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Comment by foobarian | Hacker News Reader

I have these kinds of feelings a lot. It is hard to feel useful in this day and age of a ubiquitous globally connected society because for anything you attempt to do you have instant access to the top 0.0001% of the Bell curve who you have no hope of ever beating.

I find comfort in that I am not alone, thinking of all the peasants and regular workers across history who didn't amount to much either, but still mostly fought on and had a good life. Plenty of examples in immediate family as well.

And lastly, I found that there is one thing that one can do that is absolutely unique that nobody can match anywhere in the world, and that is - as corny as this sounds - kids. It may be a touchy subject or not for everybody. But raising a human with the best possible effort you can muster is an accomplishment at least one person will remember and value 100000x more vs. any world champion in solving IOI problems or writing clever functional code :-)

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it seems to me that the biggest problem OP faces is the relationship to themselves. Before you can effectively love others you need to be able to be good company to yourself. Because who will put up with you if you don't even think you're worthy of love.

I stopped counting the number of times they mentioned that they considered themselves stupid. There is so much negative and toxic self critic in this post that my feeling is that this is the biggest most fundamental issue that I would look at tackling.

Once you can sit in a room by yourself and be truly happy with your own company go and be open to relationships - but not before - otherwise you're back to square one but only worse because now you have an additional reason that you will use to justify your self hate. Love yourself first. Out of that love maybe you find somebody maybe not. It doesn't matter. Out of that maybe kids can happen - or not. If you ask your partner (or worse your kids) to fix you eventually it will all come back to you. You gotta do that work in the end by yourself. Anything else is cheating.

Your points are also true.

In my life, kids helped me relearn what it was like to be young.

It took me a number of years to realise I had bad depression / anhedonia.

My kids helped my focus on what was important.

I accepted myself for who I am and was able to feel happy again. My kids think I'm the great wizard with technology, even if I'm considered average.

Message to OP

We can't all be famous or the best at something. We don't all have eidetic memories. You will meet those savant like personalities and they will skew your view of the world, to think that you are not capable by comparing.

Stop comparing.

You can do great things. The greatest achievement is to live a long life and to challenge yourself. Be the best you can be. Accept your limits. Use your ability to help others and take joy in that.

If you can't be Einstein or Tesla, take pride in being part of their journey.

No one will remember us. This is the norm.

Interesting example though, given that Einstein had very little outward success until the middle of his life as well.

Ive had the same feeling now i make video games for my kids instead, who needs the toxic masses accept when you are the world to these 2 miracles..

"Because who will put up with you if you don't even think you're worthy of love."

The answer is people who don't know the real you. Would anyone love you if they saw a clip show of all the lies, betrayal, hypocrisy, times you yelled at your family, embarrassing fails, wasted potential, etc. But for many of us that clip show plays daily in our heads as a reminder to stop being so shitty and it comes at the price of our self-esteem.

There's another angle here too. Kids often force us to re-evaluate our own habits and improve. Here's what I mean. Imagine you are teaching your kid (OP: the kid can be imaginary, just imagine that you love them very much) about nutrition and all they want to do is eat junk food. You talk about how important it is for their health, and suddenly realize that maybe your own diet isn't the greatest. And if you wouldn't advise your own diet to your kid, why are you eating this stuff? Same with the overly harsh inner critic. Imagine your kid with this kind of self-talk. You'd want to hug them first and foremost, and second - teach them healthier ways of processing these emotions. Yes, having ambition and pride in one's work are important, but so it having confidence. Undermining confidence is counterproductive to achievement. Ideally you'd want to see your kid try hard, notice when they fail, take responsibility, and try harder next time rather than hitting the easy mode "mope button".

My kids taught me both these lessons.

>I stopped counting the number of times they mentioned that they considered themselves stupid. There is so much negative and toxic self critic in this post that my feeling is that this is the biggest most fundamental issue that I would look at tackling.

This. OP sounds like a great candidate for counseling/therapy from a psychologist who is a licensed counselor. It sometimes takes a few tries to find the right one, but it is worth the effort.

Family, kids — I agree. I stopped giving a shit about "changing the world" when my kids came into my life. They became my world. And you will change their world.

I suspect they'll remember me forever.

> I stopped giving a shit about "changing the world" when my kids came into my life.

Does that mean we oldies should be okay with tech employers showing a preference for young workforce?

nah. employers like young people because their desire to "change the world" can be exploited

This! I was constantly looking to grab the next rung up on the career ladder. Having kids made me rethink my priorities on helping them mature into happy, productive members of society. Sure, we made a pile of mistakes along the way in our child rearing efforts. I'm hoping the same, that they will remember me and my wife forever. I think they will.

