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Comment by qqtt | Hacker News Reader

I agree. A lot of discussion and these philosophical quotes about living tend to want to inspire you to rebel against your nature. Think abstractly. Think rationally. Make the right decisions (for some value of "right").

But people aren't really wired like this. Maybe rebelling against your nature is the "right" choice, but maybe just living your life isn't so bad either. Take things personally. Don't take things personally. Be angry, be frustrated. Get depressed. Also, be happy sometimes.

You only have one life. The guy who never gets angry is going to the same place as the guy who fully feels those emotions. Maybe one will be less productive at a certain point in time than the other, but does it matter?

These cosmic balance scale games are at the end of the day silly and superfluous.

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It's always a bit fraught to bring up the upsides of irrationality and potentially dangerous/destructive emotions and impulses. Bukowski didn't win a lot of popularity contests. I agree with what you've said here though.

We may be abstracting the conversation beyond the limits of what is appropriate in the workplace here, but I tend to think the workplace should and could be a more relaxed space if we were more patient with the negative emotions of others. At least for me, that starts with recognizing my own emotional states, and not always being afraid to experience them authentically.

Khalil Gibran expressed it like this: "You can avoid crying all your tears, but you won't laugh all you laughter then." Highly recommend reading The Prophet by him. A thin book, saying a lot with a few words.

This is one of those witty sentences that sound good (the balance of life, laughs here, tears there, if you want to enjoy living you need to accept dying, everything happens for a reason), but they are just biblical nonsense. There are plenty of very accomplished, successful (internally and externally) people who feel much more joy than sorrow, and plenty of evil people who have an internal life that is no worse than much more saintly people, but according to The Prophet they all should cry more. I remember I went on a date, and they said, "when a relationship is ending, I really want to feel the pain, as it makes the relationship something of value". I thought it was bananas, there is very little to be gained by pain and spiraling introspection after a break-up. But the other side of the coin says, should I keep my mouth shut during cringy conversation, so I can then have more enlightened, or presumably enlightened, conversations with someone else?

I read it differently, like: if you suppress feelings you want to avoid (labeled negative usually), you won't feel all the feelings you would like to (labeled positive usually).

(edit) Another favourite quote of mine is from the chapter about pain: "Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding."

You can read the full chapter here: https://poets.org/poem/pain-1

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