Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband | Hacker News Reader

Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband

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518 pointsdknecht214 comments

Paul Buchheit wrote a wonderful post, after similar circumstances, that I often re-read:

> On a more practical level, what matters most in our day-to-day lives is that we're good to ourselves and to each other. It's actually not possible to only do one or the other -- we must do both or neither, but that's a topic for another time. Sometimes, when I write about startups or other interests of mine, I worry that perhaps I'm communicating the wrong priorities. Investing money, creating new products, and all the other things we do are wonderful games and can be a lot of fun, but it's important to remember that it's all just a game. What's most important is that we are good too each other, and ourselves. If we "win", but have failed to do that, then we have lost. Winning is nothing.

http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2012/03/eight-years-today.h...

May Sheryl and her family be free of suffering.

Investing money, creating new products, and all the other things we do are wonderful games and can be a lot of fun, but it's important to remember that it's all just a game.

I feel like this sentiment is very common, but is implicitly stating that all of the other things, family, friends, personal health etc... are not games - when I don't see why that would be the case. Nothing distinguishes those things for me.

Creating new products, like software that gives people better productivity, or hardware that helps people achieve physical fitness goals, or systems that make getting clean water cheaper - those are life changing to a lot of people, sometimes even millions. The typical response to this is "yea but most people make junk" to which I say, telling junk from non-junk is an exercise in futility.

We wouldn't be quoting Paul Buchheit or talking about Dave Sandberg if they hadn't sacrificed some of those relationships, or health for the products and platforms that we know them for. And that's the real point - legacy. Someone's legacy is not the relationships they had personally, just look at the miserable relationship failures of Steve Jobs, but their impact on bringing their vision and impact on groups outside of their circle.

Winning in my opinion then, is having an (hopefully positive) impact on those outside of your inner circle, not within it. And the larger the impact, the bigger the win.

What are the things that—on your deathbed—you expect to regret?

Will it be that you didn't spend as much time as you could've with your parents before they died? How about with your siblings? Maybe it was all of the times that you didn't make it to your kids' soccer games, piano recitals, school plays, or graduations?

Or will it be that you didn't spend nearly enough nights at the office fixing your social media startup's bugs?

I don't remember the exact genesis of this, and I really wish I did, because it has literally reshaped my life, but a few years ago, I started asking myself the question 'If I were to die tomorrow, would I regret the way I have lived my life?' And I was somewhat surprised and horrified to discover that the answer was absolutely, categorically "yes."

I dropped out of the startup rat-race, took a good-paying 9-5 job working with people who I (still) really like, and started focusing on the other 128 hours in the week that I wasn't working.

I would hate to die tomorrow, but, if that's what happened, I would be satisfied with how I spend each day of my life. My quality of life and happiness have increased significantly since I first started asking myself that question.

What are the things that—on your deathbed—you expect to regret?

Always found these philosophical shortcut tropes (eg. if you had just one day left...) amusing, but not particularly illuminating because they over-simplify life long achievements to mere regret-avoidance. If you are asking yourself that, then 1. You are privileged to be at that level on the Maslow hierarchy and 2. you already know the answer.

Embedded in your statements though are a lot of, in my opinion unfounded presuppositions. One, that through force of will, the relationships that you describe can be made positive - something forcefully unfounded in my experience. Two, that someone's startup, social or otherwise, is a trivial farce and there is no real added value - again see my previous statement about common misguided arguments.

My main distinction is that personal happiness is not a goal of mine, but rather a side benefit from accomplishing something that has lasting tangible value for more than just myself and the people I am immediately exposed to.

You should be a little careful. The odd thing about creative professionals, which includes most software developers, is that if you take Maslow's hierarchy of needs as the truth for the general population, for creative professionals this pyramid of needs is inverted.

You see, most creative professionals are profoundly unhappy people. This is because the equation for happiness is usually easy - your expectations have to be lower than your achievements. As a side note, this is why the renowned mid-life crisis happens, because that's the point in your life when you realize that many of your dreams are impossible.

But going back to creative professionals - our expectations are off the chart. It's because we've been taught that we can achieve anything, with our imagination being the limit and hard work being the currency. It's because many of us come from families of high achievers. Yes, we are profoundly unhappy because our expectations are usually much bigger than our achievements. This is the reason for why many of us are idealists, for why we want to change the world. Many of us are also atheists, but all of us want to achieve some form of immortality, therefore that's the reason for why many of us want to build things that are long lasting.

I used to say the same things as you did. You may not feel the above right now, I'm going to make the assumption that you're in your twenties, which means you've got the energy to be hopeful about the future. But take it from a 32 year old that is going through a mid-life crisis 10 years earlier (or maybe it's just a burnout episode, I don't know), but this youthful energy is going to dissipate and you're then going to feel the emptiness in your life. And I'm lucky, because I have a wife and a 4-year old whom I love very much and which represent my reason for getting up in the morning.

A 32 year old lecturing a (supposed) 20-something about life experience. I guess cynicism is becoming younger and younger.

I was more cynical than he is at 32 when I was 14. On the one hand, I've learned to be more idealistic, but on the other hand, with how things are these days, what sort of worldview do you expect kids to learn? Since when should youth be so flagrantly ignorant as to form a worldview of sunshine and daisies while terrorism, corruption, and destructive climate change take up most of the headline space?

People have been asking this same basic question for years - heck, vast swaths of literature have been devoted to this basic question. The shortest answer I can come up with is that, if you look at it with a wide enough lens, the world fundamentally sucks. War, terror, corruption and the like are part of the human condition so as long as we exist, so will the darkness. In my mind, the key is to turn off the news, shut down a web browser and simplify, but my key likely won't work in your lock.

Have you ever read The Sun Also Rises?? Hemingway struggles with similar questions and he's a far better writer than I am!! :)

First of all here's the good news: You have been deceived! By the media!

The media is making money by reporting on "things that could kill you". It's getting more efficient at that over time, so if you do watch the news - and I implore you not to - you will start to believe the world is a bad place. That is because you will never, ever hear anything positive in the news. Because it won't sell.

For every crime in this world, there are ten million selfless acts of love. If the news reported on both equally, it'd be very boring. You'd constantly hear about somebody helping another, or putting somebody else before themselves, and you would never even get to the crimes. Not enough time.

For every murder in this world, there's a friend risking his own life for another. Or 10. We won't know. For every war, there's a million times more peace.

Look at the facts, people. Is it so hard to understand? Is propaganda, dull, dumb, and effective as it is really so hard to get around? Open your eyes, and turn off your TV, newspapers, and the associated websites.

There are three reasons why watching news is a huge waste of your time. 1 - negative bias to an extreme that is hard to imagine, as described 2 - non-actionable items. Each time you consume news in any form, ask yourself: What can I do about it? What do I have to do about it? Why did I need to know this? Am I just rubbernecking here (hint: YES, you are!)? 3 - Propaganda and lies. I used to read my local paper front to back every day. And there were a handful of reported-on news where I was an eye-witness. A demonstration, an accident involving me. And even for these harmless items, the news was just plain wrong. THIS WAS NOT WHAT HAD HAPPENED. But it was in the paper. Facts had been altered. Not even maliciously, just to make better story, or because the journalist on the ground couldn't see everything, or whatever. Now if the stories I had direct first hand knowledge of where wrong - how about all the others I knew nothing about? How accurate is that going to be? It's not.

And war propaganda. Just read up on Goebbels, every nation in the world is today doing the same things, and the patterns are so easy to spot you will wonder how you could ever miss them. All the media, particularly in the US, but also other countries, are full of it.

before that it was the threat of nuclear war, ecological collapse, and economic stagnation. before that it was the draft, violent racial injustice, and a nearly complete collapse of legitimacy of national leadership. Idealistic youts have always had reasons to be cynical. (and sadly typing up this list, I see how many of the reasons to be cynical remain powerful generation after generation)

Exactly my point! Cynicism is often well-warranted, especially if you actually have high moral ideas. What people ought to be scared of are the people who aren't cynical because they simply don't care.

You just described skepticism, not cynicism.

> Since when should youth be so flagrantly ignorant as to form a worldview of sunshine and daisies while terrorism, corruption, and destructive climate change take up most of the headline space?

