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Comment by robviren | Hacker News Reader

I always struggle with balancing the advice given in pieces like this. The author suggested that they "eat their cake today" suggesting that putting off pleasure is a useless denial. Death could come for us at any moment, but I can't live like I'm dieing every day. There is just a mountain of nuance and self reflection between living some bohemian lifestyle where every moment must be filled with something and some stoic monk who has removed all want from their heart. It's too easy for me to surrender to the dopamine hits of all the things around me and find that what I actually enjoy feeling numb. Not looking for answers, I just wanted to speak for those who might struggle against filling each quiet moment with "joy" because hollow entertainment has eroded my true enjoyment more often than not.

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I think the point is not "live like you'll die next week" but rather "live in such a way that, if you were told you have a week to live, you wouldn't regret the choices you made".

If I knew I'll die next week, would I try crack? Well, maybe - there's nothing to lose and they say the highs are pretty high. But if I found myself in a hospice tomorrow, would I regret all the crack I didn't try? No - the pluses I got from living a not-crack-addicted life seem pretty solid from where I stand.

For a less dramatic example: I think that, when the time comes, I won't regret most of the time I spent programming. By being aware of how often people regret the time they spent on a dead-end job I've made the kind of choices that gave me a good life-work balance while keeping me working on interesting stuff. Of course I'm also severely underpaid, but middle class and happy seems better than rich and miserable.

Nietzsche smiles up from the abyss toward you.

What a nice, thoughtful way to look at it!

Semi ironic username :) But I agree with you. Advice from people who is facing death can be overly dramatic and cause serious harm for people and environment. It's not sustainable to live like today is your last for 70+ years. It's not sustainable for all the interpersonal drama you will cause. And burning through resources to gain max experience will also tax the environment greatly.

Right! This whole life thing is about striking a balance between "eat your cake today" and "spend your day in the field cultivating wheat to make the flour to make more cake in the future".

In every moment of my life there has been some "cake" I could have "eaten" that would have been more enjoyable than all the hours I spent up in the middle of the night with screaming babies. But on my deathbed I'm certain it will be my investment of time in my children that I'm glad of, not the foregone "cake" I'm regretting.

Some insightful thought there right!!!

I think the real fundamental point that both you and the author make is that it's the things that are investments of time that are worthwhile, and that we should endeavor - in our mindfulness - to adjudicate the utility of time investments actively in order to maximize our ROI. I 100% agree! Going through the motions, getting dumped on, or losing one's ability to subjectively assess comparative value is no way to lead a happy life (for oneself of the ones around you).

One bit I find easy to lose sight of is that if I do spend my day cultivating wheat for flour for a cake, to make sure to eventually make and eat that cake, and not just spend all my time getting better at cultivating more and more wheat.

I dunno, I've discovered a deep joy in cultivating, to the point where it has developed into my "cake" to simply cultivate. I don't mind if someone else ultimately reaps the benefits, since from my own vantage I won't regret having spent an extra day in the field, doing the work.

To me, this is the goal; to be able to look up towards the sun every day, sore muscles and sweat dripping, and say, "thank you for this day."

Metaphorically, I mean. In truth I'm a cave-dwelling grug-minded developer.

Chapeau!!!! :)

Thank you for leading me to https://grugbrain.dev/

Yes! It's like the problem of when to stand up from the blackjack table.

Your children are your cake.

My children’s cake is my cake

That doesn't seem like a sustainable source of protein.

Sometimes! Increasingly so as they get older. But a lot of the time, personally I would say most of the time until they're four years old or so, it's more like plowing, sowing, harvesting, and milling than it is like enjoying a slice of cake.

That approach means your life ends with your first child; since you'll presumably want your children to believe that line too, then their lives will all lead to and end with their children. All in all, this is just saying, the only meaning of life is to procreate - and reduces humanity back down to level of any other simpler life form. Eat, fuck, die, repeat.

It's a belief I find hugely depressing.

People get a lot of gratification in raising children. Something that people without children can't really understand fully. I know I didn't understand it until I had children. You're building (for lack of a better word) something that will outlast you, the original legacy, one that nearly anyone can achieve. If you spend time helping people in need, I mean really spending time and energy, not just donating or virtue signaling, it's similar. An example would be teaching or coaching; being a big brother or adopting a child; being a good aunt or uncle; mentoring even, to a lesser degree, etc. Taking care of and benefiting someone who depends on you doing it really gives a lot of gratification.

