I had realised how valuable my skills at the age of 16, 18, 20 were.
On the other hand, only due to my weird, suboptimal path through life did I meet my wife, which is for me a global optimum. I literally can not think of anybody I would rather spend the rest of my life with.
Now I work at a startup at an age where most software engineers in SV are retiring. So it's all good.
This is inspiring. Thanks for sharing!
This got me choked up. You're a richer man than just about anyone else in this thread, my friend.
Regarding fame, I think the words of the late 20th Century philosopher David Cassidy summed it up best
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cassidy
If you are desperate for fame and fortune, try just fortune and see how that works out for you.
Edit: ah yes downvotes. Think about it this way. You meet someone with 6 fingers on each hand, kinda interesting right? Minutes later you meet someone with 5 fingers, also interesting?
I grew up Christian, and among Christian young people a common question was "What's God's plan for my life?"
In that context, I came across Micah 6:8 which spells it out about as plainly as you'll find anywhere:
"He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"
That seems like a standard that everyone can get behind. It gives you a standard by which to measure how well you're living, but your options remain open to do whatever you want as long as you do it justly, kindly, and humbly.
The point is that regardless of the original intent of the Judeo-Christian text, it seems an admirable enough message that can be recontextualized easily enough to fit those of different ethical and theological viewpoints on this forum. No hair-splitting or holy wars necessary.
The allusion to Alcoholics Anonymous is that the “acknowledging a higher power” step, while commonly assumed as pushing crypto-Christianity, can be reinterpreted by each individual participant as their own unifying motivator.
Humility is also useful when alone. I think X is true but let me double check can easily save your life irrespective of a belief in god or the presence of other people. Using a checklist before flying for example is an important recognition of your imperfection. Measure twice cut once is again the same idea.
The Christian POV is basically, "it doesn't matter how bad your life is because it will be great in the after life". In other words the good parts are ahead, period.
But if you don't believe then there is no guaranteed good parts ahead and the line above has no meaning.
Theologians, especially non American, drastically believe that the American Church has perverted heaven and evolution.
Life is like a long mountain trail in a great migration. There are criss-crossing paths everywhere, and you have to decide which to take. The goal is to climb until you reach the summit. There'll always be valleys and hills, so you won't always be going up. But each step you take forward, and each foot higher in elevation, is your life getting better. If you can say that most of the time you were moving forward and higher, to me that's a well-lived life.
Could you have taken a shorter path and gotten there faster? Sure! But the longer you're on the path, the more time you have to smell the flowers, listen to the birds sing, see the trees swaying in the wind. Maybe you're content to stay exactly where you are. But I think most of us should keep climbing, because there's always new trails to see. Who cares how we get there as long as we keep going up.
I wish I was happy. And I think some hard-to-treat mental illness is preventing my day-to-day happiness.
When I feel envious of others, it's not only that they're rich and they travel a lot. They also have friends. They might even have a family they care about. They have hobbies and they have _something_ to do. A lot of them say they have problems with mental health, but you can't film a year-long depressive episode and upload it to YouTube, so I have to take their word for it. And in truth I don't. The world seems clean-split between people who have everything and people who have it even harder than me, and I always just feel alone in this middle ground, where I have all the material elements to be healthy and happy but I can't put them together.
I have many things other people want, but I never find myself sitting back and saying "I'm glad I have this." I always want things I can't have, and it hurts a lot.
You're not as alone as you think, because this just resonated like I can't even explain.
IMHO, this is a mistake, if not _the_ mistake.
I feel like i've been in your shoes, in a past life. I've come to believe that happiness is like the horizon, or the sunset. It's a fuzzy concept, which disappears if you go too close to it.
The horizon is not a place, and the sunset is not a moment. They are aggregate phenomena. You can't set them as targets, because they don't exist physically. You can observe them as composite entities, emerging in the right context.
Such is happiness. You can't set it as an objective, because it doesn't exist. And chasing it directly will only cause you suffering. Instead, try to set smaller goals, and let it emerge on its own.
Take care of your physical health. Take care of your relationships. Allocate time, not much, but regularly, for activities that you like (hobbies). Widen your intellectual horizons, e.g. by reading or listening to diverse people. Get better at what you do professionally. Try to find some form of meditation that works for you. Occasionally, try writing long, thoughtful comments on forums :)
Try to do these without looking too far into it; just trust the process. And at some point, you'll have the revelation "man, it's been quite some time since i felt unhappy!"
I often have this same thought. I tend to try and phrase it as "I'm learning to put them together". I don't believe that we can't.
> I have many things other people want, but I never find myself sitting back and saying "I'm glad I have this." I always want things I can't have, and it hurts a lot.
There is one quick choice you have the power to make here which might help, which is to choose to be grateful about the things you do have.