Maybe because:

1. Headlines don't equal reality. Do we live in a worse world than before, or do we just have better ways of spreading information, and that such headlines tend to sell more than more benevolent news?

2. They perhaps wouldn't be doing anything about it anyway. Many cynics tend to be complainers rather than complainers + doers. What good does it do if you're a cynic if all it does is that it makes you sit around and mope? And if you are living in a good place with good people, and you aren't out to change the world having a positive outlook might be better for you own good than worrying about people in distant lands that you don't intend to try to help anyway.

Could you explain what is cynical about his message, or undesirable (or so I gather from your post, incorrectly perhaps)?

Oh I don't know. Maybe the common dismissal here on HN of any positive outlook or belief in oneself as being the result of naivete and lack of life experience. That in time they will resign themselves to realize that they are as useless as the cynic sees himself and others.

I see what you mean. It did sound a bit too inevitable and forceful, perhaps.

That said, I didn't read it as a dismissal or even outright cynicism. Rather, it seemed like a personal experienced they wanted to share as a bit of a warning. Which I think is really good, because I and many people I know feel similar looking back.

But looking back in that manner doesn't mean I don't look forward with hope. It just means that I wish I'd been a bit more careful at times about what I pursued, as I definitely feel more of a struggle in the energy department that I didn't feel a few years ago.

There's a relevant old saying that comes to mind: "Don't Trust Anyone Over Thirty."

I'm 36 and I endorse this message.

As am I :)

I think this is a good writeup and your point about expectations is spot on. That doesn't mean that we lower expectations though, that means you keep driving till you meet them - however Sisyphusian it may seem.

By the way I'm 31, married with three kids and just recently joined the software/startup world - so your send up doesn't really fit my profile. I haven't seen any dissipation of "youthful energy" yet - if anything my energy is just more and more focused as the years go by.

It depends what you value. If you value your work on products above everything else then fine. The reason that people commonly say things like "the time with people in your life is what really matters" is because that actually matters to people more than anything else - I don't think either can be dismissed.

My personal stance is that I'm yet to be convinced that technology really has a lasting tangible benefit other than for maybe 5% of the population. For those 5% specialised technology will have made huge changes e.g. being able to see or hear for the first time. But why does it make such a huge change to people's lives? Because they can communicate more with the people they love, with the world around them.

And let's be honest pretty much all technology gets 'productised' to be sold, and to do that people have to be convinced to buy into it when they don't really need it (I'm open to being convinced otherwise).

I love working on technology but for me it's one of the smaller (but definitely fun) games that play out in life.

I am incredibly privileged to be at (or near) self-actualization, but—then again—so are most of the folks who have time to spend here on HN.

And regret-avoidance is an interesting beast: for me, it is incredibly hard to balance short, medium, and long-term goals, and understand when I'm actually pursuing a long-term goal vs simply wasting my time on something that will never really matter.

Props to Zuck for building something that a double-digit percentage of the world uses every month, but he's the exception to the rule. Most of us will not be so lucky(?), and it behooves us to spend our time wisely.

"My main distinction is that personal happiness is not a goal of mine, but rather a side benefit from accomplishing something that has lasting tangible value for more than just myself and the people I am immediately exposed to."

Speaking of unfounded presuppositions... how do you know that this would make you happy? If you'd already done it, you'd already be happy. If you haven't, you can't know. Unfounded presupposition, then.

I don't want to make a semantic argument here though; the reason I think it won't make you happy is that nothing outside yourself, nothing external, can make you happy. You are, at the core of your being, already happy, already whole, already loved. Nothing can change that. You can uncover it by asking questions and by discovering and then questioning all the unfounded assumptions that govern your beliefs and opinions.

Everyone says: "No one on their deathbed regrets not spending more time at the office". Perhaps that's true. But I bet there are people who, on their deathbed, regret not having been more able to provide their families with financial security, or not doing a better job on something important they worked on.

You might die tomorrow. But it's more likely that you won't, and you should plan accordingly.

(I am not arguing that today's culture of overwork isn't harmful. I think it is, and I think most people in tech startups should probably be spending less time working. And if that what-if-I-died-tomorrow question is what it takes to get someone to think about what they really want to be doing with their lives, that's great. But it's still something of a cheat, and if you draw the conclusion from it that you should be optimizing your life for minimal regret on premature death then I think you're probably making a mistake.)

Now it depends by what you mean by that. Many people's idea of financial security is very different, some see it in ability to live comfortably with materialism, others see it as not having to worry about the next meal and your shelter.

If the financial security is materialistically based, I feel working more for that will be regretted.

"Or will it be that you didn't spend nearly enough nights at the office fixing your social media startup's bugs?"

For me, that quote would ends all auruments.

(I had a liver scan a little over a year ago, over some vague(probally psychosomatic?) pain in my upper right quadrant. Driving home from my primary care's doctors office with the ultrasound script in hand, I took a detour and went to the beach. I called certain family members and just told them "I just wanted to say hello." The whole day was kind of a blur, but I didn't take any part of that day for granted. I splurged and got an $8.99/lb salad. It tasted better that day? All my aches and pains went away that day. It was a bad day, but a wake up call. I ended up being o.k., and started to take life for granted--again. I won't die wealthy, but I will die knowing I treated kind people well. I don't think I will ever overlook the selfish, narcisstic one's though. I will die knowing certain people do awful things in order to "get ahead" in life. I will never forgive them completely. Yea, I have a sister who trampled on family in order to get ahead. I don't hate her, but I honestly don't knows how she can enjoy it all--when it was gotten so ugly?)

Thank you for sharing. My father passed away 6 days ago and I am going through this process. I am staying in the "rat race" though no longer care to rush, rushing isn't important - taking the time to bring good, kind people together who have the talent needed to succeed when put on task is all that really matters.

Famous article about someone who worked with hospice patients and the question about what they regret the most:

http://www.hospicepatients.org/five-regrets-of-the-dying-bro...

It's pretty interesting, although none of the five will shock you.

Good for you for focusing on creating the life you really want. Too often people sleepwalk through life, only to wake up in their 40's and discover they've lost so much time and are disenchanted with the decisions they've made.

Actually, I think I would regret all the stuff I could build if I were alive a little bit longer.

People who are creative and say otherwise are just lying (to others and to themselves probably). Or maybe, like you wrote, they are living a life they suppose they should live, instead of the life they actually want to live.

> What are the things that—on your deathbed—you expect to regret?

Probably the fact that I'm dying[1].

[1] http://www.theonion.com/article/man-surrounded-by-loved-ones...

"Or will it be that you didn't spend nearly enough nights at the office fixing your social media startup's bugs?"

There's a snarky response in here somewhere that would get to the core of how code is trivial and not a 'legacy' whereas product might be, but I'm scared it will uncover something uneasy about the nature of the work most of us here feel is an integral part of our identities...

> Or will it be that you didn't spend nearly enough nights at the office fixing your social media startup's bugs?

That's kind of an unfair comparison like saying that you might regret not spending nearly enough time telling your kids to clean up their rooms. I won't regret the tedium of work, but I may regret not spending enough time in whiteboarding sessions with colleagues that I respect.

> What are the things that—on your deathbed—you expect to regret?

Dying.

> What are the things that—on your deathbed—you expect to regret?

What does it matter?

Let's say the deathbed will last seven days. That's nothing compared to the rest of your life (let's say ~70 years). Why would you guide your life according to a projection of what you will feel in a mere seven days of your whole life?

Why not ask more immediate questions: is anything I do right now, day to day, that I could do differently in order to live a more fulfilling life? A more fulfilling life day to day of course, not necessarily fulfilling memories for some distant deathbed future.

I guess what you say is actually what that means. Not a literal deathbed realization.

There is no end-game, there is no winning, no failure, no goals in life except what you put in it. The only thing that will decide if you are worthy or not is yourself. Yourself today and yourself tomorrow up to the day you die.

Financial gain is a dangerous goal in life because it very often has a very poor ROI. On the other hand, your whole biology, tweaked by million of year of evolution, made it so that taking care of people around you is very often the best bang of happiness for buck.

But then whatever, plenty of religion / philosophies to rationalize yourself into happiness almost regardless what you decide to do.

