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Comment by xwdv | Hacker News Reader

Although life starts for a lot of people at 35, I envy those people who are able to start much earlier. These are the people who have their first relationships in high school and college, find their life partner in early twenties, get the right job, a house, kids, keep their friend circle, invest money as early as possible, god damn. They live perfect fuckin lives and it’s all because they bravely jumped in and embraced life early on and focused on relationships with the people around them rather than mope around being shy, playing too many video games, jacking off into oblivion, wasting time chasing startup ideas that were never gonna go anywhere…

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At 28, this describes me exactly. Found my partner in college, bought a nice 4-bedroom house in a nice area close to friends/family. Financially stable with plenty of time to spend on creative hobbies. We both “jumped in” to moderately lucrative careers early and are now in very comfortable positions at companies that more or less contribute to the good. By all appearances a perfect life which truly results in many days of happiness. It still feels empty/pointless. I’m too embarrassed to complain to those around me, but sometimes I wish I could buy into religion or child-rearing so that I would have a pre-manufactured purpose, and wouldn’t have to keep searching for one constantly. I think when the pandemic is over we’ll try traveling more to see if that scratches the itch.

The reason you feel this way is because you’ve never been on the other side. Imagine reaching mid thirties, no more friends, no partner, no real prospects, and getting older is making it harder to attract quality females. Your only source of somewhat human interaction is writing on the internet. It is a life of quiet desperation. There is only one goal, to accumulate money, watch graphs go up and to the right. Money is the only way to have relevance in this society, the only salvation from becoming invisible in the dating pool. And I know money can’t really make you happy, but it’s the only thing that has truly taken care of me over the years. Would you really trade your life for this? You found someone thing good, hold onto it. It will all be over soon enough one day.

> Money is the only way to have relevance in this society, the only salvation from becoming invisible in the dating pool.

This depends on what bubble you are in. It might be true for most of the society, but there are many subcultures that have different values. Think about any job that is not associated with making money, or any hobby that does not require buying expensive stuff; you will probably find such people there.

Money is simply the "common language" of people who have nothing else in common. If you have nothing in common with someone, money is the most reliable way to impress them. But this is like the laziest strategy ever (well, except for the part where you make the money, that part may be pretty difficult). Step one, find a subculture focused on something you enjoy - now you have another way to be socially relevant. Step two... well, if the specific subculture happens to have more women than men (statistically should be true for about half of the subcultures), the step two is just to enjoy life and be nice to people around you.

Picking up hobbies to meet women is miserable. I actually do not want to meet any kind of women while doing my hobbies, I do not want something pure to be distracted with prurient thoughts.

I haven't been on the other side, and I think I mentioned that I feel silly complaining about this life. But my version of life also feels like "a life of quiet desperation." I suppose it's better with a partner than it would be without, just as it's better with money than without, but that feels like splitting hairs in the face of existential meaninglessness.

Do you have an idea of what your ideal life would be?

I think it would start with "not having to work to live" and from there cascade into lots of time spent building personal projects and playing Scrabble with my parents. What would yours be?

I think we find happiness in service to a community. It can be religion or family, or it can be mentoring, community service, activism, etc. It could be as basic as visiting a retirement home or walking dogs at a shelter. It's pretty hard to feel empty ennui while seeing the gratitude in someone's eyes. And the world is chock-full of lonely, needy people.

I would be careful with that line of thinking. We often envy illusion. We don't truly know that 'those people' are living nearly as wonderful a life as we're inclined to think they are. Further, in my experience, the "perfect life" is always one moment away from "disaster" - be it a health complication, sudden loss, or any of the myriad of ways things go awry. Pain and suffering is not something any of us seems likely to avoid in this life, and inflicting misery upon ourselves due to comparison with what is likely projected fantasy is just one of its many shades.

i mean the gist of the post is right most things are better then

> rather than mope around being shy, playing too many video games, jacking off into oblivion,

even if their lives are not perfect there are better ways to spend your time then this

Precisely. The OP is describing himself as a stereotype of Redditor/4Chan user.

You can be unhappy without reducing your daily life to a meme.

I used to think this way, especially after attending weddings of friends who've been together since their early 20s. Recently, one of those 'perfect' couples got divorced. Two attractive, charismatic, financially set individuals who couldn't make it work anymore. Together 10 years, living together for 5, married for 4.

Part of the issue for them is that they both feel they didn't explore their options enough when they were young and attractive (they still are).

It's a different problem than those faced by people who barely enjoyed romantic lives growing up. But for them, it turned out to be a big enough to end their marriage.

Sometimes they also get lucky. IMHO, to actually find the right partner for you in your early 20s is damn lucky.

My wife and I have been together since we were 16. Damn lucky. Watching all the people we know on Facebook looks like some kind of hellscape.

> They live perfect fuckin lives

Do they though? Everyone has their own demons to contend with and seemingly perfect lives frequently fall apart further down the road due to regrets and pent-up frustrations.

Everyone has demons, even perfect people have perfect little demons. But as a person who has lived a broken life, I guarantee you my demons are far larger and more monstrous than theirs. My demons would eat their demons for protein.

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