And it's not mutually exclusive. I'm not saying you'll immediately stop striving for more. But while engaging in that striving (which is hard to stop!), you can choose, also, to notice and be thankful for the small things you do already have.
Recognise throughout the day the small things that could make you feel grateful if you let them. Just acknowledge those things briefly and try to build a small habit around that way of thinking.
For more on this, Google "gratitude journal".
You're not alone, there's plenty of people who prioritized career over all else and 10-15 years ended up with plenty of money but otherwise no life.
Wait twenty years and it will be the only thing...
But it doesn’t make you happier: https://youtu.be/2EiV4-ClcIs?t=2180
You can make changes today that will pay dividends in 10 years, so maybe focus on that instead.
I was widowed pretty young (as widowers go), so I have done my share of playing the what-if game with the past. Ultimately it is not a productive exercise, and I try not to do it. If I catch myself dwelling in unlived lives, I try to refocus on the one still in front of me.
It's tempting to lay in bed after a bad life event, thinking about turning back the clock, but that never ever leads to anything productive or positive.
Best case scenario is you can't fall asleep until 4AM and screw up your sleep schedule for a week. Worst case is you start exhibiting learned helplessness and go into depression for a year or several.
I always try to refocus and think about what I can do for the people who were there for me during bad times, and how I can learn from my misfortune. (Sometimes, there's nothing to learn and it's just a bad stroke of luck. Even then - it's not going to help playing the what-if game)
Ultimately we are the people we are both because of good and bad things that happened to us.
Exactly this. No matter what your imagined and real futures turn out to be, the good ones all require effort and investment in the present. You can’t go wrong with making investments in your life now.
"Vicarious learning from the experiences of others saves making errors yourself, but I regard the study of successes as being basically more important than the studyof failures. As I will several times say, there are so many ways of being wrong and so few of being right, studying successes is more efficient, and furthermore when your turn comes you will know how to succeed rather than how to fail!"
~ The art of doing science and engineering
I think the reason is that success is usually cumulative: each little win builds on the last until it's obvious you're going in the right direction. Those wins often depend on random or temporary things you have little control over. For example: CED was the perfect format for the decade RCA started developing it in, but it took until VHS redefined the market to finish it.[0]
Meanwhile one mistake can send everything tumbling down. Study enough mistakes and you might know enough of what to avoid to stay afloat long enough to find the right chain of wins.
In principle, I agree with the fact that studying failures teaches one more, whether more is better when it comes to learning stands to be discussed, however.
What I mean by this is that, although you may profit from your parents sharing a plethora of don't-dos such as avoiding drugs, staying away from toxic relationships, not dwelling on your insecurities, et cetera, having regular abstract conversations about how "thinking deeply about my predicament, my objectives and how to reach them despite the former" might be much more useful to you.
In short, the first approach teaches you, potentially, numerous, isolated lessons about specific circumstances you will likely never face. Yes, you certainly learned more things, but whether those things will be useful to you, particularly, is unclear and only time can tell.
If you and your parents, however, have a thorough discussion about what allowed them to lead a happy life, as in the second scenario, both pushing and pulling, trying to discover what it really was and looking to find consensus regarding attitudes, processes, ideas, roadblocks, etc, you might learn a framework what will be useful forever, regardless of the concrete circumstances you are faced with.
Nevertheless, this comment of yours is spot on:
> people who succeed rarely have much luck identifying which selection of choices got them there.
Therefore, I really emphasize that not only the mentor should share the reasons and methods behind their success, the listener must be able to understand why and whether they were as useful as the mentor portrays them.
I did give a considerable amount of time to thinking about the what-if scenarios one day and when I looked down those other paths of what might have been I realized I would have to give up something I had come to love to pursue those.
Who I am may not be the best but I made these choices. I can't travel to past to berate that version of me. If I'm dissatisfied it's up to me to change that for future me.
I don't regret my childhood largely because it's immutable, but when I reflect upon it I would've preferred to have spent a lot less time playing video games.
> Early teens is a time when kids should focus on social activities, not be obsessed by some individualistic activity
I don't think GP is suggesting they spend their time exclusively on these activities. But it seems like good advice that kids to spend some time on such endeavours!
Besides, many of these activities could involve (or lead to) socialising with other kids in the process, towards a common goal. Which is an amazing way to develop social skills too.
— Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
BUT its not productive to do so. Every one does it and its ok, but it should not be an obsession. I realized that everything doesnt go according to plan and I need to chart my path, not compare to others. Whats good for others, might not be yours. You have to decided what you want to do in the future.
The concept that doing things that you hate doing is "exercising of the muscle of willpower" is very revealing. It's something I've tried to do adopt, and it's been a very powerful motivator in getting me to work out and reduce procrastination. As banal as it may sound — like the father in Calvin and Hobbes saying "it builds character" — it's also a great way of framing it.
