I Turned 72 Today
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[1] https://www.bzn.be/ [2] https://www.tegeltjes.com/tegeltjes-wijsheid
- Pick a career in your early 20s and get really good at it. Just pick something. Being good at something is better than endlessly searching for the "perfect" job that matches all of your interests. I worked in the food service industry for ±5 years during and after college, and I occasionally wish I had just become a chef, or an architect, or a mechanic, or some other very narrowly defined profession that results in mastering a particular set of skills – as opposed to the ever-changing, nebulous format of most white-collar technology jobs. You'll probably make less money, but I feel like such people have a better sense of identity and overall purpose than the typical white-collar worker.
- Popular culture is very feel-good about everything and shies away from any kind of negative emotions or feelings, preferring instead to neuter them, and push humans to be stoic, utilitarian, and anti-romantic. (As shown by the OP.) I don't think this is healthy or practical, and instead suggest that you learn to channel negative emotions into useful behaviors. We're all human and it's normal to get angry and not be nice.
- An extension of #1 above: good people are hard to find and the "maximize preferences" approach to dating, jobs, and other life decisions seems rational but really isn't. The best partner/job/etc. for you isn't one that has the most compatibility points determined by an algorithm and is in fact much more mundane and human in nature.
- The human ability to forget pain is really remarkable. No matter how horrible a situation is, you'll most likely forget about it in a few months or years. "This too shall pass" is the traditional adage describing this.
- You live in an era that has compressed every major life decision into a series of supposedly arbitrary choices. The real world doesn't work this way, and there are very different outcomes between say, being a parent and not being one, both for you and for society at large.
- Finally, the modern world, by default, thinks that the past was filled with dumb, irrational people, and that the present is automatically better in every way. This isn't a smart attitude and you shouldn't discount someone's viewpoints just because they lived a century or a millennium ago. And as an extension to this: don't be afraid of reading something by someone that you (think) you'll immediately disagree with. It's helpful to be able to interact with a variety of ideas and viewpoints without necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with them in toto.
Envy is purely negative in a social sense, it makes you fight people just because they have stuff you want. It is beneficial to your own genes but not beneficial to humanity.
Of course I'm violating advice #1 here.
(Constructive) Criticism is what advances our development as a species, not sure why that is a necessarily bad thing
criticizing the "stuff" is okay, this is how we advance, but not the "person"
> In my experience, people generally cannot tell the difference.
Often/Usually
> It's possible that I'm at fault in my approach, though.
Probably usually not. Broadcasting good intentions only gets you so far. For most of us it's high skill communication. Earned trust can pave past issues. Past that it's often a minefield of psych factors (you+them) - like having a good/bad day, internal disciplines, where is self-esteem in the equation. A good read on the other person can make mines visible.
And it might not even be the person you're talking to who eventually changes their mind. It might just be a reader, a thousand of whom exist for every one person visibly contributing.
You can't see the mind changing, but it's wrong to conclude that therefore it never happens.
Criticism might not change people the way you want however, it is like punishment vs rewards, you can change people by punishing them or rewarding them, both works to change people but in different ways and often punishment makes the person resent you so you should do it sparingly.
"You will die, don't delve over negative moments too much."
You can read this but have no experience of knowing you will really die. You might rationally understand it, but you experience no change. Yet when you finally realize you will die, when you truly know it, you act from a different place.
"You will die." is very generic and bland yet truly knowing it can change everything.
I know I'm going to die. I've been with people when they died. And I'm seeing a parent living with the challenges of very old age. I know I'm going to die and I try to meditate on that and, as far as I can tell, I truly know it. And I see the value of that knowledge.
But in a way it also changes nothing. I'm still alive. I'm still going to die. Nothing fundamental has fundamentally changed.
No soul, adventure or brutal honesty
I need to do this. I know my project (just a passion, not a side hussle or for income). Tell myself I need to. Then daily life gets in the way. 10 years or more.
Hard sell on HN :)
This was also one of the more interesting points in Dale Carnegie. Wish I could live up to it more often.
I have only fairly recently worked out that how food makes you feel is at least as important as how it tastes.
72 is the new 60. I love the wisdom that comes with age however I hate the back pain.
"It’s usually better to be nice than right."
"Nobody gets to their death bed and says, I’m sorry for trying so many things."
At my current place, I made a conscious decision to be 'nicer'. That doesn't mean I'm going to put up with BS or get pushed around, but I'm way more thoughtful with how I approach interpersonal relationships. I've found more success with less stress with this approach than I did with my previous tack. It really boils down to being "nice", or as I tell myself, "don't be an asshole".
99 years old might not be wiser than couple of smart people, but their conclusion can be wise for other regular 30 years old hard working professionals who are losing their mind over their careers and never investing into personal relationships
There are lessons you can only learn by living through them, no doubt about it.
I think I just don't like these type of posts where age is used as some kind of source of authority or to set expectations. Old or young, like a post that says "I'm only 16 and I did X".
It doesn't diminish the accomplishments or anything and maybe it's just better marketing at that point..
> It’s usually better to be nice than right.
But I am nonetheless happy to see a reminder like this from time to time, a reminder to put things in life in perspective. And for sure there are some gems here. And in the comments too.
Perhaps the two that struck me for some reason (perhaps because they seem to speak to truisms about living with other people):
It’s usually better to be nice than right.
Envy is like drinking poison expecting the other person to die.
And from the comments:
People will forget what you said or what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
My gripe, for every one of them, I hear a contradicting one, from an equally reputable source. And then it gives me a cognitive dissonant Diarrhoea. And stresses me out. DAE face this? How do they handle it?
I had a childhood where I was brought up to believe I was worthless. One tactic I used to overwrite those schema that imprinted in my personality from early life is to repeat what I believe about myself, like I'm a good person, etc. Eventually those pathways of believing I'm good were more comfortable than those of believing I'm worthless.
1) honesty is the constantly out of reach ideal that solves a huge portion of nearly all global problems
2) Everyone becomes worm food faster than they expect, and they care less about their legacy when they are dead than they expected and they are forgotten faster and more permanently than they expected.
That's for sure....