Children and Helical Time
moultano.wordpress.com
moultano.wordpress.com
By contrast, you remember things in your youth that happened only once, like spraining my ankle at a crossing with a train oncoming (it was less dramatic that it sounds lol), or going to a music festival, or finishing high school.
One thing that maybe needs to be talked about is that you can simply relive your life. This works best if you had a good time. So the answer to the question is not just that you should look for new firsts, you can replay some old tapes.
I'm lucky enough that I know people from every time in my life. I have a chat group with three other guys that I met when we were 4 years old, over 40 years ago. They sent messages last night. I got a message from my first grade teacher, and my high school English teacher. I have a chat with all my buddies from school, where we exchange messages that are about as mature as when we were teenagers. People I worked with, I keep in touch with.
I have an online photo album that is basically the only data I care to have a backup of. Now and again, I flip through it, and I see what I was up to, and have nice thoughts about that.
It might sound a bit weird for a mid-40s guy to be so resigned to being old. But I was talking to one of the mentioned buddies from nursery, and I turns out the big milestones have happened already. We already finished school, got jobs, had kids. There's a lot of little things to tick off, but they are little things: visiting various interesting sites, going to some concert, and so on.
Later in life, I managed to catch up in dating and other aspects, but kept a good streak of nerd pride and am totally happy about that.
If you were to have observed my childhood and got depressed about it, that interpretation would have been misguided.
Only one of the two of us was there.
One of my friends in high school was like that - always studying, always doing extra classes. Straight As even without it, good grades, six highers one year and another two and four CSYS by the time he left. Then off to Uni where he got a first with distinction in Business Management. He never did anything but study, although he did play football a bit.
In the intervening 30-odd years he's mostly worked as a deputy manager in a supermarket in a small town maybe an hour's drive from the slightly smaller town I live in. He's never done anything else. Moved a couple of hundred miles from where we went to school, got a job, worked his way up to assistant manager.
I see him sometimes in passing when I'm working up that way.
We must imagine Stephen happy.
I rarely find myself on "autopilot". Is that why?
But as an adult, learning how to ride motorcycles, touring; fine dining and discovering a love for fine wine; travel generally; the perspective that living in multiple countries gives you; the birth of my son, and how it changed my perception of my parents; these things were more significant and still more salient to me now. I am a very different man to the one I was at 20, and I feel I changed more between 25 and 35 than I did between 10 and 20.
My theory is that the brain is good at compressing memories, so if you do mostly the same things every day it's not stored as a separate memory.
I actually felt my 30s as one of the longest periods in my life, because of things that happened in my life
Much downside to this but the upside is my life feels incredibly long and I haven't even reached 50 yet. I have already lived numerous lives compared to the self that would have had a very stable life the last 25 years. My working life feels vastly longer than my very stable childhood. That came and went in the blink of an eye from this perspective.
Move to a new city, get a radically different job, get a kid, switch up your routine, pick up unusual hobbies/interests and every year will feel like a new life. Childhood feels very long because you have to go through mandatory checkpoints imposed from the outside, add that to your adult life and it'll feel the same. Why don't you go get a parachute intro course next weekend? Or rent a car on a race track? Go ice climbing next winter? Join a yoga club, a music class, a reading group, a dance class, &c. try things you don't necessarily want to do and you'll open many doors.
Most humans have a tendency to go the path of least resistance, and in today's world of working from home and unlimited screen based entertainment you can very easily waste decades your life
There is so much in the world and so precious little time, I cannot really imagine running out of new "firsts" to do. Just I think many people never take control.
(The article itself seems to be more about raising children, being dad and fulfillment than the comments and title suggest)
And each year is new, even if just teachers changing; but most have new things you can do.
For me as a child, even getting a haircut was a dreary experience. It felt as an eternity I had to sit mostly immobile, while somebody else maneuvered sharp blades around my head. Nowadays it feels like I barely accomodated in the chair, it's already over.
