Comment by robcohen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robcohen | Hacker News Reader

My advice is this:

Become a different person.

Take your life and incinerate it. Not literally of course.

I mean completely change what and who you are.

You’re an accomplished software engineer at 30? Great. You’re done doing that.

Go buy a $15k trailer, get a truck, and hit the road. Stop looking at screens, only read books. Stop working a job behind a desk, find something else, or if you can afford it don’t work at all.

I suggest reading CrimeThInc: Days of War, Nights of Love. https://crimethinc.com/books/days-of-war-nights-of-love

Pick up a guitar, learn to farm, meet some nomads. Do it all in another country. Break the law. Do whatever you feel like. Don’t hurt people, obviously, but you’re probably a sane enough person to not want to anyway. Learn a new language. Stop speaking your old one. I mean, really, and truly, break out of the matrix. Go to the edges of your universe, like the “Thirteenth Floor”. Get fit, dissolve your old identity. Become awesome at yoga, or weightlifting, or Jiu Jitsu.

You really can choose to become unstuck. Fly to Europe, buy a bike and a tent, and just go, man. Figure it out later. What’s there to be afraid of, really?

This might sound kind of inspirational but as someone who feels similarly to OP, that's a long list of things that I would never want to do. I don't want to do anything - that includes the random list that you're throwing at the wall. It's not like I've always wanted to have a different job, travel or learn more languages and I'm too timid to try these things - I don't want to do anything including all of the things you mentioned.

Change is a good thing but removing all of the stability from your life and spending all of your time doing things that you don't want to do seems like a really bad idea.

What would be a more comfortable way for you to approach new things? Serious question - you say you’re too timid to try these things, which I totally understand.

What do you feel would be an easy way to ease you into new experiences? Someone to help you along? An experience in a medium or setting you’re comfortable in?

This is really the big problem of our time. Old sources of meaning have fallen apart (livelihood, family, community) and I see so many people with a similar sense of emptiness.

> Serious question - you say you’re too timid to try these things, which I totally understand.

They didn't say that at all. They're saying they have no desire to do those things. Even if you injected them with all the confidence in the world they would never walk in that direction. You're completely misunderstanding them.

> I'm too timid to try these things

They did say that.

>It's not like [...] and I'm too timid to try these things

No, the commenter said s/he was not too timid to try, it was the lack of desire to try new things that was the obstacle.

Right, I misread.

Sorry, but I think this is bad advice. It sounds wise and clever on the Internet, but in reality it's just an extension of the "consumer experience" mentality that leads to the society-wide feeling of malaise OP is experiencing. Because the fact is, doing a bunch of random things doesn't lead to any real insight about the human experience or what one's place in it ought to be.

Instead, I suggest that OP (and anyone else) delve into philosophy, religion, and especially the nature of capital-W Work, that being "What do you wish to spend your time doing in order to master it and grow into an identity as such a master?" The film Jiro Dreams of Sushi is an excellent introduction to this, but you can find similar mentalities labeled as "craftsmanship". The key point being that you need to create stuff (including your self) not simply consume it or find it out in the world.

I disagree because it seems to me OP is to comfortable with his life. When you are to comfortable you can't appreciate life and the things you have. The reason some of you don't enjoy the things he listed or basically anything that puts your self out into the world is because you need to retrain your brain to enjoy things again. The hardest part is starting but once you get going it's easy. You need to create difficulties in your life to keep yourself from getting too comfortable. I have spent the past 4 years traveling living overseas in many countries dealing with covid regulations and all the hassles that came with it. I am glad i did it because now everything seems easy. Op's life sounds so relaxing to me.

Because when your in a third world countries and living in run down areas with no warm showers, no ac and there's giant cockroaches or other insects in your bed you 100% won't take things for granted again.

Even just being in America feels like i am so lucky and to be honest i have never been more grateful.

Came here to say this, though I don't know if "comfortable" is the right word. I think a fulfilled live involves a balance between freedom and responsibility.

This post and discussions like this always remind me of Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I'd highly recommend to anyone, but especially those contemplating such questions. The major insight, though not immediately helpful, is that life is both heavy and light, and we must learn to live with these coexisting dichotomies.

"In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens. If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.

But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

...That is the question. The only certainty is: the lightness/weight opposition is the most mysterious, most ambiguous of all.” --Milan Kundera

You’re not wrong, but I don’t think “continually make yourself uncomfortable” is really a desirable or doable strategy for most people in the developed world. Especially if you have dependents that don’t want to be taken along for the ride.

I don't think the advice is completely bad, but it doesn't seem to tackle the core issue. Getting out of the comfort zone, being exposed to a new environment and trying out new things can definitely help in order to figure out what to do in life and how to find meaning.

I did something like this. 3 years ago I started traveling while working remotely. I've been to like 30+ countries now in the last few years. My basic thinking was I'd leave some problems behind & some would come with. I worked on the problems that followed me, and got a remote therapist for the hardest stuff. I am in a much happier place now. YMMV.

> What’s there to be afraid of, really?

Incinerating your life, trying all these new things, only to find that the emptiness returns shortly, and now it is no longer paired with a dependable income.

Unless you have mouths to feed, or someone who needs money for medical issues, who cares if you lose a dependable income? Why make decisions based in fear? Fear that you won’t be able to survive, that you won’t be able to make it. Have more confidence in yourself. You’ll adapt, and probably be even better off with the wisdom you’ve accumulated.

Wow, this is incredible advice. OP, I hope this resonates with you :) As someone also approaching 30 and fed up feeling burnt out, I needed to hear this.

You cannot better yourself. You cannot alter yourself in any meaningful way.

This is the right advice, but few people will follow it.

great advice, but seeing crimethinc linked on HN is always wild

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