> I guess what you say is actually what that means. Not a literal deathbed realization.

Then why not just say that? Compel me to self-improve. Don't guilt me in to some existential dread.

> On the other hand, your whole biology, tweaked by million of year of evolution, made it so that taking care of people around you is very often the best bang of happiness for buck.

Evolution compels you into procreating and taking care of that offspring. But there are many more motivators than good feelings. As long as you passed on your "legacy", it doesn't matter whether you did it out of joy or out of fear and worry. As far as the cause and effect of evolution is concerned.

I don't think it is about feeling satisfied on the deathbed. We imagine the deathbed as the place where we finally understand what is important and what isn't, and then try to apply this knowledge to the limited timespan in between. It is a way to take a step back and evaluate our lives.

I too used to think this way. I can't explain it now that I have a child and family and have lost people very close to me. Where as before the mere thought of innovating I felt like I was some of the first people ever to be doing something where in now I find it was all just a race. I.E. - Someone else could've finished that super fancy product and made lots of money. Just today I missed my daughter swimming for the first time and no amount of money or technology can fix that.

I agree with you about the hopeful positive impact. Impact is hard to quantitively measure though so much as love is hard to measure. You only know how much you are loved by surrounding yourself with people who love you and sharing your love for them I guess. I never realized how alone I was until I had an inner circle to miss.

I can't explain it now that I have a child and family and have lost people very close to me.

As I posted to someone below you, I am married and have three kids. I have also lost a lot of my friends - I am an Iraq war veteran and was in the Air Force from 2003 until last Feb.

All of that has led me to my conclusion because I see what is left after these people have gone away - and largely it's...nothing. Once their friends and family die, their "legacy" dies too, there is nothing lasting beyond those narrow impacts. So I feel like it's almost the easy way to go to focus on those around you and those relationships because they give the most immediate and personally impactful response - but they forgo a much wider and more grand legacy that could extend centuries.

To first approximation, there are almost no people who would have a "grand legacy" that could extend centuries. How many do you know from 1850? Eventually, no one will remember you, and that is true even if you are the most successful person on earth.

The urge to have a legacy is a manifestation of the fear of death, and is primarily an exercise of ego. It does not have to overtake one's life.

It's not about being remembered, it's about your life having positive impact beyond those you can personally see.

Yeah, but the question nobody's posing is: why should it? That's a question I personally can't answer. I don't see any higher meaning in "leaving a legacy". You'll be dead anyway. Why shouldn't we focus on living a better, more relaxed and less stressful life while we're here to recognize that?

Good question... Somehow if we can get out of the hyper rationalist maximization seeking robot mentality, an answer of some form may present itself. Accepting death helps. Not just my own but that of much more. Buddhism has some very interesting insights here. And I bring up belief deliberately, because the answer here is faith. Not certainty, but faith. Whatever it may be (leave legacy, do no harm, etc), it's doing what you believe that results in a satisfactory answer.

If you were born into a very tough situation in a war torn or third world country, you'd do what you needed to with what was given to you. While we do have a lot of material wealth and might have more free time, we still face the same great equalizer: death. As do our civilizations and our planet (and likely us, way before that). Given the constraints, you can simply "try your best". Living without regrets might be a job to one person, a 90 hour startup to another, traveling and learning to others. Whatever your belief is, following it is the best that you could do. Ultimately you have to answer to yourself & be able to live with yourself. Personally, living selfishly, while it maximizes certain things simply goes against my core beliefs. I don't necessarily know that living less selfishly is necessarily better. But for me, it is. Your beliefs, may defy logic, and may not necessarily maximize legacy, wealth or whatever, but in having acted you will have done your best given the situation to be able to live with yourself, which is all you can ask of yourself.

> Somehow if we can get out of the hyper rationalist maximization seeking robot mentality, an answer of some form may present itself.

If you have to be less rational to accept an answer, doesn't that imply that the answer is wrong?

And if you're supposed to come to an emotionally satisfying view of life by rejecting rationality, doesn't that screw-over those of us who gain emotional satisfaction from obtaining rational answers to things?

Oh, wait, everyone with a scientific turn-of-mind has already been labelled a "robot". Beep boop, then /s.

And the reverse question would be: why shouldn't it? Why should I focus on living happily and have family and relationships? I'll be dead anyway, and so will everyone I ever loved. So I guess it's up to one to pick for him/herself. Some want to focus on their own small world, others want to leave behind some lasting change affecting many.

People try to be happy because they intrinsically want to be happy. Not because being happy matters after you're dead -- obviously you're not in a state to be happy after you're dead. At least not in this world.

Why do people want to make a lasting change? Purely for intrinsic reasons? Or is there some hidden assumption like for example that it will make them happy in their later years?

Satisfaction from seeing "fruits of your labor" improve the condition of everyone is also a source of happiness. I don't think it's worse than happiness from having a good family life. I also don't think there's some kind of "altruism" that isn't ultimately just another way of getting happiness - maybe a more intellectual one, out of the feeling of doing something one considers morally good.

> Satisfaction from seeing "fruits of your labor" improve the condition of everyone is also a source of happiness. I don't think it's worse than happiness from having a good family life.

Yet you seemed to want to draw a distinction between happiness and a lasting impact. Though the distinction was perhaps just with the family/local impact.

> I also don't think there's some kind of "altruism" that isn't ultimately just another way of getting happiness - maybe a more intellectual one, out of the feeling of doing something one considers morally good.

Right, but a family-related happiness is less because it's just a result of chemicals (oxycotine?) that are related to survival, a sort of failure mode? You said yourself that it is less fundamental. What is fundamental? And why is your derivation of happiness higher than those who go by the supposed more base instincts of focusing on their family? Because the hormonal causes are harder to pin down and analyse? So what? Something more complex and harder to describe is better?

If you feel happy, I think the distinction of why is unimportant.

Pardon me to interrupt strive for greatness, but the world I live in is massively interconnected, and it's becoming more and more every day. Even if you try hard to avoid it, you have some impact, mixed with impact of other people. Yes, it might be local, and in some really unfortunate situations it might really eventually +-die, but let's focus a bit on average joe.

The world I see does indeed need to improve a bit, on all possible levels. If you strive to improve mankind as a whole, or at least big parts of it, please go ahead and do your best. Just don't neglect that personal, "local" aspect as so many do these days (ie crappy parents raising even crappier kids). This world also needs happy, balanced and positive people, not only depressed, exhausted overachievers (or overaimers) I see so often around me.

I tend to focus locally (friends, family, coworkers), and let the effects seep wider if possible, on their own. One example - 2 weekends ago, I took my girlfriend to Mont Blanc with guide, on skis, and on top, after gruelling march on skis, I surprised her proposed marriage. The reactions from people around, but also total internet strangers were overwhelming, quite a few wrote that in these (for them) depressing days, seeing this gave them positive energy and hope (for life, relationships, people around etc.).

Did I change the world with it? Of course not, I am not the first nor the last guy that did it. Does this have some, maybe minor but positive impact on other people? Definitely yes. Enough drops in the pond can also have an effect.

Legacy is about being remembered; it's your name attached to tangible achievements, your name credited for effects.

Impact exists with our without legacy. The network effect of your friends' lives may be outwardly invisible, but the impact of their work, on the lives of anyone they lived near and around, had fun near and around, served near and around, worked near our around... is quite vast.

You don't have to be Abe Lincoln or John Rockefeller to have lived a meaningful life.

There are lots and lots of people with a legacy, granted few of them may be mentioned on a day to day basis, but when the talk falls on specific topics that is another matter.

For one Lincoln was around that time, so was a host of others that are famous.

One can want a legacy without fearing death, and one needn't die to have a legacy.

You tend to get what you value, so if you believe that your legacy is more important than your close personal relationships, there's nothing anyone on Hacker News could say that will make that "wrong".

Just remember that everybody's legacy is fleeting. In a generation, Steve Jobs will probably be remembered like the Duesenberg brothers.

I guess legacy is the wrong word - as it implies a level of vanity that is uninteresting in my opinion. Rather, lets call it impact.

For example Leo Szilard I feel had a much broader and deeper impact on the world than did Einstein, but with significantly less fame. Same with Woz vs Jobs etc...