The 'vicarious firsts' framing doesn't quite land for me because of that, but the 'urgency that won't let you drift' observation resonates. Maybe what matters isn't renewed wonder but having something -- family, friends, caring about the world -- that demands presence. The forcing function matters more than the feelings themselves.
My dad always says something related in nature: caring about and loving your family makes you a better person more than it helps your family.
It's a cliché but I (almost 50 years old) have found that when you get older, you notice patterns, Something "new" is often just an incremental improvement or two existing things combined.
Rust doesn't excite me much, and Go seems too boring to use for my side projects. Elixir + Phoenix LiveView is the only "new" thing that has excited me in the past decade, but I can't stand the Elixir syntax. Maybe it's because I have seen so much change during the years? If someone started out with React, a new version seems like a big deal, but to me it is just an incremental improvement.
When I was a kid, a new CPU or GPU had an extreme impact compared to the previous generations. We went from crappy Wolfenstein graphics to Quake in a few years. I have stopped following new releases now, because they don't really do much.
The same applies to mobile phones. The next iphone / samsung model doesn't really motivate me to replace my existing phone.
Similar to you, I don't care about mobile phones anymore. Instead of fancy hardware or features what I care is simple, secure, and private phone (open-source OS). I used to get excited on new models.
Recently a couple of my friends were talking about "Telegram vs Whatsapp." One is better because it has this feature, etc. They asked my opinion too. I don't care which is better, I only use them because I have to use them for contacting family and some friends. I just need the send text and image functionality (and I don't use it for private / secure texting).
But for most of things in life you just need to use them.
The hard part is finding something to geek out on that doesn’t turn you into a curmudgeon insisting everyone is “doing it wrong”.
This is just not my experience at all. I had a great childhood, but ask me about the most vibrant moments, and very few of them came before I was 18. The births of my children, my wedding, meeting my wife, lazy afternoons in college...
But is that experiencing life, though? How many strong memories from that "logarithmic first half" of my life do I have? Actually very few compared to what came later, and they are not particularly compelling either.
My guess is that the author just hit mid-life crisis after having spent one or two decades in an office. Boring mindless job is what makes life experience to plateau, not adulthood. If I think of the most accomplished persons that I know, who've done many things with their life, I can't imagine them saying that their childhood was half of their life. They would probably laugh at the idea.
Or maybe he hasn't reached that crisis yet, since he finds solace in the idea that his child is doing the living for him. Wait until the kids leave home, for the log to turn into a exponential panic.
Seen it a few too many times. Live life today, people!
“ So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
“ And don't worry 'bout tomorrow, hey Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today”
Ron paul was used to describe the sort of (seemingly) libertarian "leave me alone, i dont want to know you. please go die" views you espoused.
The key is not assuming that some future date will bring happiness - that is something that has to be found each day.
I was saying that you must do both - dont just slave away and expect that you'll live when you're retired (a lifestyle which makes it less likely that you would even live until retirement age, let alone be physically or even mentally capable of enjoying retirement).
Instead, live in a way such that there it is meaningful while you do it, and it also prepares you for the future. Again, this would also have the benefit of showing your kids and others how to do this themselves.
I don't accept that premise. I'm in my mid-fifties now, and a year is still a long time. They years get short if you fall into a routine and never do anything new, but it is easy enough not to fall into that trap. And I say that as someone who thrives in doing the same routine every day. I get my variety in the details, doing different projects, having different conversations, trying new foods, exploring new places.
> Childhood memories have an intensity and a vibrancy that it is difficult for the rest of life to match.
I've found that we all have different memories. I know people who cannot remember their childhood at all, and I've known people who remember it well. But not having vibrant memories of your adult life? That feels a little depressing. Adulthood is when you step up and become your own self, directing your own life. It is when I climbed mountains, explored the world, met new people, tried different careers, moved to new towns, had long-term relationships including children, created art, studied subjects beyond the standard high school education. Childhood was OK, but was fairly anxiety-filled, at least for me. The truly amazing experiences in life were as an adult.