>reduces humanity back down to level of any other simpler life form. Eat, fuck, die, repeat.

It's a little more than that but though humans (most) are civilized and intelligent, we're still a great ape.

>It's a belief I find hugely depressing.

Why? It's our nature. Jonas Salk is probably the finest human I can think of and he was certainly motivated by all those things.

Plus I think what parents do a poor job expressing to non-parents is that kids are fun. Like, they're a lot of tedious work, especially in the first three or four years, but they're also like the most entertaining fun thing out there. You know how it's fun to be around people who are really having fun? It's like that, but often.

Just as a top-of-mind example: All through my adulthood, I really disliked Halloween. Just not my thing, too much pressure to pick a creative costume, then go to a tedious party. But last night I had such a great time taking my five-year-old trick-or-treating. Because it's so new and exciting and fun for her, and that's infectious! But that sort of thing happens a lot.

That's what the metaphorical "cake" is. But that doesn't mean "that's it, there is no other joy to seek in life now", like the parent comment seems to be inferring. It's just one source of joy, but one that is hard to capture any other way.

I think you misunderstood the comment. "Cake" in this thread is just a metaphor for "that which brings you joy". It is inarguably the case that peoples' children are one of the things that bring them joy.

None of the rest of what you seem to have read into it is written there.

I suspect this person does not write those words with the intent to drive people to fill every moment with pleasure.

I suspect their intent is more along the traditional lines of encouraging readers to not put off something into the “long term goal” category that would just as easily fit in the “short term goal” category.

If anything, I see it as complimentary to your thoughts because many folks will use momentary pleasures as a way to put off a highly rewarding yet difficult life challenge.

Yes, the author's words are probably meant for someone who is living an inward looking life, not thinking for example to tell their aging parent, "I love you". And for all of us, it is a reminder.

I think it's even simpler than that.

A lot of the treadmills that society places upon us are just bullshit. It's packaged as "long term goals" to make it sound more plausible (you'll either forget you were conned or get used to it in some kind of Stockholm syndrome). But in those cases there's actually no trading short for long, it's just purely bullshit. Like, the high school geometry assignment for the author. It is literally wasting her time if she didn't enjoy learning it.

I guess "bullshit" might be objectively too strong a word -- given that "one man's trash is another man's treasure", whether it's trash or treasure depends on who/what person you are. But subjectively, for the wrong person, a lot of stuff is just that.

> It is literally wasting her time if she didn't enjoy learning it.

I didn't enjoy several classes which were prerequisites for my career which I enjoy very much.

The most obvious example is the idea of waiting for retirement to do the things you want to do and, frankly, things you probably should be doing long before you’re in your late 60s.

I am certain it was clear to the author and those with perhaps a more fine tuned ability to control themselves. I have been the person who reads things like this and used it as an excuse to extract cheap joy from bad habits. It's incredible how much wisdom one can extract from a decade of stupidity.

I've been thinking a lot about this recently as my wife and I are starting to think towards retirement and having gone through the death of some close family members.

My father used to give me the advice "live life such that if you were to write your own autobiography you'd find it interesting." Yet when he was beginning the process of dying he told me about his regrets in not traveling to see more of the world. The regret was so profound that it immobilized him to the point that even though he wasn't yet sick enough to need daily care, and could have gone to one or two of the places on his bucket list, he couldn't manage it.

I was struck one-time while on vacation in Europe with a tour group, an elderly woman in a mobility chair had become very frustrated with the amount of difficulty she had with getting around to see various sites we were stopping at. She lamented that she had wasted her life waiting to retirement to come see these places and by then was in such poor physical shape she spent more time on or near the bus than seeing things. At the foot of a rather simple cobblestone incline she finally broke down in sobs because there just wasn't a reasonable way for her or her caregivers to get her up the thousands of uneven stones in the street.

Yet I also know people who gravitate and prioritize immediately emotionally satisfying experiences and choices over long-term planning. They all have money problems, unstable housing situations, and nothing saved for when they can no longer work. Yet the moment the next emotionally satisfying opportunity arises they leap at it even if it again causes them to fall back into the steep pit of daily and long-term struggles they can't escape from.

I'm happy where I've arrived and the balance I've struck. But I know that it also wouldn't make other people satisfied as they have a different way of optimizing this problem. For me? Take care of the short, medium and long-term problems, live below my means, use the excess to buy experiences not things, and check that bucket list off while I'm young enough to enjoy it. That way, while I sit old and secure in my retirement I can be satisfied that I did what I wished, but still ended up well enough to take care of what I needed to do.