On the flip side, you only get one life. Each person has to make the decision how he/she wants to live it. Is a larger legacy worth pursuing at the cost of those claimed to be dear to each person? That is a question one must consider, and I don't think there is a right answer.

What do you see in a legacy? The opportunity to do good for humanity, or the opportunity to be remembered?

For there will come a day when even Jesus, Shakespeare, and Newton will be forgotten. Eventually, we will all be forgotten.

Reminds me of Ozymandias:

  I met a traveller from an antique land,
  Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
  Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
  Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
  The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
  And on the pedestal, these words appear:
  My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
  Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
  Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
  The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/238972#poem

The words are still there, aren't they? That counts.

That counts.

By which math? 90% of the world doesn't know 90% of the history and doesn't care to know. The same history that includes big names of their era. Steve Jobs may be held up as an Ozymandias of our day, but will he be remembered for any of his "accomplishments" a thousand years from know? I doubt it. Why? How many Steve Jobs does 90% of our planet remember from 1000 years ago? One, two, ten, Zero? So is it about a named legacy or an anonymous one? If you are talking about impact. Sure. How about your impact on those whose actions affect your life the most? Whose choices influence your decisions about your life? Why does the focus have to be binary? Either, or?

I feel 'leaving a legacy' would be dying knowing that your work left some tangible mark on humanity that you shared the planet with. It doesn't have to change people lives twenty years from now. Just the fact that my creations were enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of people in an year(or five years) is the satisfaction most people would happily die with and would include in 'legacy'. Of course there is a different spectrum of 'legacy' for different profession and depending on your work the value of 'legacy' would fall somewhere in the spectrum specific to your work. So comparing 'legacy' across professions might not even make sense as long as you are helping thousands(or some higher number) of people. And as others have said, I believe 'impact' is a better word for hacker/scientific community than legacy.

I guess my juxtaposed argument is that to me the notion of any sort of legacy is just not good. I'd rather have my daughter be remembered for being a good dad. Than some guy who made something neat. A "legacy" is an ideology. To me when you're dead, you're dead, that's it.

I think I feel similar to AndrewKemendo. "Legacy" is a wrong word, maybe "positive impact" is better. Being a good dad is cool and nice, but if I had to chose one, I'd rather die knowing that I helped lift a million people out of poverty. Or even a thousand.

I get strong feelings of love and need for relationships, but I sometimes feel they're more of an hormonal failure mode than anything fundamental. I want to love and be loved, and be the best I can be for those close to me, but I don't feel that those in my immediate vicinity are somehow morally more important than all those random people I don't know.

I guess there might be no good answer, but the "common wisdom" is that to be happy, you should focus on yourself and your relationships as opposed to the world around you. Maybe it's a common sentiment, but there are people who genuinely don't feel that way.

>but the "common wisdom" is that to be happy, you should focus on yourself and your relationships as opposed to the world around you

Apart from the genetics thing, part of it is that most people are not going to be involved in impactful work. They do bullshit jobs and fret over it way too much than they really should. In turn, they lose out on quality family time and take people close to them for granted. So some of the comments about 'deathbed regrets' is actually valid for such people. If they were really fretting about solving cancer, aids or any thing that would change millions of lives, the apparent wisdom would immediately make less sense.

It is a part of that being good to yourself he talks about. Creating things, lasting impactful things, is a great favor we all do ourselves. Martin Luther king wrote about it well in the 3 dimensions of man. Man being all he can be, is his length. It's an important dimension. But you must balance that with your breadth and height. Outwards to others and your spirituality. Worth a good read. http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documen...

There's nothing to "fix" about not being around for every single moment.

"firsts" aren't really such a big deal.

1. There are many many "firsts". 2. Each one isn't really a "first", because so much of what we do is gradual, that's arbitary where you draw the line of accomplishment.

> ... before the mere thought of innovating I felt like I was some of the first people ever to be doing something where in now I find it was all just a race. I.E. - Someone else could've finished that super fancy product and made lots of money

You're implying that technology doesn't ever improve people's lives. But, especially if you take longer term view, it clearly can and does.

Sheryl Sandberg is being talked about because she happens to be in the public eye and has gone through tragedy that we can all relate to (or eventually relate to for those of you that are in your 20's). The real point is not "legacy". The real point is everyone goes through this stuff and we empathize with it. I actually forgot what Buchheit did, but still remember his touching essay from 2012 (as did the first responder to this thread).

"Legacy" may be the focus of your life, but that's just you. There's nothing wrong with that, but also your values are no more valid than anyone else's.

I think part of the reason "investing money, creating new products", etc. are "games" is that they're often done only to earn money. It's like a clicker game where you click on a button and gain gold, and you don't give a damn whether the button says "save drowning children" or "OMG ROTFL WTF", as long as it pays out.

> Winning in my opinion then, is having an (hopefully positive) impact on those outside of your inner circle, not within it. And the larger the impact, the bigger the win.

I share that sentiment. And then I find most of startups to be stupid games - because only few of them are made to have that impact; majority is created to trick people into joining, which generates growth, which increases the chance you'll have a successful "exit" and boatloads of money. But if one genuinely goes for having a positive impact, fixing or enhancing something about our world, then I cheer the effort. And this is something I myself would want to do - so that on my deathbed I may find comfort in that I left the world a little bit better place than I found it.

I used to think that. Then I realized that the one reason to think that legacy is important, is that losts of very influential people, the kind that leave a legacy, seem to think so. By that lens, legacy is nothing but a virus that uses your resources to replicate.

Currently, I aim to love as much as I can and to have some fun! Any other aim, just seems like a great way to fret.

> We wouldn't be quoting Paul Buchheit or talking about Dave Sandberg if they hadn't sacrificed some of those relationships, or health for the products and platforms that we know them for. And that's the real point - legacy. Someone's legacy is not the relationships they had personally, just look at the miserable relationship failures of Steve Jobs, but their impact on bringing their vision and impact on groups outside of their circle.

It seems to me that you're measuring the quality of a person's "legacy" by how famous they managed to get. That seems like a really horrible rule to live your life by. I would much rather be a little person who brightened some other little people's lives than an asshole who cheated his best friend and abandoned his child but, gosh, sure did make some cool toys and a lot of money.

> "just look at the miserable relationship failures of Steve Jobs, but their impact on bringing their vision and impact on groups outside of their circle."

I'm sorry but am I the only one that doesn't buy the view that Steve Jobs was this irreplaceable visionary everyone eulogizes him for?

Wouldn't pocket size touch screen computers get invented anyway eventually?

Based on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon - touchscreen phone and PDA from 1994 - I'd say the concept was firmly established prior to Jobs return to Apple in 1996.

I think the vision comes in concreting the conceptual developments that had happened in to a product and creating a market for that product at a price that made the company hugely profitable.

Hmm... legacy. That's the bit that's tricky.

You suggest that "telling junk from non-junk is an exercise in futility," and in many ways that's quite an agreeable sentiment. So much speculating and lots of people mostly get it wrong.

But if it's futile to tell the junk from the not-, what's the argument for sacrificing your joy and happiness while "chasing the rabbit?" If we can't generally tell the difference between fantastic and flotsam, what's the argument for removing ourselves from the lives of people that care for us and love us?

If it's legacy, I think we're missing the point of it all. Because legacy is a personal goal, is a self-effecting goal. Legacy isn't about helping other people, it's about some lasting kind of immortality.

We have to be more whole than the people we're trying to help. If we deficit of our joy and happiness, if we don't know how to give that to ourselves and our loved ones, how can we possibly hope to give it to others?

There's that parable about dealing with the plank in your own eye, so that you can see clearly enough to deal with the speck of sawdust in your brother's. I think this is a time we might find some wisdom in that story.

It sounds like a lasting impact of Dave Goldberg was the love he helped grow in his family and their friends. There's a heartbreaking outpouring of love in Sandberg's essay. I don't wonder if it was their achievement in being whole in their love, his commitment to his inner circle, that allowed him to bring passion to those outside of it.

I think we'd all be so lucky.

But if it's futile to tell the junk from the not-, what's the argument for sacrificing your joy and happiness while "chasing the rabbit?"

Local vs. global extrema. That is to say, the person working on something thinks it's not junk - for them it's a global maximum. For observers, what the person is working on looks like a local maximum (or minimum).