The author addresses this, of course. But he does so in a really odd way:
> This works, to a point, but there are only so many firsts for you, and chasing this exclusively seems to lead to resentment. You remember the things you had as a kid. You remember the excitement and warmth of that world, how immediate and raw everything felt, and you want to go back.
This is where my reaction was: "Dude, wat??" If adult experiences make you resentful, something is really off. If a good experience makes you wish you could go back to being a child, I'd be recommending therapy because that is not the reaction most adults have to new experiences. I don't say that to be mean, either - if your childhood memories are that much stronger than adult ones, that is not the typical human experience, and I would sincerely be asking for medical and psych support to figure out if something is wrong.
I'm describing my impression of other people's experience there, not mine, (note the word "exclusively") the sort of downside I see of living an inward life of hedonism.
Could anyone who is extremely fortunate and never had to work for money share their experience on this?
I find that the years that I spent on art (playing around, learning new things, not taking other peoples' orders) lasted longer than the ones I spent doing software development for money. Both were fun, but the remaining memories differ by intensity.
I personally don't find the logarithmic experience theory convincing. Why are the first three or so years excluded from this? It seems more likely that new experiences make more impact, or that repeated memories make them more intense. Or dozens of other theories.
That was the happiest I’ve ever been.
Childhood is mostly blocked out (abusive parents, poverty), and adulthood is mostly work.
Maybe we just remember the periods when we’ve been happy. It would make sense evolutionarily.
I have no clue how it would have turned out if I would have grown up in a country without a safety net. I hope the same as I never needed that net and will never need it, however I am not so sure; it makes taking risks very easy...
From my experience childhood felt like grinding my way to max level in an MMO. Had to be done to start playing the game but didn't really care for it. I had more freedom since I was 18 than before so I cherish those memories more.
Some really enjoy that, but the journey to max level was always more interesting to me.
There is a way to reroll; at least vicariously.
Tourism is generally forgettable and I don't recommend it to anyone - save the money and do something where you live.
Backpacking feels meaningful in the moment, but is also largely forgettable. I truly have almost no meaningful memories from 2 separate 2 month trips in Europe and southeast Asia.
The slow travel is most recent, was the most "boring" but also, I think, most meaningful as I was explicitly focused on self-reflection and discovery of a more meaningful way to live after many years (or a lifetime, really) of aiming to be a better cog in the machine. I don't have a lot of "memories" - highlights that I reminisce about - from it, but rather various phase shifts/epiphanies in my understanding of myself, life, the world etc...
I now live in relative poverty in a poor country where I have been working for 7+ years to develop a project for the benefit of the multitudes who can't even conceive of being able to do anything that I've just describe. And for whom even childhood is rather joy and wonder-less, because of how hard life is. I'm mostly glued to my computer again, but it's not soul sucking in the way it was in a cubicle with spreadsheets - because the purpose is meaningful.
I do miss the slow travel days - they were absolutely the most enjoyable period of my life. But I've also met people who have done that for decades and they're profoundly sad people - they have no roots or connections anywhere, no meaningful vocation, etc.
A meaningful life is to be actively involved in the sorrows of the world, with joy.
Still, I really ought to get a bit more play and exploration back into my life.
In the past year, I've been coaching teen soccer/football and that has been wonderful. Both to help me fix my desk-broken body, as well as to help them, principally, become better humans. To succeed on the field they need to develop the same characteristics needed to succeed in life - discipline, determination, cooperation, empathy, solidarity, creativity, perspective, vision, patience, and more. The world around them is largely bereft of such things, so it has been challenging.