And I assure you I'm neither a
> "troubled teenager who took my latest shower 3 weeks ago"
or a
> "middle-age professional of some sort who cannot close his trousers anymore because of additional calories brought on by family life".
Your comment doesn't paint you as a very positive person. Of course, it's fine if you'd like to be that way, but my question is: why? What good does writing a comment like this do you (or me, or anyone reading it)? To me, these sorts of despondent and cynical comments seem to come from the very types of people you think listen to Goggins.
Why someone who is not a troubled teenager (and all these influencers were troubled teens) or a middle-age disappointed man (the message is always for men, where are the women?) should wake up at 4:30 am to do squats, bjj, or running? There is no reason whatsoever if you are not in one of those buckets. It is counter-productive, it is silly, it is kicking oneself in the genitals to tell their troubled internal voice: see, I can hurt myself, I can take it, I am strong. What an insecure, troubled way of approaching life!
Why someone should give up on things and actions that have been pleasurable since the dawn of times for all, say, normal people? I am thinking, and these are all hated by the military influencers, about a glass of wine, an escapade, a sudden decision that is not joining the Navy Seals, a night out with friends that ends at 4 am (not staying up late shooting other people, a favorite of Goggins and Willink. Yes, to give them a better future, I know. I have always found funny that men join the military at 17 because they, as they never forget to repeat, want a better world, which is always also what the US want, a terrific coincidence).
"The concept that doing things that you hate doing is "exercising of the muscle of willpower" is very revealing. It's something I've tried to do adopt, and it's been a very powerful motivator in getting me to work out and reduce procrastination." - That's terrible (long-term, short-term anything can work) advice, outside the tails (like people who hate showers, kids who hate calculations, middle-age men and women who hate small portions). Why not working toward enjoying the run, the squats, the learning? Why not "following" people who have a sense of lightness around them, who are "fun" to be around while being accomplished, instead of these soldier-philosophers who seem always pissed and look incapable of not putting a life lesson even in the broccoli they had for dinner? Let me give you an example: I don't like exercising in the morning, it often gives me an headache, I tend to go hard and it tires me out more than I like during the day, I prefer to workout after 5 pm (like many other people). Now, tell me: why should I do "something I hate to exercise my willpower", instead of— listen to this insight—exercising after 5 pm?
"What good does writing a comment like this do you (or me, or anyone reading it)?" - There is no big vision behind my comment; but since I have seen one too many people buying into this "hard-man for hard times" trope, I would like them to read my cynical comment and say to themselves: they (i.e., me) are right, I am not a troubled teenager that the Army can straighten up, I am not a disappointed man who needs to be radicalized by these early-risers lunatics, I am better than that.
In every case I can think of, it's better to know. Even when it doesn't seem like it.
Does that mean the definition of Heaven is when the person you ended up becoming meets the person you could have wound up being?
I get that it is trying to say something abstract, like, you could be a lot better than what you are, but it just sounds so incredibly ignorant of how horrible things could be that it irritates me.
I entered college as a Nuke E, then rather quickly realized that (at the time), there wasn't much of a career in it if you didn't want to work in a submarine. A guidance counselor could have clued me in to that kind of thing. I switched to physics, as it would be more general, only to, after observing the actual lives lived by the faculty and the PhD students, that the competition was quite fierce for such meager stakes. Noticing that my brilliant professors might have second jobs or rustbuckets to get to work, noting that a few of them were looking a bit threadbare, it was quite a shock.
Guidance counselors ought to have a lot of this information on tap. Perhaps they do now, but at the time, it wasn't available at my high school.
Perhaps we are drawn to this topic if only for the younger generations.
So they have to take this dumb approach of “assist the teenager with the barely developed brain do whatever whimsical shit he/she wants that might haunt them for life”.
“Sure son, being a clown sounds pretty cool. Here are some 4 year acting degrees that cost $180k. That sounds high but don’t worry because you can easily take it all out in government loans. But it probably be worth it because these are the top schools in the country!”
Your life would basically revert to depth-first search instead of carving out your own, unique path in life. This would also mean it would be much, much easier to be unhappy because you could just switch to another branch and see if the grass is greened on the other side instead of having to learn to see the green you have now.
The inability to redo choices is like death: without death, life itself would be dead. It could not pressure you to make choices, to overcome yourself, dare to go for the love of your life or that enormously ambitious career, and eventually navigate yourself into a life where you grow to be happy with what you have instead of what you want. Without the clock ticking you wouldn't make the best of you in life. Similarly, if you could backtrack to your old choices you wouldn't be compelled to learn from them and they would be rendered worthless.
Get back to me when it's choice not an inevitability and I bet we find much different answers.