The AirBnB story is a good example of this. "I want to make a way for people to pay to stay on an air-bed in my house" sounds a lot like a local minimum to the outside observer.

It sounds like a lasting impact of Dave Goldberg was the love he helped grow in his family and their friends.

Undoubtedly. Based on his work however, it looks like that is where it will stop.

but would you really rather be remembered as a successful businessman by some strangers on Internet or as a loving human being by your own family? I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just it's not the same level of emotion... not even close

Not close at all. --Wait, which one are you saying is higher? Because different people have different values; there's no need to shit on someone's life choices if they aren't hurting people.

Wanting to be remembered is very narcissistic. Personally, if I have influenced people (knowing and unknowingly) positively over my life, I'll be happy. That could mean raising a child to be a good person or providing tools for people to help themselves become better. There are many ways to achieve the goal.

You have a basic misunderstanding of perception. It's common, everyone has this, the idea that you're this bag of meat separate from everyone. What are you supposed to do?

But, you will be good to yourself, and to others, if you discover who or what you really are, on a level where it cannot be described by words. It makes sense, therefore, to put your effort into that discovery.

The products you create - cool, but irrelevant as well. Bucheit is right about that. It's a game.

You think Steve Jobs lived a meaningful life because he sold some fucking electronic toys to rich people? You really think that's what matters?

Spoken like somebody without kids. They trigger responses built into our brains that make family very much more important that all the rest. Thus, family isn't a game any more.

I have three kids (5, 3 and 1) and a wife of 6 years.

That's exactly why I feel having a family is nothing fundamental, it's just bunch of hard-wired hormonal failure modes. Not to say they aren't pleasant though.

> trigger responses

> game

"May Sheryl and her family be free of suffering."

Out of respect to Sheryl and making sure we learn from her experience I think it's important to post this part: "Real empathy is sometimes not insisting that it will be okay but acknowledging that it is not. When people say to me, “You and your children will find happiness again,” my heart tells me, Yes, I believe that, but I know I will never feel pure joy again. Those who have said, “You will find a new normal, but it will never be as good” comfort me more because they know and speak the truth."

Sheryl and her family will never be free of suffering.

I have read that post multiple times also - it really puts things into perspective

Good message.

In the old days we needed a Buddha, Jesus or a Krishna to remind us of the simple truths. Today we look for them in blog posts. Everything changes and nothing changes.

What is the New Testament if not a bunch of blog posts published together in a paper form? ;). Writing forms evolve and change names, but they're still fundamentally the same as ever, and as important as they always were.

I mean, you are commenting on the site created by a guy whose essays people read as scripture. :)

Buddha taught that there was no God, therefore there were no morals, that the universe was deterministic, but that even so humans should strive to act with loving-kindness. Perhaps in your estimation this is a simple truth.

Jesus' call that one must metanoeo (let one's mind be changed and one's heart transformed) or perish, while related to the Jewish teaching that God is close to those with broken, contrite and humble hearts and found by those who seek him with all their heart and soul, was a new and radical call, not a mere reminder of a simple truth clearly as he claimed himself to be the Truth.

I hear this sentiment all the time--about what's really important and what our priorities should be, etc.

But, there is something disingenuous about it. We have engineered a society wherein our very survival depends upon these "games" to which Mr. Buchheit has alluded. And, in his case he has the luxury of considering his economic endeavors to be games.

It's certainly not his fault. I'm saying that we choose the society we want, and we have collectively decided that we will continue to allocate the world's resources--and, hence, our very subsistence--according to our successful participation in these "games". Well, enough (not really), but then, is it genuine to remind people that eating isn't as important as relationships?

If we really believe that our economy diminishes our most important human needs and priorities, then shouldn't we instead be advocating for a new economy?

>we choose the society we want

That's not really true. I don't think there's any meaningful sense in which anybody chose this society. We don't have that level of control.

Oh yes we do! Every time we vote.

Every society makes choices about what it values most. Values prized in Anglo-Saxon economy is freedom and individualism. Asians see it differently. Nordic and Mediterranean societies value social welfare.

Take universal health care; what some see as 'communism' is to others the perfectly obvious logic that every human being deserves health care by virtue of being a human being, and not based on the size of their wallet.

I think that's a ridiculous simplification.

> I don't think there's any meaningful sense in which anybody chose this society.

I just showed you how: the vote. Just because its simple does not make it ridiculous.

"The vote" isn't of much help in a single-party election.

Nor does "the vote" imply the underlying voting system meets a threshold of efficiency, that externalities do not undermine the efficacy of "the vote", or that many policies are even subject to "the vote" to begin with.

This idiotic grade school idea of "democracy" as a warm and fuzzy godlike essence helps no one and only poisons discussions.

Democracy should be much warmer and fuzzier. The greatest impediment to this is the "externalities" that undermine it.

So, rather than attack the "grade school idea" of democracy, perhaps we should be considering why our execution has failed to live up to the ideal. Because, to the extent that we allowed it to happen, we've also done so by choice. You might even say democratic choice.

"By choice", a Hobson's choice, perhaps.

You're clearly so invested in this ideal that you even retroactively shoehorn acts against or apathetic to it in the same framework. This isn't worth discussing because the conception of democracy you're operating under is simplistic and incorrect.

>a Hobson's choice, perhaps.

I agree that it's the current state. But, I don't believe that it must be this way by some natural law. Maybe that's where we depart.

>so invested in this ideal

I'm invested in the notion that somewhere between where we are now and the ideal state is possible, and that we'd be far better off reaching for it. What alternative are you proposing?

>retroactively shoehorn acts against or apathetic to it in the same framework

I don't know what you're trying to say here. If you're merely pointing out that there are people and even systems that work against the democratic ideal and that apathy among the populace does the same, then there's no revelation there. You're simply stating an endemic problem of which most semi-conscious people are aware. But, what's your conclusion?

>* the conception of democracy you're operating under is simplistic and incorrect*

It's more likely that your conception of my conception is simplistic and incorrect.

I'm invested in the notion that somewhere between where we are now and the ideal state is possible, and that we'd be far better off reaching for it.

This I can agree with. Even if the ideal state cannot be attained, we're really far from even an approximation of it.

You're simply stating an endemic problem of which most semi-conscious people are aware. But, what's your conclusion?

I'm trying to say that democracy should not be revered as much as it is, but that more importantly people tend to be ignorant of its machinations. They completely set aside hugely important details like voting systems (such that FPTP guarantees party dichotomy as per Duverger's law), externalities, fraud, gerrymandered districts, and the idea that we should vote on people instead of policies.

The latter is ass-backwards by all measures. Vote policies and have the people fill in the demand for their execution. Instead you have a system that incentivizes deceptive and bombastic political campaigns with an extremely narrow ideological set. When you refuse to participate, you're told you can't complain. When you do participate and your candidate turns out to be a total actor, then again it's your fault for electing them, but remember, folks - democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others. Which is why the way we do democracy is absolutely infallibly correct.

It's more likely that your conception of my conception is simplistic and incorrect.

Perhaps, but your original comments were quite rude in the way you shoehorned life into a primitive idea of "voting". There's something about democracy that it has become a secular icon which shuts off people's ability to reason, and makes them refuse to improve their axioms.

On balance, we agree. I think there are some who overly romanticize our current implementation and we are all certainly encouraged to do so. Still, I think most people see the flaws, but participate because it's the best (and currently only) game in town. That is, they agree with you more than you're allowing.

But, there are also many thinking people who are as aware and passionate as you and I about how broken it is and how far from the ideal we are. So, you could say that we have a special responsibility here. The question then becomes what are we going to do about it? It's easy to make statements and paint those we feel are "less-enlightened" with a broad brush. But, it doesn't move us any closer to the ideal. In fact, those people must be led.

>but your original comments were quite rude in the way you shoehorned life into a primitive idea of "voting"

Actually, if you kook carefully, you'll find that I didn't introduce the idea of voting. I think you're a little too eager to paint everyone with the same brush.

In any case, my original post was simply saying that it's not enough to go around with these platitudes about work/life priorities when our very survival currently depends upon work.

