Comment by themartorana | Hacker News Reader

Comment by themartorana | Hacker News Reader

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I've been contemplating death a lot lately - from this HN comment thread with @sago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9260286

to being at my uncle's bedside as he passed away earlier this week. There was undeniable pain in watching him go, even though I barely knew the man - we were all still rather struck by watching someone breath their last breath.

But in the end (and yeah, it's anecdotal) I find I've been spending more time considering what I want the remainder of my life to be, if the end is randomly assigned to be sometime between moments after I submit this comment to say, 60 years from now. It's focused my thinking. I've been more forgiving, less likely to take offense, kinder to my wife, more in awe of my new kid. Politics bothers me less, and I'm less likely to get hot and bothered about the latest scandal.

It's been a bit cathartic, while being intensely scary. I'm not looking forward to leaving this life (see comment thread linked above) but having the idea be so in-my-face in the recent past has, in some way, made me more thankful and reflective on the life I do have right now.

My father passed away when I was 18, my mother passed away a year ago. Both from illnesses which no one had in my family.

As someone in his late twenties, it hit me hard. Even today, I cannot seem to enjoy anything since I feel the void of my parents, both of whom I was deeply attached to.

A friend who saw how broken I was gave me the book, "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tibetan_Book_of_Living_and.... It changed my perspective on death. It made me realize that nothing is permanent and it's best not to be afraid of death. A must read for anyone suffering from loss of their loved ones.

To live without the fear of death and to accept what happens, sets you free in many ways.

That is one beautiful book. I've read it twice so far, and it remains on my read again list. I wish you much happiness in the years ahead.

beautiful illusions

>Politics bothers me less, and I'm less likely to get hot and bothered about the latest scandal.

I get the desire to unplug from politics. It seems such a waste of very precious time, with one's impact on it being minimal at best.

Yet I can't justifying unplugging because of the lives I've seen ruined due to bad politics. Consider just the damage done from the war on drugs.

There's a great mental model called the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence. Happiness, according to this model, is about making the former circle only slightly smaller than the latter.

For some people, "focusing their thinking" means acknowledging their powerlessness and becoming unbothered by it, narrowing their scope to the things they can actually do something about. For them, politics was never useful, because they never believed they had any influence.

For others, such focus means pushing out their influence to encompass more things, so that their concerns are something they can do something about. For these people, politics is inevitable and necessary, because influence will naturally touch more and more lives and consequently, more and more politics.

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