It's strange, I left my home country and now wherever I go I see people that speaks different language than me, buildings that I'm not familiar with. My community where I am active with is also different than me. It is a strange feeling. I hate airports because whenever I am in airports I always have a mixed feeling. The feeling of leaving my current place to visit another home in another place.
Now my heart is in three different countries (or cities, to be precise). Every vacation season I have to decide which country to visit and to which family. Life is short. I saw my brother's baby, and then on the next vacation that baby already knew how to walk. My parents and grandparents are getting older. My kids and my brother's kids will speak different languages, grow up differently, and so does my wife's kids with her sisters'. I have a dream of uniting them in one place during vacation and see how those kids react to one another even though they can't communicate in one language, I think that'd be a hilarious sight but very wholesome. I hope there will be faster way to travel invented within our lifetime, maybe Concorde again?
I guess this is the life of immigrants. We are immigrants, this is our way of life. I often asked myself what would happen if I stayed in my home country? I'd marry my current girlfriend at that time, maybe help my family's business, or do something else. I don't know.
For anyone curious: I was born and grew up in Jakarta (Indonesia), and my wife grew up in Tokyo (Japan), and now I work in NYC. Life is surely strange. I feel very insignificant every time I think about this and I realize, there are millions, and billions of people in this planet with stories as unique or more unique than me. The world is is a strange place.
One day, maybe we will retire in Japan, or in Indonesia. Who knows. It's too far in the future. What I do now is cherish every moment I have, knowing the future will be different.
And less unique.
From my house, I can drive to my hometown, visit my family, and drive back in one day. I left the USA once, except for that I never spent a continuous week outside of the state where I was born.
A lot of people online say that travel makes you a better person. But it's expensive, so I have to just hope I'm not missing too much.
Probably every experience you have can make you a better person, it doesn't need to be travel.
I used to travel a ton for work and fun (there was a year where I hit 6 continents in a 10-month window) but spending the last 9 months in a one-bedroom apartment with my wife and our newborn is no less mind opening.
In fact, like everything, travel gets old. At some point you know that you "got it" - you can be dropped in a random point on the earth and make something out of it - and yet you may not know how to be at one place for a long time (I am learning that now.)
Also, it makes things less special. In a way I am jealous of people who are dreaming of going to Paris and then experience it for the first time.
You do you - save your money, invest in relationships around you, learn things on line, be a good child and parent. If that's "all" you have to show against someone who has been everywhere but doesn't have what you have, you're ahead.
The hardest part for me is that my wife doesn't like my family, so she refuses to visit them... as half the family lives in one country and half in another, and we're in yet another country, it's almost impossible for us to unite the whole family. My parents never met hers... and I only met my brother's youngest child when she was already 5. Last time I went to visit my parents I went alone... and again last time I went to visit my brother (who lives on the other side of the planet from my parents - I live almost in the middle). Sometimes I wish I hadn't started the wave of moving to some other country (which my sister, then my brother followed years later)... as they moved to the country I'd been in, I had already moved again to another country because of my wife. Now I am finally planning to have kids (quite late but still time) I wonder how we're going to manage without any family nearby... and how my parents will feel when we never come to visit... that's if I convince the wife to get a kid, we're running out of time quickly and she doesn't seem at all bothered by it.
I'm in a position I must make a decision: perhaps go back to my country and get a new wife there (even though I would hate to go through a divorce) close to at least some of my family... or just let the time pass by and wait for the inevitable, letting old age arrive and die without a family on a strange country. How can I know what to do?! Leaving this great country where I am will probably be the biggest mistake I will ever make (I have a good job, great house and extreme social security here - none of which I would have in my own country), but staying here will likely lead to a meaningless, though comfortable life. What would you do?
There's an interesting contrast: the risk-taking choice into the unknown, or the comfortable but boring choice to stay.
If you choose to take the easy path, when you're old you might look back and ask, "Did I make the right choice? What kind of different life would I have had?" Or, if things go well, you might be a satisfied person.
If you choose to go into the unknown, there is a chance that things will not work out better. Maybe you'll have a more difficult life of struggle. Then you might wish that you had stayed in the comfortable but boring life you had.
> good job, great house and extreme social security here - none of which I would have in my own country
That's what you'd be risking for an unknown future..
I imagine people would recommend that you take the risk, take a chance to create a completely different life that's more interesting. But, I also imagine that those same people would choose for themselves the comfortable path. From your story, I think you'll regret it later in life if you don't take the chance.
Maybe your wife isn't ready yet to see your family. My wife, being raised in a clean 1st world country, still is not used to the living condition when we visit Indonesia. It is understandable, so most likely we will retire in Japan instead of Indonesia one day.
As immigrants we already accepted our way of life. We will grow older, and our kids too, without being able to grow together with their contemporaries within the family circle.