So, if we really believe what we espouse regarding what's important, then we should be working (via whatever means, including "fixing democracy") to make our society reflect that. Otherwise, we should stop pretending that it doesn't.

>Otherwise, we should stop pretending that it doesn't.

Rather, we should stop pretending that it does.

Voting is the collective result of individual's votes. There's no sense in which it reflects an individual's choice. Nor is it like there's a singular "we" that has made a choice.

We collectively like to say that what's really important is not work or "the game", but relationships, friends, family, etc. It's repeated so often that it's cliche, and if a person were to say that work was more important than family, we'd nearly unanimously frown upon it.

And, we collectively vote and make other choices about our society. Broken as our democracy is, there is a significant portion of the electorate that expresses a will that seems incompatible with our supposed human priorities.

BTW, we also decide, individually, what we will allow. The cost of our choices may be "high" (e.g. Snowden), but we choose nonetheless.

Then we should dispense with the admonitions about reducing our focus on "the game", work, etc. in order to focus on "what's truly important in life".

Eating is important.

That's why more and more people are pushing towards things like basic income and achieving self-sustaining technology levels. Because when basic sustenance is free to everyone and required maintenance work is minimized, one is free to focus on "truly important things in life" and do meaningful work, instead of engaging in bullshit jobs and "games" to earn the bread for oneself and their family.

I agree with your comments, including your assertion that basic income is an implementation of this sentiment. But, we aren't nearly there yet, even while we as a society nearly unanimously espouse that people are more important than work, etc. This is part of what I find to be disingenuous.

And, many of those who argue against a BI would also agree with the notion that friends and family are more important than work.

In any case, the current state of affairs is that we must eat to work (and feed those we love). In this context, admonishing people to prioritize people over work is disingenuous nearly cruel.

Joe Biden's speech in 2012 touches upon similar themes that Sheryl writes about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwZ6UfXm410&t=5m10s

"I have to tell you. I used to resent people. They'd come up to me and say, 'Joe, I know how you feel. I know, right? I knew they meant well. I knew they were genuine. But you knew they didn't have any damn idea."

"For the first time in my life, I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide. I realized someone could go out — and I probably shouldn't say this with the press here, but you're more important — I realized how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide. Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts. Because they’d been to the top of the mountain, and they just knew in their heart they’d never get there again, that it was never going to get — never going to be that way ever again."

    > Because they’d been to the top of the mountain, and they 
    > just knew in their heart they’d never get there again,
    > that it was never going to get — never going to be that
    > way ever again

And Sheryl says:

    > I know I will never feel pure joy again. Those who have
    > said, “You will find a new normal, but it will never be
    > as good” comfort me more because they know and speak the
    > truth

Is this attitude ... normal? I guess in the near aftermath, it's sure going to feel that way, but ten years later? 20 years later? 30 years later? I can understand never forgetting, but never letting yourself feel as happy again?

I have no experience, but would love to hear from someone with experience >10 years after the fact...

I can confirm this. It has been 15 years since my son died.

On a day-to-day basis there is a new normality in my life and the emotion surrounding his loss is locked tightly in a box. There is plenty of happiness and plenty of new happiness in my life.

However, at all of the happiest moments in my life the box is opened and I am reminded that we are missing the one thing that would make this moment complete.

This is why old people cry at weddings.

Thanks for sharing. I find that hard to imagine, but I've not been through it (or anything similar), so I would have no idea.

I cannot even imagine your pain. I have two small children, and if either of them were to die, I just don't know what I'd do.

Thank you for sharing this most terrible of experiences. I genuinely appreciate it.

This is my greatest fear. This is the one thing that can paralyze me late at night when my mind wanders and wonders about what can go wrong in regards to my two daughters.

Having two children of my own, the thought of losing them and living the live you do fills me with a deep sadness I can't even begin to fathom.

I'm sorry for your loss.

I apologize for not having a reference, but I remember reading a study that looked at different types of painful events, and found there are 2 main events that have a pretty much permanent effect on happiness levels: death of a child and death of a spouse. Yes, the acute grief fades, but the sense of loss (the void as Ms. Sandberg puts it) never really goes away.

This is not my experience. I lost my best friend in the world about... 17 years ago now. No, he has not been with me, nor will he be with me for the many events which have and will make up my life. This hasn't actually changed the events which have occurred, though, nor the joy I've derived from them. At most, my thoughts about him in these events amounts to "Steve would have loved this".

Some of it is forgetting, but more of it is accepting. He's not here, but my friends that I have today are. I will smile and feel a bit melancholic sometimes when I note his absence, and cherish the memories we had created together (like singing Monty Python songs at the top of our lungs on the Ames college campus while wearing togas)... but not at the expense of today.

He was here, and the time we spent together was glorious. He's no longer here (as with so many others), but that's OK. I've made new friends. I've lived and will continue to live for today, for the friends and family and just other people who are here today... not yesterday.

Life is a process of losing the things that you love. Your parents, your friends, your health, and finally your life.

Life is a process of discovering things to love. Your parents, your friends, your health, and finally your life.

People you love will turn their backs on you / You'll lose your hair, your teeth, your knife will fall out of it's sheath / But you still don't like to leave before the end of the movie

-- Cake

Actually, forgetting is the way to feeling as happy again. If you can forget.

Imagine standing at your child's wedding, or your grandchild's wedding, beaming, and then remembering that your spouse isn't next to you.

After losing a parent >10 years ago: at first there's a gaping hole in the world, but the world knits itself back together and in its new configuration you find happiness like anyone else. But you know it's a diminished world. It's missing something wonderful, which most people don't even know about.

It's not something I dwell on, but the grief still comes out now and then. Just my experience, and I don't presume to know what it's like losing a child or spouse.

You just are not the same person after that long. You remember the pain and what it was like, but in a muted way, forgetting the real pain and the unknown of going on another day. You are not you of the day afterwards, you have 10, 20 years of time to digest, forget, and deciding not to look in that crack in your heart/soul. You change, it feels like another person had those feelings and those things happened to a close friend, not you.

Reading this took me back to the experience of grieving for my dad.

The realization that it will never be okay, but that I can become more okay with it never being okay. The bizarre feeling of grief so unbearable and yet it being one of the few connections left to someone so important to me, and so being unwilling to let go of it. Even to this day, I revel in that grief. I've learned to look at it as consequence of so many wonderful experiences instead of hurt of so many missed experiences. The feeling of that void inside me is the same, but my reaction to that feeling is now to smile rather than to cry.

My heart goes out to her in this time when everything is so fresh and so confusing. I know the feeling of having had someone taken from me long before I even thought about the possibility and yet I'm sure her experience is distinct from mine in so many ways. But in writing about her pain, she's allowed me to tap back into mine in a way that I'm thankful for.

As someone experiencing grief for the first time one and a half weeks ago, I'm beginning to understand that bizarreness of grief - the ups and downs, that void..

A lot of people I've spoken to who have experienced grief tell me the same thing - that it will never be ok, but that you can become more ok with it - that you will have moments where you briefly forget and that you get more of these moments over time. I could never have understood this emotion before - I thought it was like in the movies where you're constantly crying, but it's a lot more complex and strange than that..

It’s not sobbing, collapsing, moaning grief. It’s phantom-limb pain. It aches, it throbs, there’s nothing there, and yet you never want it to go away.

Final lines from "The Day I Started Lying to Ruth: A cancer doctor on losing his wife to cancer", http://nymag.com/news/features/cancer-peter-bach-2014-5/

Be kind to yourself. Don't rush. You are in recovery. It is my experience that grief is an illness and it lasts more like a year.

Like all major illnesses there will be scars.

However, It will be OK.

I always loved this scene from the movie Rabbit Hole ... "a brick in your pocket"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKZKyjCbB-M

I have nothing but empathy for her grief - everything I've read about her makes her seem like an amazing woman, but I am very deeply uncomfortable with public displays of emotion like this.

I guess this is one of those dumb culturally ingrained traits, because rationally I cannot really come up with any reason why it should make me feel so uneasy, but I feel like I'm gawking when I read someone describing their grief so publicly.

I wish her and her family the best. May they find the strength to go on.

I have a really hard time with seeing grief on social media. It just comes across as shallow to me. People changing their profile picture to the deceased, posting tributes to them... it just seems fake.

