Comment by djaychela | Hacker News Reader

Comment by djaychela | Hacker News Reader

As someone who has a terminal cancer diagnosis (and I'm mid-way through the range of time I was told I had left, months, FTR), I don't agree with a lot of this. And I'm essentially on my deathbed (mentally), even though I'm currently not bed-bound.

Yes, my state now is not a representative state of the one I was in a year ago before my health started failing. But I'm still the same person. I forgot that briefly after my terminal diagnosis, and starting doing things I thought were the right things (making sure things would be OK for my wife, tidying up a litany of messes that would be hard for her to deal with without just giving up and selling things for pennies or giving them away), but after a few weeks and speaking to the right people, I started living more normally again.

Yes, my priorities have changed massively - things that I thought were important 4 months ago are truly meaningless to me now - but many things that are important to me now were so before. And they will be until I cease to exist. I'm making the most of the time I have left because it's important that my experience at this point is as good as it can be, and because I want my wife to have good memories of our last months together.

I've never suffered from 'reason 2'. I've always felt I made the right decision at the time with the information I had and the person that I was at the time. So I don't have many regrets - none of significance to speak of, certainly. I know I am lucky in this respect.

Reason 3 is meaningless, IMO - both generally and certainly to me. I'm 53.

And I don't think many people really do think about this seriously until it's actually on the table for them. I certiainly know I didn't - even last year when I had an operation which hopefully would have removed the cancer and given me years of life, I hadn't really thought about the finality of death and what it means (or doesn't) to me. FTR I'm an Atheist, and I think that 2026 will have as much meaning/experience for me as 1969 (i.e. before I was born).

Thank you for sharing.

I’m in the exact same boat as you and what you wrote matches my experience and thoughts almost to the word.

These days my motto is “Make today a good day” and every day I do my best to live up to that.

I’m not deeply thoughtful about this stuff, but my personal philosophy could be called “positive existentialism.”

I am here. It is amazing that I exist, and have an opportunity to be alive and aware. I don’t want to waste it, and so I try to say “yes” to life. And life comes to us moment by moment, day by day. I don’t want to regret things I’ve done, but I also don’t want to regret things I didn’t do.

I’m not in the position that either of you are in (sorry about that btw) but in a sense we all are, and just don’t realize it yet.

> in a sense we all are, and just don’t realize it yet.

one of the luckiest breaks you can catch in life is to live through something that forces you to realize this.

Thank you for sharing. You don't have to share any more, but if you would, I'd like to know what things have become truly meaningless to you. Did any of those things surprise you, or were they what one would expect in this situation (career, retirement, and similar)?

There were a whole load of things that I thought were important - mostly objects I owned and projects that I was going to do (some with them, some without). I have done a lot of clearing out so that my wife doesn't have to 'next year' (our euphemism for after I die) - partly because I want to decrease the load on her as much as possible and partly because I know the things in question and their value.

I still have a large workshop full of stuff (tools, building materials, etc), and none of it means anything to me now, whereas it did before - I was worried about all of these objects, which sounds a bit strange, but I've mostly been a 'caring about objects' person most of my life.

There are things that need to be done that I know I won't get done now, and they don't bother me at all - now that I've ensured my wife will be OK financially and the house (which I've been extending so we could live comfortably) is mostly complete and I've finished the small jobs needed to get it to that state with some help from friends. Also, I've had a few other things I've needed to get rid of that I didn't want to (one was my van, main form of transport, which had a mechanical fault that in 'normal' times I would have fixed myself, but would have taken 3-4 days work plus machining time and costs). Just sold it and let it go, and I've not thought about it since. Same for the motorbike I owned and loved for 14 years - once it had gone, that was that. There has been something freeing in letting go of these things.

The biggest thing, though, is playing music. I've played guitar since I was 13, and made most of my income from playing and teaching music (and music technology). Aside from a project I have completed for my funeral (a song my wife wrote and played), I've not touched anything musical - not picked up a guitar or anything like that. There's been no desire to do so whatsoever, it's just 'gone'. I stopped listening to music for a month or two, but that's back now, fortunately.

I didn't really have a 'career' - I've been self employed since 2000 and fallen into things which have worked for me (and I have loved doing, which is good). If I had the energy, I don't think I'd still be doing work, but I still care about it and its quality, so that is still there.

Effectively, I have 'retired' with my wife, who is long-term off work (because of the work she does, she can't work while going through this). So at least I have that and we've spent all day every day together since January. This has been meaningful.

Much to think about. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you for sharing

Thank you for sharing, much respect to you.

I was wondering, are you looking into religion at all? Does your inner self sometimes suggest to you that there is a God, and do you feel an urge to pray to Him?

Not that you asked my advice but as a believer I would ofc gently nudge you to do so. I believe with conviction that the doors to God are wide open until the very moment we breath our last.

You do realize that that's also likely true for all the thousands of Gods that've ever been imagined by humans? So I am gently nudging you to consider praying to them as well, just to be on the safe side. ;)

>I am gently nudging you to consider praying to them as well, just to be on the safe side. ;)

Lol do you guys remember Benny, from the mummy? There was a scene where he was going through necklaces of various religions, praying, and that's the image I can't get out of my head right now.

How could I forget? One of the funniest scenes in movies for me, ever, to this day, and I am 45.

I don't pray to God "just to be on the safe side".

I pray to God because I have come to know Him from within my deepest inner self.

I haven't come to know any other God besides the Almighty and Most Merciful, Who created the cosmos and everything in it.

I think I disagree, I may be wrong, I usually am but here's what I think:-

I have looked into christianity from an atheist's critique and I read that in christianity, if you did even a minor sin (which I guess everybody does, because nobody's perfect), then all you have to do is, is say that Jesus didn't die in vain and you can go to heaven because all sins are forgettable.