I understand what you say about staying here you might end up having a meaningless life. Trust me, I thought about it a lot too. Hence that's why I set some things straight with my wife. Who knows what will happen in the future, but I said we gonna work here for a while, maybe until kids go to college, and we gonna go back to Japan. We decide that we aren't taking any long and expensive mortgage, but if possible, only 10 year mortgage. 10 years is a short time. Once we finish that mortgage, we can do whatever we want, and see where to go next.
Again, it is too far to think of the future, but my current plan gives me and my wife hope and goal to aim to. We'll enjoy the journey while we are here.
Brabel, I moved back to home country and brought my wife. That can also be a solution for you.
Ahh, one day I will. Today I still can't afford it. My family's side, parent, grandparent, etc messed up a lot financially and lost everything. I can't afford to go back right now or even move to Japan, my current salary is a reserve for in case anything goes wrong with them.
I just feel that in my career path, all my jobs have been about making other people (investors) more money and extracting value from markets rather than building something truly valuable to the world. I did actually work in a stint at an NGO, but that was so filled with a bureaucracy and wasting money I had to go back to a for-profit company.
I'm feeling that maybe I should leave the software engineering career and do something completely different (what I don't know), but I'd still like to do programming on the side. I just fell into this career as it was what I was good at.
How anyone here been at a similar cross roads in life? Which path did you choose?
My current thinking is to de-emphasize work for the kid years. Maybe get a more boring stable job with minimal hours and focus on the kids. There are a lot of adventures and experiences with them that no job will replicate.
Based on what I've read here, other sites, friends and colleagues, I should have changed jobs at least a couple of times by now but I've been here almost 4 years now and don't regret it. If you've found a place that you find fulfilling then I don't think I need to follow conventional advice. The downsides are less exposure to different project types and not working with a bigger team of experienced devs. I need to compensate for this by putting in extra effort on my side but I still think I've made the right choice for now.
I think if I ended up in a commercial dev job, I would have started looking at other options as well. It makes a real difference when you see you work being used for a greater good.
While you're considering other options, maybe also consider joining a smaller dev team where you have more autonomy and less red tape.
The reasoning I came to is that given the probabilities of how children are conceived, if my dad didn't have cancer, our first child would have been someone else than our daughter.
So basically wishing anything different for my dad would be wishing that my daughter didn't exist.
And I guess that made his death easier for me to accept.
This reminds of the moment when Emil Cioran's mother mentioned how she should have aborted him outright. This led him to the insight that his life was largely an accident contingent on small factors, and that it therefore need not be taken so seriously.
Can you prove this?
Even if we ignore all of that, there's still the swirling chaos of causality to contend with, forever altered by that small change...
The cover and premise push it as a rom com, but I enjoyed the relationship between the son and father much more.
I changed my perspective. In a way I now compare life to what it would have been to never have been born, and it's wonderful. I feel privileged and gifted to have been "given" (metaphorically for me, but it's up to one's beliefs) the chance to live, to experience the truly insane thing that it is to be a human being! Sure, maybe I could've had more, but in a way it's like being upset because you sold your startup for 1 billion instead of 2 billion...
> So what is there to do? Should I adopt a strategy of total non-action, of being a passive observer to my thoughts and my bodily emotions and my neuroses? Should I somehow elevate myself to a point beyond my own mind, where I am exposed to fewer neuroses?
> No… I am in a checkmate, a cosmic checkmate. And the only thing to do is to do what I can as best I can, and hope the rest of my life may continue unfazed.
When we release a dice from our hand it could land on any face, but the face it lands on isn't truly random, it is just too hard to establish the factors which caused it. So with our choices.
A sure belief that my choices right or wrong were all I could do at the time has saved me from endless doubt and speculation. The only choices I can make are today.
I saw the film About Time recently which is based on this whole idea of going back and doing it differently - with hindsight. Whilst it was quite enjoyable, the inconsistencies caused by the idea just shouted out throughout. Life isn't and can't be like that.
I'm struck by how many of the comments revolve entirely around career choices. I wonder if that's a us bias or a world bias or just a HN bias. Career can be consuming but it's only a facet of life's choices, not the whole thing. Maybe it's the bit we feel we have most agency over. Either way, interesting.
[1]https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/heres-what-these-20-million...
If building/starting something doesn't work out then you'll be in a bad position.
Build/start something on the side, then if it becomes successful you can safely quit your job.
You might also find inspiration, collaborators or opportunities from your job. It's not all bad.
I do think certain scenarios like Replay or Groundhog Day accord additional advantages because the relived lives stack up, and one’s knowledge, even mastery, accumulate.
Getting married and having a kid killed it, though. Doing things from scratch would at a minimum mean having a different kid with the same wife, so now when I fantasize about this all I think about is what I would lose.