I don't doubt their sincerity, I just think it's a really crappy medium for that kind of thing.

You're not alone in this. Many people find this difficult both to do and to witness. I think it's because many of us are, sadly, not comfortable with vulnerability. Brené Brown has an excellent and very popular talk on that topic, I warmly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o

As a non user of Facebook it's incredibly weird to see like scores assigned to every tribute or condolence comment.

Like = upvote; an echoing of the sentiment expressed. The word does cause some cognitive dissonance.

The prayer got me the most.

"Let me not die, while I am still alive..."

That's powerful stuff. The idea of asking for more time like a kid in a swimming pool - just 5 more minutes!

I hope I do die while I'm still alive though. Dying after I'm done living sounds worse.

I feel the other way around.

I'd rather die while I'm alive (doing or living through something really exciting) than completing something exciting, then entering the dawn of life realizing that I'll never do something as exciting again, and then dying.

I wanna die in the middle of having fun, not in a retirement home.

That is not how I interpret that.

I think what that means is "Don't let me be caught up in grief and mourning so much that I become the living dead." Hope that makes sense.

Basically just praying for the strength to carry on and learn from tragedy, rather than to be consumed and defeated by it.

That's awesome. Thanks! An interpretation I didn't consider.

I understood it differently. It's Sheryl saying the prayer, not Dave. It's not "don't let me die at the prime of my life," it's "don't force me to live on after losing everything that makes life bearable, a living death." To me, also, that is powerful stuff.

I agree with you; I didn't get the prayer at all. It seems to call for some «pre death» period when you're not dead yet but somehow not truly alive, and I sure don't want that.

Anyway our own death is unimportant since we can't experience being dead. Death that matters is the death of others (dear ones). My payer would be: let me die any which way you want... but let me die first.

so rather than bearing the pain, you rather inflict one on closest ones? you realize there not much between (apart from everybody dying at once). you like an easy way out of things, don't you...

> so rather than bearing the pain, you rather inflict one on closest ones?

Yep. And I should try and allow them to do that for themselves.

> you like an easy way out of things, don't you...

I sure do.

This is a good state of mind to be in. I felt this way when I was younger, and as I've aged, I don't feel the same way. It felt better to have your state of mind. Hang on to it as long as you can :)

Stay at a fun retirement home!

That's not what it means as I understand it, it's about not treating someone as already dead before their death. Instead to acknowledge their existance and use the time left positively.

Really great read, I recently lost a friend who was among many other great things Jewish. As a "Gentile" I found the entire Shiva process both historically / anthropologically interesting and very helpful with the mourning process.

My thoughts go out to her and her family.

Her thoughts on what makes mourning, and specifically the interaction with other people so difficult, are really enlightening. It reminded me that each person experiences life differently, even when we are all united by the same feelings of satisfaction, love, frustration and grief.

My deepest condolences to Sheryl, as well as anyone else who reads this who has lost a loved one. Life is both amazing and delicate, and I think we could all focus a little more on the little things that make all the difference. I know I could.

It's easy to lose sight of what's truly important amid the fog of day-to-day life.

The way I see it, life is basically a long-winded effort to get loved. To get loved by ourselves, by others and by our gods. Everything everybody does in life boils down to this. From Hitler to Mother Teresa. From Osama bin Laden to the Dalai Lama. You want to do things that matter, to change the world? Why? How do you know they matter? Because those to whom they matter love you for it. You love yourself for it, others love you for it and by your own spiritual presumptions, your gods love you for it, or they will some day. And so, it is not the big things or the small things that matter. It is not saving the lives of millions or attending your kid's play that matters. The only thing that matters is you finding love, however you find it. If there is no love feedback for you, it doesn't matter. That's why nobody is trying to save the starving children in the planets of the Andromeda galaxy, coz there's no feedback for it. And if you think that's a poor analogy, well, there was nobody coming to the slums of Africa to do the things people these days come to do.

My favourite part:

> "Celebrate your birthday, goddammit. You are lucky to have each one."

Same can be said about each day though. Not sure why birthdays are special.

I haven't celebrated my last three. They just become like any other day to me and they fly by.

I didn't even realise my last birthday was coming up within a few days until my dad mentioned it to me.

My birthday just came up around then; I prefer to celebrate every day, not just once every 365. But that's just me.

Can anyone summarize that long text?

A woman who is relatively famous in some technology circles lost her husband (also famous in the tech community) suddenly due to a tragic accident. Her post comes at the end of a religious mourning period and she reflects upon how she has learned to accept help and work to move on after such a harrowing experience.

It's a pretty good read, and I'm sure it's heartfelt. As others here have mentioned, it's odd to see something intensely personal and thoughtful in a social media post, and it's tempting to dismiss it as a trite attempt at attention-seeking (given the medium) but I don't believe that to be the case.

For the segment of the HN community that hasn't followed the professional activities of Sheryl Sandberg or Dave Goldberg, however, the post will have little relevance other than perhaps some shared personal experiences and sympathy for the loss of the family.

Thanks MrZongle2, much appreciated!

Downvoted? It is a 2000 words essay. We all lost someone special, me too. I was wondering why this essay showed up at the top of YCombinator (and more when it comes with religious stuff).

Yeah, I don't see the point either

If Facebook posts were eligible for Pulitzers, this would win. This is so incredibly thought-provoking, well-written, and well-constructed.

“Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of option B.”

> Judaism calls for a period of intense mourning known as shiva that lasts seven days after a loved one is buried.

It's strange to me to prescribe how long people should mourn. Some people are appalled when someone seems to get over someone quickly after they've died. But if they are truly not sad about it any more, I say good for them. What does it help the deceased for the living to be sad over them?

Judaism does not require that a person be sad (or not sad) during that time. A person's emotions are what they are.

The mourning time is about actions, yes. But it's more about community. During the shiva a person does not work, and (if they want it) will receive many many visits from members of the community (even people they do not know personally). They can receive those visitors however they want, just as someone to talk to, people who can help, or simply as expressions of support.

People visiting someone during shiva are advised not to talk, but rather to listen. Or even simply to just be there without saying anything. If the mourner wants to talk they will, and if not they won't.

This type of community support is one of the ways Judaism has lasted so long in the face of so much persecution.

Here in Panama we have the traditional catholic funeral rituals (which are rarely practiced by the urban population). Part of this are the "nine nights" where the family of the deceased hosts long hours (mostly during the day) of prayer repetitions (velorio) for nine days. Friends and extended family come to visit, and they may choose to participate in the prayers. The guests are received with coffee, fresh cheese and a especial kind of bread. After the ninth night, some mourners choose to continue dressing with neutral colors for months.

As you mentioned, this is mostly about community support.

Often people who have lost close ones feel overwhelmed by all sorts of emotions, including guilt - whether over mourning too much or mourning too little. "Is it ok that I'm still grieving? Should I still be expressing this grief to people I meet? Do people expect that I should be moving on now? Am I moving on too soon?"

By declaring the length of the mourning period, religion does there one of the things it does best: give us a sense of ritual and assuage potential guilt at those very important moments in life: yes, it's ok to still be mourning. Yes, it's ok to move on now.

These are not mandates. They're not marching orders. They're a guideline so you don't have to add guilt about mourning too much or too little to what is already a crushing amount of sorrow.

Depends on how observant you are, in Judaism, it is mandates / marching orders.

The "shiv'a" (literally, "seven") is a lot more than just the mourning period - it is also the period when others are required to come and comfort the mourners. It also officially stops if a holiday happens to fall inside it - thus, it might last as little as half a day, at which Judaism tells you: "It's time to stop mourning". (with the implied statement that the deceased has semi-saint status, and that's why you don't need to mourn as long).

It's not uncommon for people to mourn longer than specified (e.g., the whole 7 days even though there's a holiday that should have terminated it) and for other people to be critical of them for disobeying the letter of the "law"

I don't think it's about reducing guilt; It's about establishing something that's easy to follow for people whose world just collapsed. Guilt management is, perhaps, a small part of that.

During the whole following year (if mourning a parent; 3 months if mourning your child, one month mourning a spouse or a sibling), the mourners are instructed to not enjoy - modern interpretation is to not see movies, shows, attend weddings, etc. I think it's about mourning etiquette much more than it is about guilt.