I don't think there is any advice as such to be taken from these sort of articles, but that is balanced by the fact that most people operate without any particular regard for the eventual certainty of death and if they reflect on it maybe they'll do something differently. Strategies and goals that make sense when rolled out to infinity do not always do so well over 100 years. Seeing what people value on their deathbed can be a source of inspiration for what did and didn't seem to work.

Although, in my view, there is no reason to perceive a dying person as having special insight. If insight matters it can be achieved at any age. Literally the best strategy I've seen in the face of death is just to relax, go with it and try not to get too attached to life. And that mindset offers no guidance at all on what is good to do with the time we have.

> There is no reason to perceive a dying person as having special insight

Have you ever had a near-death experience? Those often seem to be followed by a sense of clarity that inspires some people to live better. They seem to cut through the crud and reveal the unimportance of certain things, and highlight the value of other things

There have been a couple of times I knew death was possible in the immediate future and all was out of my control. I thought, what happens, happens. And I let go, relaxed and peaceful. But it is not easy nor useful to hold that attitude in everyday life.

Maybe it’s not easy, but many people find that attitude useful in a variety of circumstances. Maybe this is part of why some of us seek the advice/perspectives of the dying. Life is rarely peaceful unless we make it deliberately so.

"But it is not easy nor useful to hold that attitude in everyday life."

Why do you think it would not be useful? Aren't you more productive, when you are relaxed, compared to stressed out, where one does make misstakes easy?

Does your insight now have more relevance than when you were 11? I think so as you have a better view of what it means to exist as a human. We should all take our elders view with a little bit kore attention. Whether they are right or wrong, happy or sad, etc…

https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/:

> 1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

> 2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

> 3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

> 4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

> 5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Yup.

I've (so far) concluded that the way to frame it is "If I were to go today, would I be — on balance — happy that I've done what I could with what I had?".

Life is a partial knowledge game.

Everything is a bet on some future outcome, whether it is "will I enjoy this menu choice in 5 minutes?" or "will this education/career choice make me healthier/wealthier/sizer in three decades?"

We live in times where we can more reliably live 8-10 decades and have a plausible chance of living long enough to see substantial healthspan extension science to indefinite lifespans, yet we could also not see the next sunrise...

So, it's just as valid a bet to go all-in on the Hedonic treadmill or organize every hour around life extension, or anything in between. Enjoy it all now and be hated by your future self (unless you're lucky like Keith Richards, still rockin' at 79), or spend less-enjoyable effort now and enjoy being in shape later, etc., etc., etc.

It is all place your bets, take your chances... (& we can often change course later as we learn about life and ourselves).

I first saw tacked to a door in a rock climbing school, one of my favorite aphorisms:

Good judgement comes from experience.

Experience comes from bad judgement.

I think you are misinterpreting the article. By "eating cake today" the author clearly meant they are appreciating each person and each moment of life, as life is precious. It was not a call to hedonism.

sometimes people quite literally settle for something worse or just 'mediocre', when they could have something good, something better, something they actually wanted and desired. but nope, people settle for something middling 'for the time being'. and then never get that good, great thing. sometimes that never becomes quite literal. and then, the things that get put off, become irrelevant, truly and on many levels - they're irrelevant in death, and irrelevant to anyone else living who doesn't care for it even a bit.

it doesn't have to be a cake, but ffs, stop refusing yourself what's better when that option is literally just there. and sometimes those options are free.

(and hey, if 'better' is actually 'not having cake' - maybe it is just that for you. sometimes that death recontextualization makes things seem irrelevant in that way - why do something at all when it literally will not matter, and doesn't matter on any scale of the days really)

Balance.

The extreme of living for today only or living for tomorrow only will mean you are under serving your present or future self. Time is short so it’s wise to give to your present day self. Also you don’t want to rob your future self, so investing in your future is also important. Extremes are easier to manage. With balance you’ll have the choice and its burden to decide between today and tomorrow.

I agree, but I tend to lose my perspective and skew heavily to living in the future. I loved reading this article because it helped me to reprioritize some things, like that family vacation I've been putting off. Or even just playing that board game with my kids that I promised them.

you'll also get some sort of mental and spiritual diabetes from such an approach to life. my impression is that people who die don't have a better idea about living healthy and happy than those who are blessed with health. those recommendations from the death bed seem to be rather reflecting regret regarding what ever area of life that person used to neglect.

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