"Don't worry so much about whether you made the right decision. Instead, focus your energy on making the decision you made, right."
It's fruitless to think about making a different choice in hindsight.
It's really empowering to assign yourself the agency to make the best choices you can from the options ahead of you.
-----
The house is like a child’s drawing. A deputizing childishness that grew because someone—much too soon— gave up his mission to be a child. Open the door, step in! In here there’s unrest in the ceiling and peace in the walls. Above the bed hangs a painting of a ship with seventeen sails, hissing wave crests, and a wind that the gilt frame can’t contain.
It’s always so early in here, before the crossroads, before the irrevocable choices. Thank you for this life! Still I miss the alternatives. The sketches, all of them, want to become real. A ship’s engine far away on the water expands the summer-night horizon. Both joy and sorrow swell in the dew’s magnifying glass. Without really knowing, we divine; our life has a sister ship, following quietly another route. While the sun blazes behind the islands.
I’ve yet to meet someone I would trade lives with. What more can I aspire to?
Run, Lola, Run
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130827/
On the general midlife crisis of regrets and time-running out, see:
2019 Wilkins–Bernal–Medawar lecture:
Life begins at 40: the demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2020.000...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084549/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxu7Z3uOLWg (full movie with English subtitles)
I wouldn't. I used to think I could, now I don't want to.
Where would I like to be? Don't know that either. I'm happy with not knowing.
One day I came across a silly writing prompt thread on Reddit along the lines "What would your mind was transported back to you as a 14-year old?"... Presumably anticipating lots of comments about buying Apple shares and Bitcoin.
I was struck by the sheer impossibility of retracing my footsteps to get back all the things I've liked about my life, the loss of loved ones who only exist as they are as a result of interactions with me I could never reproduce.
It's just a silly hypothetical, but I find it crushing to even describe it in a comment. The anxiety it produces is physical, distracting, disorienting, and reliably predictable. It made the article even difficulty to skim. Like the author writes, I find it easier to imagine different lives for other people.
I like what I've lived very much and the people in my life.
What If You Could Do It All Over? -- I say: Thanks but no thanks. ... and please don't mention the idea again!
:)
If we do not always understand why God allows certain events in our lives — why He permits the evils we do or endure — the saint's witness assures us: the same mercy that restores life, that can reunite mother and son, may also permit death as the prelude to restoration.
— Fr. John Henry Hanson, O. Praem., Saint Monica and the Child of her Tears, 2019
1. This is likely not some stream of consciousness piece, where he basically writes his article as it comes up with stuff. It takes time, it has probably been edited numerous times, there's probably been lots of research, etc.
2. He writes that he studied English in grad. school, so I'm just going to assume that he's well-read. Probably had his fair share of exposure to the classics, as well as modern literature.
>" Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,"
>" I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."
Ironically, a close friend of Robert Frost joined the army and died in WW1, as a result of Frost's poem, believing he had to choose another path as well.
Everything that has happened to me; good and bad, has made me who I am today.
I’m cool with that. I’ve had a pretty big share of bad, and there’s lots of folks who think I “haven’t lived up to my potential,” meaning that I didn’t give them what they wanted from me.
At this stage in my life, I am strangely satisfied. Never thought I’d be happy, the way I am, but it’s a funny old world.
It could have turned out a lot worse. I am truly blessed.
Reminds me of Sliding Doors. Interesting movie.
> We seem to find meaning in what’s never happened. Our self-portraits use a lot of negative space.
That what we didn't do, the choices not made, are as essential to us being us as the choices we did. It's what "The Road Not Taken" is really about--as Joshua Rothman knows, but many people miss, including the guy who wrote that sticky-sweet self-help book.
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
Truth is, one could make those choices and arrive at an outcome leading right back to this very question.
Unable to resolve that, I started to think about the scope of human experiences.
If I were to do it over, I would do it as a very different person. Roll the die, and go, same as happened this time.
Even then, it could be very similar...
A relevant folktale: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/japan.html#stonecutter
As I currently lay on a bunkbed on a little cottage on a mountain somewhere in Europe, I could have never predicted or actively have made a choice to bring me here. If I believe I did, through consciously setting a goal, the series of events or choice to get me to that point would have been out of my control.
There is no control. Our decisions are influenced by all the previous decisions, decisions of others (our parents, our significant others, our bosses, etc), and external events outside of our control.
External events as insignificant as bus being late. Such an insignificant event but it could prevent someone from having meet their significant other, or to have lost a job, to have escaped a traffic accident, or to have heard an idea that completely changed their lives.
There is no free will. This is freeing and humbling. Freeing because you know you are doing the best you can, with the capabilities you have at this moment. Humbling because you know other people are too.