But they're vastly better at playing now than a year ago, and I've heard they generally behave better at home as well. The difference between this and the article's version of living through your kids is a) they're not my kids and b) I'm focused on helping them become proper adults via play, whereas the article is largely about recreating Neverland where everything is childish. I expect it'll be unlikely that I'll instill much community spirit in them - though, perhaps we'll incorporate some community service into the training at some point. But it all does seem meaningful.
Still, the real focus and crux of my life is the overarching project to help people everywhere become more self-sufficient. Hopefully I'll be finally ready in the next year or so to "go public" with it, and that people will be receptive to using it, collaborating, helping etc...
Was your schedule oversubscribed in these ? I ask because my experience of pleasure travel is very different. More so when there were (i) very little schedule to speak of, other than start and end dates, (ii) had a partner to share the experience of unplanned discovery to share with.
Both, I think, make a significant difference to the experience.
The other biggie are photographs and writing about it.
I dont have any idea what this means. Could you try again in plain english?
Yes, not having a schedule makes for better travel, as I described in my later multi-year experience. I think most things could probably be made better by having a genuine life partner to share it with. But doing things solo absolutely does not preclude you from meaning. (moreover, I wouldnt describe most romantic relationships as anything resembling a genuine life partner).
Photos and writing are also not inherently meaningful. I did plenty of both and, again, I thought it was all meaningful in the moment, but since realized it was all largely misguided.
If someone were to travel in a genuine manner - where you integrate with local communities, get involved with their traditions, problems etc, then that's an entirely other thing. But just roaming (let alone an itinerary) is largely not actually useful, unless you put it towards something meaningful (eg genuine reflection and improvement, which would largely lead you to realizing that travels themselves are not necessary or even important).
Other than that our experiences are different and that's ok. People are different. It's always a pleasure to meet my past self through those writings (usually emails to friend and family) and photographs I took or were taken by others in the trip.
Agree with you on the part that it is absolutely possible to have a meaningful trip without a life partner.
also, i probably didnt make this point nearly well enough, but the real point is that travel is completely unnecessary and will absolutely not solve any of your real problems. More likely it will just distract from them, or make them worse. Whatever genuinely beneficial things you and your partner experienced together while travelling could and should be experienced wherever you happen to live.
"travel" is a completely foreign concept to living, that has only become "possible" to most people recently. For millenia, people learned how to live quite well without it.
We are creatures of our surroundings environment and changing the environment definitely helps regulate/alter internal states. Can it be done without the travel, presumably so, but travel makes it easier.
Besides all this stuff about internal state, that's too new agey for my tastes, travels are fantastic for its experiential / dopaminergic value, especially if it's a place that offers beauty.
My brain responds to the sights and sounds in the serenity of mountains in a way that I cannot recreate in constricted crowded settings of clutter. Maybe some people can, I just simply cannot.
Can one live without traveling, of course one can. One can live bed-ridden, paralysed as a born paraplegic. But that was never the question.
That seams like a rather uncharitable take.
To me it came across as being an adult about simple pleasures and joys. Not fantasy.
Perhaps it is because I super admire my friends that enjoy the simple things (one in particular has been rather successful as well). Other friends have big goals - I struggle with them - too often it looks to me they are partaking in a frustrating game of elusive status. Although as a geek, my status games are quite different from theirs, so perhaps it is just that I am misunderstanding them.
> various phase shifts/epiphanies in my understanding of myself, life, the world etc
That's interesting, and I've had that too when my purpose of traveling is to learn about myself (versus traveling just for pure fun).
> traveling
I've done a huge variety of traveling and long term backpacking (the luck of being paid well for a geeky childhood). My opinions about my experiences really don't match what you have written.
>I personally don't find the logarithmic experience theory convincing.
I think this tracks though. When you do art or other things you can explore different things. Doing the same thing for 40-60h per week is just not such a varied experience.
If anything, having new experiences is what seems to slow down time in my experience. Visiting new locations, doing and learning new things. I suppose more things will be new to the young than the old, so it would make sense as an alternative hypothesis.
