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Comment by avilay | Hacker News Reader

Can a kind soul write down their interpretation of the story? I didn't quite get it.

[Edit]: Thanks for all the explanations!

I’m going to annoy people who actually wield this language well. I feel like there’s less of a clear point and more of an aesthetic. Like not even metaphorical or allegorical. It’s just the overall feel of wandering and pointlessness that creates a sense of calm.

I'm not quite sure I got it either, but I guess this is probably the main gist:

> by the time most people wind up here, they’ve got plenty of regrets. Nobody gets it all right. You’re born, and then you go through life making the choices that you think are the best given the information you have at the time, and you don’t always have all the information to make the right choices. Do yourself a favour and forgive yourself for any failings on your part, you’re only human after all

I'm reminded of the lyrics from Pink Floyd's Time:

  "And then one day you find
  Ten years have got behind you
  no one told you when to run
  you missed the starting gun"

The longer you live, the more tiny little mistakes you make. Things that at the time you could have done better, if you'd known, if you'd been a bit more careful. And these weigh on you, emotionally, pretty consistently.

And while it's pretty absurd, in the story, such tiny mistakes having such outsized consequences, the story reminds us that such severe consequences are well within the realm of possibility. People do lose limbs off of little, careless mistakes. Doubly so with all the incredibly concentrated sources of energy we have in the modern world - power tools, automobiles, explosives.

Would one really lose ten years trying to pick out a single Netflix show? No. But could one wake up one day and realize that they'd accomplished nothing of note for a decade, that all their free time was dumped into Netflix shows that weren't even that good?

So, what do you do with all that? Memento Mori, I guess.

I've accomplished nothing of note ever. Most people don't. They just live their lives, trying to get by as best they can.

I don't know if that is true. For large swaths of the population, raising a child is their biggest accomplishment. Justifiably so.

Other accomplishments of note might be: a single conversation that helped someone change. Little acts that made the world a tiny bit better. Having brought happiness to other people. I like to think that is the meaning of not wasting your time – not just measuring your life's worth with a science/capitalism lens.

I guess I interpreted "of note" differently. Raising a child is not noteworthy, it's just normal. Millions of people do it. Nobody will be remembered for raising a child, except by the child himself.

When I'm gone, I'll leave nothing "of note" behind. I haven't won any great prizes or set any records. I haven't authored any papers. I haven't invented anything that changed an industry. I haven't cured any diseases. My name won't be on any buildings or monuments. I haven't really left any kind of discernable mark on the world or civilization or even my home town.

Raising a child is noteworthy. Same for the millions of people who do it now, and the millions of people who did it before them. Just because millions of people do it doesn't diminish the significance of it. Framing it as such, is like saying there's no point running a race if you don't come first. A personal victory is still a victory. If it matters to you, then that's all that matters. All of those things like authoring papers, winning great prizes, setting records, will all be eventually be lost to time.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

understated throwaway line. its often the small stuff that we gnaw on for too long.

But sometimes do question it before you end up to sweating the small stuff

YOLO

Beautifully put, in four letters.

"A Bunch of Rocks"

https://xkcd.com/505/

It's an allegory for AI hysteria and WFH depression. Generally, anything to put a wet blanket on the nice things that have happened to tech workers in the past few years. To put salt in the wound, it's done in a style that used to delight HN.

It reminded me of those cringe videos CGPGrey put out for COVID.

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