Sure my life would have been better had my parents stayed together, and my mom not immigrated but then I would have grown up in a third world country and would be confined to that normal life. Sure I went through a lot of trauma, but I have now the ability and freedom to travel the world.
All the trauma of my childhood and teenage years left me with intimacy issues, unable to sustain a long-term relationship. Do I wish that was not the case? I'm not too sure. I like my life, with the travelling and chaos. Had I not had emotional issues, I would probably have a family and kids by now, and be settle down. It's likely I would have enjoyed that, as I would be that guy who wants the family life, but I'm glad I'm this guy. It was not up to me anyway, who I will be in 10 years it's not up to me either.
The best combination of starting over + immortality.
Funnily enough, this might actually be quite possible to achieve with sufficient technology.
I'd love more, judge less.
Laugh more, perhaps even cry more, but yell less.
I'd listen more, speak less.
And finally, I'd be so much less selfish, and so much more giving.
If I could do it all over.
They both could have "stopped" decades ago and have achieved more than 99.999999% of people who ever lived, but instead they are pushing against something different continuously.
Freedom is a weird thing. Most would say that more personal freedom is a good thing, at least for themselves. Yet so many behave in exactly the opposite way. I'm reminded of Paul Graham's recent essay How to Think for Yourself, and this passage about ideologies:
> The independent-minded thus have a horror of ideologies, which require one to accept a whole collection of beliefs at once, and to treat them as articles of faith. To an independent-minded person that would seem revolting, just as it would seem to someone fastidious about food to take a bite of a submarine sandwich filled with a large variety of ingredients of indeterminate age and provenance.
http://paulgraham.com/think.html
Nobody forces an ideology on someone, and yet the number of people who gleefully latch onto ideologies seems to be exploding.
Could there be a connection between greater freedom and greater desire to restrict that freedom - not from the outside, but from within?
Wouldn’t be a New Yorker article without a dig at capitalism. Capitalism is individuals choosing how to invest their own money. Any deviation from private capital is socialism and we live in an extremely socialist society already.
What an amazing way to make yourself sick. Remunerating is an absolutely horrible habit. Don't assume anyone else has a perfect life. My last partner was divorced, but put up a nice front for family and friends up until she seperated.
As far as I'm concerned until the day I die I don't have a second to waste on things I can't change anyway.
This is the real ticket to happiness imo. Once you realize there are just an enumerable amount of things you cannot directly change and start thinking "Why am I so angry about this?" you eventually learn to be happy.
EDIT: I guess it was suspicious that 99% of my high school circle picked law or finance or business courses instead.
Better jobs are competed for strongly. Good stuff is never free and never available by default.
The pretty good stuff is often in short supply.
But it's misleading. Friendships and relationships aren't "free" in terms of effort and achievement. They take the same kind of work/luck/genetics/network combination as getting an interesting and fulfilling job does.
Sure, even the hobo on the street can have faith in Jesus and mental peace for free if you mean that sort of thing, but most things people want are scarce or at least aren't available by default, without either effort or connections.
Depends on where you work too. Sounds like you may need a new job.
However, there are crappy doctors and architects - just like there are famous software engineers. Prestige - outside the ingroup - is a function of the accessibility, value, and quality of your work. Like the Taiwanese folks who built a mask availability tracker...
I swear, I’d never think to ask this of anyone, doctors, lawyers, teachers, nurses, cops, literally, I can’t think of one profession that gets asked this, I’ll try again, pilots, chemists, diplomats, translators, artists, mechanics, it’s endless.
What is it that you actually do?
How about fuck you, I’m not answering that anymore.
It tickles people the wrong way that you took software development into every possible industry you can imagine and not only started offering tech solutions, but business solutions too.
Incoming projection - I see it as the most passive aggressive low ball attack on one’s profession. It’s karma too, because we do the same to sales/product/people management elements within our industry. I know why I’ve done it, and it’s mostly insecurity, ‘oh those people aren’t smart, will soon be gone’.
^ Now imagine the whole of society looking at you like that.
In my experience, most people (i.e. sans pathologies) ask this question because they are ignorant and curious.
They are trying to integrate the unknown (you and your craft) into the known, not trying to challenge your ego.
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A story that might be illustrative.
A close relative of mine came to his current country from another country, but is a citizen of his new country. At social gatherings over the years, a not-uncommon question, asked by immigrants and born-citizens alike, was "Where are you from?"
There was no quicker way to become his mortal enemy, and to ruin a party!
He thought people were trying to parade his otherness, with the intent of making him feel out of place, not welcome, lesser-than, etc.
From another perspective, each question was an opportunity to educate people on his heritage, and an objectively-fascinating component of his identity (that of "The Immigrant").
I think it’s what afflicted my relative, too, for what it’s worth. When you’re stung by people, it’s hard to see the value in continuing to remain open.