My father was a major foundation for what I do. Someone has to build these foundations. Many people don't take good enough care of their kids and many responsible people don't want kids. So it is literally world changing to be a good parent.

"I suspect they'll remember me forever"

Laughed out loud at that. Funny because it's so true.

For me personally it didn't stop me from wanting to achieve something in my life. Which I realize only partly overlaps with wanting to change the world. It was impactful nevertheless and I'm sure my kids will remember me :-)

Goes in the other direction also, assuming your own parents are also decent people. You can provide immense satisfaction to them by sharing your time with them.

This is a delightful sentiment, and I'd go further and say that things as simple as being kind to the people around you, cleaning up after yourself, etc. are similarly important and impactful. They sound trivial compared to acts of "genius" but a ton of people are jerks, every day. It's not trivial at all to make the people around you feel better, it's not easy to do it every day, and if everyone actually did it, the world would be a vastly different place.

I find kids overwhelming, in fact, if I had kids (I don't yet) I would be constantly worried about making sure they get the best of life. I have a dog and he is already a lot of work, I even feel bad on days when it rains and I can't take him out as long as I would like to. I feel bad when I go out for dinner with friends and have to leave him alone. The feeling of raising a dependent is not fun (for me at least). It definitely gives me a sense of purpose every day but the thought of going away from him makes me very anxious.

I almost feel it is a happier life to have lived like a nobody. I can relate to the OP because I feel exactly like him many times. But then I remind myself that we are all stardust and there is inherently no purpose to life. Somehow that makes me feel very calm.

Your post reminded me of when my first daughter was born. I remember me and my ex-wife would wonder, “how do people do this with two children!?”.

Not too long after, we had our second daughter. We very quickly realized that the answer to the question was “you just do”.

At least for me, I also realized our second daughter got less attention/coddling, but turned out just as great/spirited/happy.

Sometimes, I recognize that I hold myself to an unrealistically high standard/expectation. While setting the bar high can help one accomplish great things, but can also leave them feeling like they never measure up to their unreasonably high standards.

Kids are a lot of work for sure and require a lot of sacrifice. However, I hope you don’t avoid having kids because you don’t think you can be a good enough parent. The fact you are worried about it is already a sign, in my book, you’d make a pretty great and thoughtful parent.

Don't worry. The more kids you have the more your grip on them spirals out of control as they interact with others and develop their own agency and personality. So you do the best you can for them every day, and the butterfly effect will do the rest.

Just stop feeling bad about these things. You are probably doing 99% right (just by trying) and it’s the completely insignificant, outright noise 1% which brings you down.

One thing I realize as I get older is those 10x people are 10x in usually one aspect of their lives. They've dedicated a huge amount of time to one thing. There's lots of people like that who sacrifice other things that you value and vice versa. You can specialize in one very nice thing and get really good at it or spread out your time to more than one thing.

Children are the ultimate creative project. Beyond that, proper child-raising is promoting the well-being of the future of the human race. This is the 99%'s highest fulfillment and should not be looked down upon as being incomplete. Indeed, it is a wonderful testimony to the abundance of giving life to promote more life-giving.

> And lastly, I found that there is one thing that one can do that is absolutely unique that nobody can match anywhere in the world, and that is - as corny as this sounds - kids.

Eat, shit, sleep, reproduce, die. Living being 101.

But the main thing about having kids is that you will not have time to think about how your life sucks anymore. Probably better than taking drugs to achieve the same result.

Wow so edgy and deep

> you will not have time to think about how your life sucks anymore

s/to think about how your life sucks/to ingest content that convinces you that your life sucks/gi

Bullshit. Now in addition to sucking at my job, I suck as a parent. And also suck at my job more. Double burnout whammy.

>And lastly, I found that there is one thing that one can do that is absolutely unique that nobody can match anywhere in the world, and that is - as corny as this sounds - kids. It may be a touchy subject or not for everybody. But raising a human with the best possible effort you can muster is an accomplishment at least one person will remember and value 100000x more vs. any world champion in solving IOI problems or writing clever functional code :-)

I know you are trying to be helpful but this is probably not a good answer. I don;t think we know enough about his background to be recommending such a major life choice. Although each kid is unique, there is nothing unique about having them.

What if getting a trophy at IOI is easier than making a kid?

As for me it was...I got silver medal there, but I would have given it away easily for being able to date one of the many hot hostesses on the competition. My life would have been so much easier if I just spend my life in the gym instead of solving math and programming problems.