This idea of all sins are forgettable is also in hinduism, with bathing in river ganga as well.

To me, I wonder, if Jesus exists, And some guy just worshipped him but he was a really bad guy, would he go into heaven? and Because the only sin unforgettable in if so, why should I really obey the christianity is being a skeptic of the religion/ blasphemy which is really ironic I guess, better make people worried about hell and if they question it, they automatically fall into it.

To be honest, there have been some really lucky instances in my life when If I ask god for something, he truly gives me that thing, I mostly ask for study related marks, like going to an exam hall without studying and still getting really decent marks imo compared to others simply because the exam was way tougher than expected and I am sitting like wow, I didn't realize the exam was tough because of my own issue of time issue... great....

I know it seems really petty that I believe in god / reject god because of fear/reward, but I genuinely don't know. All rational thinking really leads me to an idea that we haven't found God yet...,

If I have to believe in anything, if anything spiritual, it might be the idea of karma. I want to die knowing that if somebody bullies me sometimes and I don't speak back because I can say some really vile things but then there won't be any difference b/w me and them. So I just sit, I know that it hurts listening to them and probably try my best to ignore them but they still know that it hurts, so they try to chip me away..., I try to think of the best things I can speak that can make them realize I am not OKAY with their shit. I want to probably die knowing that me not shit talking back/ being pacifist has its value. IDK.... , maybe I am too weak and skinny. I legit never thought I am gonna get bullied but I guess some people are messed up

I'm not the person you responded to, but In my experience most people who choose the label of "atheist" have spent time looking into religion. The nonreligious people who haven't are much more likely to just describe themselves as non-religious.

As an atheist, the only time or two I've felt an urge to pray has been when I've felt very alone, and missed the comfort that came from praying and believing that someone with real power was listening. If that's what you believe, of course that's going to feel comforting (plus it provides opportunity for mindfulness and reflection).

Both fortunately and unfortunately, Christianity (which you did not mention, but your language is consistent with) did not hold up to scrutiny for me, so that full level of comfort isn't there, but thankfully many of the benefits can be found in meditation.

If you’re looking for comfort in Christianity, I agree that you aren’t going to find it. Jesus explicitly says that we will suffer in this life. There are comforts in the Christian life but on the whole, it’s not a tool for finding “benefits” or feeling fulfilled.

I'd certainly have agreed with that! But it's only the occasional comfort it brought me that I miss, obviously I don't miss making sacrifices in exchange for an afterlife I don't believe in.

The comfort that religion such as Christianity gives is in the belief that any suffering is temporary and meaningful, while the state of non-suffering that shall follow will be permanent.

As an atheist who still holds up some religion mostly because of fear, I genuinely fear very small outcomes and sometimes I genuinely feel like luck is on my side when statistically it shouldn't have been and then I praise the "lord"

I wasn't born into christianity but rather hinduism.

My critique of your statement is that I personally don't see any difference b/w suffering and non suffering in an infinite scale, our bodies will adjust to it.... suffering has its meaning because its finite.

You could very vaguely quantify suffering at a neurological level,I think.

But the meaning of the suffering is derived from its temporal nature. If suffering is permanent, my point is, is that there would be no difference b/w suffering or euphoria.

There are other critiques as well.

I just don't understand, I know why I follow religion, its mostly fear and some really lucky moments.

I don't wish to pray to god, I wish to pray to universe in some sense. Thanking the universe, I just have named it god because I find him more approachable..., more personal I guess, but I know its fiction.

To be clear, I wasn't referring to Hell or anything like that, especially since the notion is rather fuzzy in Christianity and is completely absent in e.g. Judaism, so it's not a universal monotheistic thing, but rather to day-to-day pain and suffering As to your point that suffering or non-suffering is made irrelevant by permanence, I think not everyone would agree, but more importantly, humans in general aren't particularly good at dealing with infinities, even imaginary ones. So the selling point there isn't so much so the abstract philosophical notion of eternal bliss, but rather the very concrete one of not having to ever again deal with some painful events that you regularly face IRL, like starvation or your small children dying.

Regarding your take, it reminds me of how in David Brin's Uplift series, humans are mostly non-religious but often invoke a deity called "Ifny", short for "Infinity", which is basically a personification of luck as you describe it. It's not an uncommon thing, either - indeed, I would argue that most pre-monotheistic religions are largely that, just with specialized gods responsible for different manifestations of luck, so to speak (so e.g. you'd pray / sacrifice to the god of harvest to ensure that no unlucky events would happen this year that'd ruin it).

Monotheism is rather different, though, and I think it can be distilled down to the archetype of a perfect government - which would also explain why it only arose sometime after the first large centralized states, and was largely spread by them. But this also takes care of the "unlucky" angle in a sense that there's simply no such thing as luck in a perfectly ordered universe.

No. I know being religious would be a great comfort at this time, but I just don't feel that way.

Thank you, I appreciate your honest answer and genuinely wish you all the best.

I believe a merciful god does not damn people

Nobody has the right to call anyone damned on behalf of God, I agree. His Mercy is beyond our comprehension.

However people damn themselves sometimes, do you agree?

Im' starting to believe you are trolling now

Your god gave him cancer

What makes you know the reason behind that wasn't so he can enter into God's mercy much sooner?

Maybe he could have chosen some more peaceful way for him to die

I sometimes really wish religious people would engage in the reflection they expect from others and start to realize how offensive this is, especially to someone on their deathbed.

It's not offensive. See OP's response to me. U need to get out of your bubble.

Proof by example?

My wife is in your situation and she wouldn’t agree with the article either. Travel is the only thing she dreams about doing. Everything else she wants to keep as normal as possible for as long as possible.

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