I've also had a bad tooth ache since the day before Christmas I haven't been able to get dealt with since all the local dentists are off, and it feels like it's been the longest week in my life. Dunno if I'd recommend it as a way of prolonging the subjective experience of time though.
Another anecdote is that last year I quit coffee cold turkey, and a side effect was that time seemed to slow down significantly. A lot of people seem to be reporting this. Make of it what you want. Quitting coffee also sucks quite a lot, though not as bad as week of severe tooth ache.
Wasnt there any emergency dentist available? In my location, there are those for these reasons.
But said and done, I came back on Monday, they looked at it again, said it was probably an old filling that was maybe acting up, basically just drilled a bit and filled it back up again. This made it hurt a bit less for about a day (specially during the procedure, even with them drilling into the tooth, local anaesthetic made this the least discomfort I'd been in for almost a week), but since then it's been aching again. It's not as bad as before, but still barely manageable with OTC painkillers.
So tomorrow I'm hitting them up again, hopefully I'm able to convince them to pull the tooth, since it's way back in the mouth and has been nothing but causing me grief since I got the original filling, food getting stuck and causing inflammation, that sort of stuff. The alternative would probably be a root canal, but since it's in a very inaccessible location, that's a real hassle.
But in hindsight, time passes slow in periods where you had many new experiences and is almost missing in periods of routine.
So an exciting experience might be fast in the moment and slow in hindsight.
Sometimes the art comes first, sometimes the words come first, ultimately they all end up with a rough draft of both in an Adobe Illustrator file that gets refined into a final page, and then I make another file in the same directory, and another, and another, and another, until there's enough to be worth considering printing a book. Sometimes I realize I just have to sit down and figure out what the next hundred pages are gonna be shaped like before I can go back to worrying about what this chapter's gonna be shaped like, or what the current page needs to do. Really it's the same shape as any creative process: make a quick, messy version, ask yourself what's the easiest/most obvious thing to do to make it better, repeat that step until you're satisfied with it and/or the deadline hits.
An important part of the process is also directing interested people to my crowdfunding (https://comradery.co/egypturnash, https://www.patreon.com/egypturnash) so I can afford to keep drawing pages instead of seeking other work. :)
For centuries we lived in large families and those within communities where everyone witnessed birth at home with multiple siblings and responsibilities around raising children from a small age. The current atomic families with two adult both completely inexperienced in raising a child is unprecedented in history.
I agree that reliving memories is not a large part, though it is impactful. But it's not dreary ... large part is also having fun and good time with your kids.
I think this explanation is true but incomplete. I believe it's also related to Critical Flicker Fusion Frequency [0], the way I see it, if an organism is smaller it has a higher frequency, it sees more image per second, therefore perception of time is slower. (E.g. a fly sees you moving really slowly). Maybe it's related to the processing time of images, with smaller brains insect can process more of them per second.
Maybe humans process more images as children, therefore see the time time going slower.
It's been a while I didn't think about this, maybe some studies have been made in the past years.
There's some lag between starting and being world-class simply because continued practice makes you better. Plus, you get much better at sustained focus and being able to connect disparate training experiences together as your consciousness develops in the teens.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/tabletennis/comments/1i085sr/a_coll...
[2] https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/what-is-the-pe...
The big thing which we need to change and solve is education --- I have memories of going to a school in Mississippi which my perception of was that it was quite well run, and that classes in it were divided between academic and social --- social classes were attended at one's age level, while academic classes were attended at one's ability level (4 grade cap up through 8th grade) and that students who progressed beyond high school courses were able to take college courses, some teachers being accredited as faculty at a local college, or instructors from that institution being brought to the school for classes at need.
Maybe AP classes offer a similar facility in public school systems? Though one wants to cue the _Doonesbury_ cartoon of the college dean who after being told that his entire Freshman class is taking remedial 051 level _everything_ is running a glorified pre school.