Regarding the accrual of knowledge and its hardening effects on the soul:
> with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.
> The wise have eyes in their heads, while the fool walks in the darkness; but the same fate overtakes them both.
These quotes come from Ecclesiastes, which does not contain a much of a resolution.
> A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil.
Tao Te Ching makes a similar recommendation: empty hearts and fill bellies. In short, worry less of ideas, and more of literal substances that bind us together (food, drink, and toil).
Now that I think of it, IT people and mechanics suffer from the exact same stereotype where people don't trust anything they say and assume they're just lording their knowledge over the poor, uninformed user for status/money.
I'm sure the others also suffer from stereotypes.
It is true though that its easier to climb the ladder via social/soft/people skills and selling/positioning yourself well and knowing who to associate with etc. compared to working real hard on technical stuff. If you want to impress general people, tell them about people related achievements, like how you led a big group to success, or how you resolved conflicts, big names you've worked with and know etc. Social capital is indeed more valuable in general and so managers and "soft" professionals like lawyers can seem higher status. But its more about the focus on people vs things. Rule of thumb: if you can be objectively wrong or make an objective mistake, you're on the lower end of status. If situations are more wishy washy and rhetoric can save you, you are higher up.
Even though formulating it bluntly is frowned upon: as a software engineer you dominate (rule over) computers and equipment (similar to blue collar work), but to get respect from non techies you need to dominate people. No way around it. That's why managers like to have many reports, even if they are useless and hurt the bottom line.
It is reasonable to infer that these additional dates are actually interested in dating your job, and your essential self and body are just along for the ride. Your job goes, you go.
The problem is you will forget this at some point and start thinking a particular date actually cares about you personally.
Do yourself a favor to save your future self some pain. Take your CV, in paper form, roll it up into a cylinder, and dip it into latex. You should have a latex wand of about 8 inches in length. Wrap it with a few hundred dollar bills, gift this to your date and run away as fast as your feet will take you. You’re welcome...you’ve just saved yourself 10s to 100s of thousands of dollars and many hours of misery.
Details may vary depending on gender, economic status and the local currency.
Also, I think a major elephant in the room: some people just feel better about themselves and sleep better, knowing that they are a big dog and can feel justified in looking down on others.
“You know, I should say up front that, in my experience, doctors tend to be assholes. The reason they tend to be assholes is because they get to be. They're doctors.”
It's a self inflicted mental suffering that people bring on themselves. Instead of enjoying that high wealth they fume about why they aren't as impressive as fancy lawyers, ceos, politicians and doctors...
We're arguing about status here, so when you're satisfied with the money but not with the status.
If it makes them feel better I have to teach the 99% of their high school they are talking about and they all seem pretty one track minded.
Counter anecdote: I know law and finance and business folks who wished they studied more computers.
I find this take really interesting, because my (and my peers') experience so far has been very different.
I do think about my literal social status (i.e. friends, sex, etc.) but I don't think thought along those lines has ever really influenced my decision making - beyond a vague desire to outdo people born better than me.
500 at Goldman is like VP with some tenure, which would be similar to E6 at Facebook
Hell Goldman sales and trading managing directors make 750-900k a year, which is what a good E7 at Facebook makes, both usually reached by age 33-35 by high achievers.
I work at a FAANG and the people that I work with aren't terribly different social status from the ones I worked with during my first internship, they're just ~20 years younger.
If you actually think lawyer is a high status job then youre watching too many movies.
Half my friends are doing service jobs or gig work.
I can invest in my best friends studio , planing on seeing another friend in Asia next year, can take multiple international vacations per year.
I have no credit card debt.
All from wanting to learn a bit of Unity once upon a time. You can't compare yourself to the top 5% of income earners while ignoring the bottom 95%
I'd recommend talking with your friends, and asking them if they find their work fulfilling. If it falls short of their expectations, ask which dimensions contribute the most to the diff.
This might give you some perspective on what life would be like in another vertical. It probably isn't as rosy as you imagine, but you might have done this already.
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I would recommend to younger people, that they shouldn't make their career choice through the lens of prestige, because time has demonstrated that social standing is flimsy and unpredictable.
A profession's relative prestige varies regionally, temporally, socioeconomically, and in the eye of the beholder. These are mutable dimensions for the duration of a normal career.
It's kind of like the old advice: if you're interested in marrying someone for life, don't marry based on one dimension alone (looks, money, health, personality, family). Any of these can invert completely.
In finance terms, it's like betting your financial portfoilo on the 40-year performance of a single ETF: not outright stupid because some people will be successful, but it's not super wise.
If this doesn't help you feel better, maybe you should consider changing careers? As a SWE, you have enough intellectual capital, time and domain-specific education is the only thing standing in your way.