You do IOI in high school, so one would expect you to hit the gym regularly at that point.

Also going to the gym is pretty easy, so if you know “the path to happiness” why not just take it?

,,Also going to the gym is pretty easy, so if you know “the path to happiness” why not just take it?''

I'm doing it but I'm 40 and the gains are not the same...my girlfriend left me for a younger and much stronger guy (and no, just younger wasn't enough in itself). Also in the 90s whenever I asked a girl if she likes muscular guys, they usually answered ,,not that much''. They are much more open nowdays about what they want from a man than 20 years ago.

You are smart, seems to be well off financially and still relatively young, so the future should not look that bad, probably you can get a younger girl too.

Sure, I have a much better and easier life than at that time when I was depressed, I just wanted to point out that just because a person goes to IOI, it doesn't mean that he's happy. Also finding a person to have a family with hasn't become easier, so I guess I'll just keep up with serial monogamy.

I got in fantastic shape and was less successful with women than before. Getting strong and fit is great, and I highly recommend it, but it really, really does not fix how we feel about ourselves.

That's strange, for me it definitely helps

there's a great bit from Louis CK on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1-7AKx_4Ug

"You get to read to kill a mockingbird." when he says it is hilarious and I often remember that when moments seem shitty.

This is a great bit of his. In his 2017 special he provides a darker, but similarly themed line of thinking. He has a whole bit about a man whose life is, from the outside, seemingly so dull and horrible. And the entire premise "what is delaying his suicide?!" I know dark humor is not everyone's cup of tea, but the bit did remind me that the perseverance and self preservation of man is a beautiful thing.

Louis CK is a genius. One of a kind.

There is some solace to be found in the fact that our world does not perfectly adhere to the ideals of a real meritocracy. While living in such a world may contribute to unfairness, it also enables you to be in a better position in life than someone who is more naturally gifted.

In fact, one might suspect that you're more likely to find moderately gifted individuals at the top levels of success than very talented ones.

From the micro point of view, a talented individual has a greater a priori probability of reaching a high level of success than a moderately gifted one. However, from the macro point of view of the entire society, the probability of finding moderately gifted individuals at the top levels of success is greater than that of finding there very talented ones, because moderately gifted people are much more numerous and, with the help of luck, have globally a statistical advantage to reach a great success, in spite of their lower individual a priori probability.

Regarding kids and at the risk of sounding overly negative:

Given that 100% - `0.0001%` of people are basically average and judging by my Internet most of the people have a very pessimistic outlook on life and the future, is it really fair to have children?

If they don't, by slim chance, become that one in a million that just breezes through life ... they will become as pessimistic as we are ... and at some point they will find that their only contribution is having kids on their own.

(Disclaimer: I am not anti-kids, I/we always planned on having some, but as we are barely making ends meet it has never really been a good time and now we are in our mid-30s and time is running out)

I think the commentary largely speaks for itself, but there is an aphorism that I think would be helpful:

If you measure yourself by someone else's yardstick, you'll always fall short.

That is a good point, but also why settle for coming up short if you can improve yourself.

I feel the opposite, I've been frequently told I'm smart, hard-working and that I've achieved things but all that usually in relation to that I'm disabled but I personally would trade anything to have a normal 'regular worker' life if I could.

I couldn't, not just because of the disability, But I'm easily bored and I need 12 parallel side projects to escape reality and I envy those who seem live carefree, doing what they're told and most importantly - living in the present.

So OP, there's no point in comparing with others be it smart or dumb from one's perspective. There are people who envy your lifestyle. Social media oversells the value of 'being known', I'm certain many in the top-tier of being known would rather wish they were unknown.

On average our society would prostrate to corrupt politicians, immoral celebrities or new age celeb-billionaires but would treat a homeless musician who makes little money without cheating or hurting anyone with disgust. Many put up a facade to keep up with this society, but for the sake of our mental well-being it's good to remove the facade every now and then.

I have the same problems... That's because I have many mentally problems and my brain found an easy way to have "work addiction" - my psychotherapist says.

There is the only way: go to a doctor. Books don't help much.

I don't know about others but this comment is pretty eye opening to me. My mind just went complete 180 degrees right now. Thanks. There is so much food for thought.

Have a good one!

> And lastly, I found that there is one thing that one can do that is absolutely unique that nobody can match anywhere in the world, and that is - as corny as this sounds - kids.

Great recommendation to a man who is bipolar and have a schizoactive disorder.

I once heard someone suggest that “settling” for where life might be now as generally good, because it brings you peace and absolves you from guilt of not being good enough.

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