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Comment by nazgulnarsil | Hacker News Reader

Focus on what you can do for others, not what others can do for you. Activities will gradually lose their luster as you age, if you are focused on what you get from them. In Buddhist terms: cultivate mudita, sympathetic joy in the joys of others. It is nigh impossible to make yourself happy, yet seemingly trivial to make others happy, if you are keeping an eye out for the opportunity.

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> Activities will gradually lose their luster as you age, if you are focused on what you get from them.

Doing things for other is also activities, and you also seem to be focused on what you get (sympathetic joy) from that.

You are right in that doing the same things for literally decades can get boring. Rethinking your life and trying different things is part of aging (including focusing on yourself, if what you did all your life was to do stuff for others)

I’ve always thought that there seemed to be a meta-selfishness to that sort of thinking.

It doesn’t bother me at all, unless the person tries to also say that selfishness and selfish motivations are to be avoided.

Confelicity: Pleasure in another's happiness. Antonym: schadenfreude

This reminds me of the term "compersion", used by the polyamorous community to describe the feeling of joy from watching a loved partner fall in love or lust with another partner. Antonym: jealousy.

I have something slightly different thing in mind: a balancing act between your ideas/needs and others.. and a joy in negotiation. With freedom to evolve or quit the game. No obligations. Basically kid's play. I think it's a saner form of interactions. Lighter, deeper, more vibrant (well, in theory).

Hatred of self-interest is one of the worst aspects of human existence and is responsible for a non trivial amount of human suffering.

Try to find a way to embrace and appreciate your self-interest. Humans are not evil just because of their egoism, and nothing about egoism is inherently evil.

Also Christianity, where self-seeking is one of the worst things you can strive for.

I find it interesting that the implication is that you should strive to not be self seeking, because it’s better for you.

That is a wrong view of Christianity (one of the most important things a Christian needs to do is self-examination).

Or do you mean pride?

One cannot be charitable if one does not know his or her own defects and virtues. And this is a lifelong exercise.

> yet seemingly trivial to make others happy, if you are keeping an eye out for the opportunity.

Trivial? Would you expand on this? Any examples? Thank you.

A kind word or act takes a moment of your time but can leave the other person thinking about it for days, weeks, years. You probably have memories of other people doing nice things for you.

Your comment is simple yet powerful. I am saving it in my diary for later.

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