Roger Zelazny made much of college education becoming quite a different thing when Samuel Eliot of Harvard made the conceptual leap of dividing education by the college credit hour and allowing customization beyond the rote repetition of previous generations in his wonderful novel _Doorways in the Sand_ --- perhaps that should be extended down on some sort of skills basis? The school I attended after Mississippi did reading with a pair of boxes of Scholastic Reading Assessment (SRA) booklets, which, not understanding that one was supposed to do a two or three at each level and get approval on before moving to the next level, I did _all_ of in a matter of weeks, which left me with nothing to do for the balance of the school year but go to the (meager) elementary school library.
Almost makes me tear up. 1000 times this.
I remember coming to the realization during my more challenging school years that waiting all week for Saturday to come was literally wishing my life away. I didn't know what burnout was at the time, but an angel of a friend recognized it and helped me understand.
> We also think that novelty rivets our attention and makes time seem to slow down. Childhood is full of novel experiences that, as they repeat, become less so. True novelty becomes unusual when you’re pushing 60 as I am now. The brain says, “Oh, that again,” and glosses past it.
> But what about those of us who are well into the flattening part of the curve, what can we do for ourselves? You can seek new experiences perhaps. If time goes faster because your life has fewer firsts and more routine, then it can be extended by adding firsts. You can learn new things, travel, take up hobbies, or new careers.
> This works, to a point, but there are only so many firsts for you, and chasing this exclusively seems to lead to resentment. You remember the things you had as a kid. You remember the excitement and warmth of that world, how immediate and raw everything felt, and you want to go back. You start to regret that the world has changed, even though what changed the most is you.
I like to think that life slows down once you form a stable image and story of yourself. The more you convince yourself that that image is fixed, the faster time will go by. That might justify why childhood seems longer, since that image seems to form around adolescence.
Experiencing new "firsts" but keeping that image of yourselfe fixed just works for a while. That is why it may lead to resentment, as the article says.
So dont fool yourself: some image of who you are gives you some stability, but just use it for that, so that you dont run crazy with options.
If you treat every event as something that might reshape your ego, then suddenly a big number of experiences are new, and time suddenly slows dont. It may even appear to dissapear from time to time.
I think it does mean though that optimising for this is probably not the thing to do.
I, personally feel like having lived is a net win, joy-wise, mostly on the strength of my childhood. So I'm trying to give that to my sons as well.
Start a company in an industry where you have no experience. Move to a country where nobody speaks a language you understand. Find a new sport and commit to being a top 0.1% participant (for most sports that don't air regularly on national television, this can be done in a year).
If subjective life is speeding up, throw yourself some curve balls.
You then are no longer in control of your house, schedule, or really much. And you have someone to cheer on.
Which you might find super rewarding! But I am fairly confused by the claim that children are interesting and wonder how people spent their pre-children time to arrive at that conclusion – or how much they actually are involved in all the parts of taking care of their kid.
Wake up, drop kid off at school, go to job allowing one to afford health insurance for kids, come home, take kids to after school activity, eat, sleep, repeat.
As an adult, especially a well paid SWE like many on HN.. you can create the life, make the decisions and have the experiences that you want. Your life is as vibrant as you choose it to be.
Much of the stuff I used to read about or watch on TV as a precocious child.. I can just go buy/see/do with the agency & money I have as an adult.
Sure you have a 9-5 (or 8-6, or 7-7) job but you used to go to school and after school activities all day as a kid probably too. It’s your choice to do something or nothing with your hours of free time after work and weekends.
Small children in the picture adds additional time constraints, but should also bring additional vividness/subjective time experience to your life.
If life is moving too fast, then make specific choices to slow down. Take up hiking or camping. Do things with your family if that's a valid option for you. Turn your phone off. Be mindful of your body and emotions.
Lots of small things that can help you slow down a little.
I think most people I meet would benefit from reframing what they consider to be extreme.
For much of that there have been critical pressures making most days important. Which makes them memorable.
Subjectively and objectively, things have changed so much, and so many times, I feel like I have had several lives, so far.
Right now I am in a “make” or “break” situation going three productive years. I solved some very difficult problems that I put myself in a “must solve” position. Each problem solved had significant life impact.
The indicators for “make” are going up month-to-month now, making it a tough but intense and wonderful time. Feels a lot like my early 20’s when I started a dream business (for me) while in school.
Definitely don’t experience time as indicated by those graphs.
There is always novelty if you stay curious. Boredom in your life will only start once you have become boring.
6-7 !!!
(who here also thinks the true meaning of 6-7 is reactive fear of 2026 & 2027 from the school-going crowd?)
I’m going to combine this information with another idea. The second idea comes from Tony Robbins, who tells us we can have mastery over our memories and use them to influence our psyche.
You can magnify and clarify pleasing and positive memories. You can diminish and distance unpleasant or painful ones. This can change your view of the world, for better.
Time is relative no matter what age you are and probably depends how much has changed in your life (maybe I should put a graph here to make it more scientific :)) )
William R. Emerson, Ph.D. https://emersonbirthrx.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Journa...
Does this article seem accurate to your perception of life? It would explain some things regarding my interactions with most people if I am so completely missing something so fundemental about their existence.
Edit: Why does conveying my experience and desiring to understand the experience of others get a downvote? Genuinely curious.
Edit the second: I just started to wonder if this article is going to affect my birthday in a couple weeks. Part of me feels like I am going to think "well that is 1/46th of my life gone" and have a midlife crisis. The other part of me remembers Zeno and his paradox and giggles.
Is it just me or is this just not true?
I remember vibes about childhood: long days of boredom, especially in school; summer days in fields and by the river; days of learning how to code, of reading loads of books. More than anything else, a lot of time to fill not otherwise spoken for.
But specific events I can recall, there are far more of them from adulthood. Amazing experiences, things that changed the way I live, they were adult events and decisions.
Half of your life is childhood because you weighed subjective experiences differently when you had no knowledge or life experiences so you should change your life based on that situation where you were in Plato’s cave?
Actually fuck even this title is bad. If life is subjective, don’t ask how “we” should live. Subjectiveness means that’s a “you” question.
It sounds like the author has had a good childhood and is a good parent to their kids. Wonderful.
But the whole article is appropriately summarized by their final sentences
> You recreate your memories in them. They recreate childishness in you. Life folds back on itself, but not quite the same. It loops, but continues. A helix. > > Life, then, is the creation of childhoods. You have yours, and then you get to create childhoods for others. The time is yours, and theirs
They have completely given up on their own life, and the possibility that they, too, could live in a child-like way, where they have their own wonder, joy etc.
Eg
> Children make you childlike. Skipping through the park as an adult man raises eyebrows (deservedly or not.) Skipping through the park as an adult man with your son or daughter skipping next to you on your arm is one of life’s greatest joys, both for you and for anyone who sees you.
Why do you care about people's eyebrows? Go skip, play, dance, be curious, be creative - whether just for the sake of it, or also in your "work".
Your kids need to see you actually living so that they, too, might be able to actually live once they've moved into adulthood.
> Your Christmas trees get smaller, your lights less ambitious. Some find all of these fun for their own sake, but if you are not the type of person who finds ritual appealing you will likely find yourself slowly disconnecting from holidays. You will find yourself asking what all the hustle bustle is for. > > Kids. That’s who it’s for. Of all the experiences that children renew, traditions are renewed the most. When you put up a Christmas tree, it’s for kids. When you decorate for Halloween, it’s for kids. All of these holidays are in essence a celebration of childhood, and children let you see them all for the first time again. If you remember the excitement of galumphing
Christmas, and other traditions, are NOT about trees and lights and presents. Thanksgiving is not about waiting to stampede a Walmart to buy crap. It's about genuine communion with family, friends, or - if you're particularly clued in - even strangers who don't have such traditions available to them.
And so on.
They talk about the joy of showing kids Saturn in a telescope. I won't argue with that. But that doesn't mean an adult can't have joy in discovering new things in the cosmos - be it through a career or hobby in telescopes, or exploring all parts of nature, from microbes to volcanoes. Whether as a hobby or a career.
This person is missing the point of everything.
We must do as nietzsche described and progress from a camel, to a lion, to a child again. Joseph Campbell - a wonderful interpreter and guide of all of these things - explains it all well, a quote of which is at this page https://centeroflighttulsa.org/three-transformations-spirit/
Nietzsche's ideas where not for producing self-help advice on having hobbies.
As for campbell, he studied him plenty and even curated a "portable jung" compendium. Moreover, his description of the camel, lion, child (from, at the very least, Zarathustra) is exceedingly accurate.
You're really out of your depth
Quite funny from someone suggesting that being very into Jungian thought gives you some credibility when it comes down to Nietzsche.
> particularly becoming a child again, rather than living via your children, who will eventually no longer be children and then leave you.
Please, just go and read the original. It should make it clear for you. For now your "interpretation" of Nietzsche is equivalent to New Age take on Buddhism.
The concept of time dilation explored in the article is fascinating. But I think it's possible the author has some wishful thinking about how experience and memory works. Or perhaps is using a plausible formulation as a reverse justification for his own life choices.
Here is how my childhood memories feel to me. Ages 0-14 are like an opaque tunnel, through which my brain and developing body was shot, like a cannonball, in an instant. I have some fragmentary memories of having gone through that tunnel, but they are mere fragment. My 14 year old self, somehow and miraculously, ended up on the other side of that tunnel healthy and of sound mind.
Age 14 is around where something resembling "the recorded video of my early memory" begins. I have clear memory of various episodes from ages 14-18, and this was also a period of intense individual development for me. This was where all my inclinations, passions, and life goals started to come into focus. That turned into full-blown adult individuation in college, where my goal was to pull away entirely from societal/parental expectations and live my own life. In other words: pretty much everything I associate with my adult character had its seed-like start in my age 14-18 period, exactly the period where I was pulling away from my developmental dependence on my parents.
My childhood before then is a blur. That might be a depressing thought for parents -- that this kind of blurred and fragmentary memory of childhood is possible, given that parents often describe this period as one where they are "making family memories" -- but I don't think I'm the only one. Importantly: this doesn’t make early parenting meaningless. Good parenting is ethically and developmentally important even when it doesn’t leave the child with later-retrievable episodic memories. But I don't think the point of parenting is to create said memories. It's to create a healthy child who can develop and individuate on their own in adulthood.
The article talks a lot about childlike wonder, and seeking that in adulthood. I'm all for that. But what's strange is that OP seems to believe the only place to find that childlike wonder is in parenting of your own children. I am sure parenting can be one such way to regain childlike wonder, but surely not the only one. People can reclaim their childlike wonder in sport, art, hobby, play, and travel, among other things. What's more, I know many parents who haven't the slightest bit of childlike wonder when they interact with their children. Or any other children in their family. So I'm not sure it comes as naturally to everyone as OP seems to think it does.
Two adult thinkers on how adult humans spend their time that have interesting thoughts on childlike play are John Cleese and Alan Watts. Cleese discusses it in the context of creativity in his wonderful lecture, summarized here:
https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/04/12/john-cleese-on-cre...
And Watts had this to say about it: "... if you don't have a room in your life for the playful, life's not worth living. 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.' But if the only reason for which Jack plays is that he can work better afterwards, he's not really playing. He's just playing because it's good for him! Well, he's not playing at all! You have to be able to cultivate an attitude to life where you're not trying to get anything out of it. You pick up a pebble on the beach and look at it: beautiful! Don't try and get a sermon out of it."