So religion tries to reduce guilt. Well I guess I learn something totally new every day...

Admittedly I'm not familiar with Judaism except through the limited view of the Bible and comparing it to Christianity.

Religion is a pretty complex thing. I totally agree that christianity tends to be, as Alan Watts described it, "institutionalised guilt"... but that's just one dimension of it. Religion is a huge topic. It's many things to many people. It's never helpful to intelligent conversation to reduce a big thing to a single axis.

I think it's not a bad idea. If something on this catastrophic level happens, you're going to be unprepared. If you have a societal framework of how to go about your grief, I can imagine it will help some. It won't make anything better but it might provide something to hold on to when the hour is darkest.

For those like me that are wondering what is going on, apparently some Silicon Valley executive died recently.

A human being died and another human being went through grief and wrote a moving post about her journey. Do you really need to apply (what I'm sensing to be) pejorative labels to it?

Death may not be your typical HN fare, but it is a subject that touches all of us eventually, so far with no exception. I am glad that she was willing to write this and share it. My life is richer for having read it.

I don't think the parent was trying to apply pejorative labels or there was any malicious intent behind their post. It was more along the lines of being unable to parse the title, IMO.

It's also good practice to critically examine any written piece, regardless of whom it may come from. While you may derive aesthetic and ostensibly emotional value from it, not everybody may necessarily feel that way.

In fact, my life wasn't changed or impacted in any profound sense after reading this. You should keep in mind that not everyone may think the same way as you, or even share the same reality.

> It's also good practice to critically examine any written piece, regardless of whom it may come from. While you may derive aesthetic and ostensibly emotional value from it, not everybody may necessarily feel that way.

That's an interesting assertion, and itself worth examining critically. Is it generally good practice to critically examine any written piece? Possibly. Probably even. Is it always good practice? Perhaps even that is true. Is it always good practice to state the outcome of your critical examination in public? At this point, if your answer is still yes, we diverge. There's a time for stating your critical analysis, and a time for keeping it to yourself.

Death is one of those topics where critical analysis is generally unwelcome. To use a slightly extreme but actually fairly relevant analogy, if someone very close to you died and you were mourning them at their funeral a few days later, and someone there presents you with some kind of critical theory of the chemical nature of grief, while it might appear to be some critical analysis of the present moment it would nevertheless be most unwelcome.

Which brings me to your second point:

> In fact, my life wasn't changed or impacted in any profound sense after reading this. You should keep in mind that not everyone may think the same way as you, or even share the same reality.

There's nothing wrong with that, but I think you can tell fairly easily from the comments that other people were moved by this post. In some, it has brought up feelings of grief that they wished to share too. In effect, the original post by Sheryl Sandberg has made this thread a place of grief for many of the commenters here.

They will have come to it from many places, both real and imagined. For me it is imagining how I would feel if my wife died, or how she might feel if I died. For others it is remembering the death of a loved one. Either way, what they express is real and deeply felt.

I think this "promotes" this thread to a place of grief, and as a human being who respects other humans' right to such places, it is reasonable to keep your critical evaluations to yourself in such a place. There are other places to express your critical views of this. Yes, you have a right to express them here if you wish, but you should also be aware of the implicit request to let this space be what it is.

I know this is the internet and so expecting people to respect other people's feelings is somewhat extraordinary here, but I guess I have a high opinion of humanity in general.

I can understand how you feel that feelings (yours personally? others'?) were not respected. Especially very short comments can sound terse to the point of sarcastic. However, the tone that you're bringing here is not quite appropriate. You seem to be raring for an internet argument: you're taking offense at pejorative labels in posts which don't have pejorative labels, and trying to go badass-philosopher on equivocations (they said "It's good practice", you criticized "It's always good practice").

So, I know who, roughly, the affected parties are here. But if you look close, that's not actually contextually obvious. People who don't know who the affected parties are click "Back" and then look at the comments, because Sheryl Sandberg is very unlikely to tell Facebook exactly who she is, who her husband was, and how he died. So they will come to our HN comments with a, "not to diminish anybody's grief, but who is this and why do I care, again?" approach. A simple comment of "her husband was a Silicon Valley executive" is great there. I mean, maybe I'd have added "and she is the COO of Facebook" too, since I've personally never heard of the companies he was a part of, but I remember hearing about his death a while back.

It's just supremely ironic. Here you are, inappropriately critically analyzing the appropriateness of critical analysis and disrespecting the real expressions of others' feelings while decrying how the Internet disrespects the real expressions of others' feelings.

I'm totally with you that there is a deep sympathetic response here where you and I both imagine living without that love that we're presently consumed by, or forcing someone else to live without that love. Yes, our feelings are real. Their feelings are also real. It's not the time to perceive slights in terse comments and expand short sentences into philosophical analyses. The phrase "which brings me to your second point" should be barred from this context. It's not just us and our sympathetic grief; they and their confusion are also very valid responses to a totally-ambiguous out-of-nowhere post.

Interesting comment, and I'll think about it. Not to take away from your comment as a whole, I will nitpick one particular thing. There is a big difference in tone, imho, in saying "some Silicon Valley executive died recently", which I believe to have a dismissive undertone, vs saying "a Silicon Valley executive", which is fairly neutral. The "some" is probably what triggered me there.

It's a succinct explanation of why this particular passing might be relevant to this specific site. Maybe as a preemptive answer to others who might be wondering the same thing. Being succinct might come across as cold.

In order to come across as less pejorative, maybe I would have changed "some Silicon Valley executive" to "a Silicon Valley executive". But the rest is fine on the face of it.

Thanks. That's the tl;dr I needed.

Coming from the UK, this made no sense whatsoever to me.

His death made the front page of the BBC website.

I made no connection when I briefly saw the news. Her post and the attitude of giving meaning to a senseless loss (isn't death always senseless?) is moving. There are many lessons she learned that are useful to us all. Everyone loses loved ones. From old age, from accidents, from completely unexpected events. In the end, all that matters is what we, the people who stay alive, do out of it.

So what? People die all the time, we don't need a post about it, let alone some religious spiel.

When people think that any passage of any length that mentions religion, however briefly, is a "religious spiel," I find it just as baffling as folks who insist that anything anyone does must include a prayer.

A little bit of research would uncover that, in the tech startup worldwide community, Dave Goldberg was one of the most loved entrepreneurs.

The fact that he was Sheryl Sandberg's husband (and the very fact the he was proud to be described as such) is what put him on the front of the BBC.

Hacker News is first-and-foremost a forum of that tech startup community. I'm not one, but many people who frequent here will have known and looked up to if not one then both of the people mentioned here.

It might have been nice to have considered them before reacting like this to the death of their friend.

AFAIK it didn't on bbc.co.uk. Perhaps bbc.com but I don't look at that.

It's all about FIFA bribes and rollercoaster accidents.

He died a month ago, so I don't know why you are mentioning the headlines of the last few days.

A quick google search reveals a bbc.co.uk news story about the death.

Both of which are generally more "BBC newsworthy" for us UK residents.

With that said, I don't do Football and was part of the Runaway Mine Train crash.

I went on that in the early 1990s when it opened. Hope you didn't get injured!

Just a little whiplash and broken glasses. I was one of the lucky ones.

I've been on it once since that day to try and get over it, I spent the entire time shaking and holding on to my partner very tightly, heh.

Thanks :)

Now that's the daredevil attitude I like to hear :)

I'm British reading from the UK. He died weeks ago.

However, it wouldn't take much reading to realise that a) this wasn't just some dude who died and b) this isn't just some wifey who is talking about her grief.

So everyone else who dies is just dude and wifey?

Way to devalue 99.999% of the population.

My wife was a palliative care nurse. She taught me that everyone is remarkable but when it comes to dying, for one person to be valued higher than another based on social standing, celebrity status or perceived societal worth.

This is merely voyeurism.

@wumbernang these are people who are a part of the larger community who built HN. When the US wakes up you will see that many of the people who come here know them personally (especially those who built and run HN).

You might want to consider their feelings.

You don't have Google in the UK?

I'm a little surprised that this needed to be said. I wasn't aware of the event or any of the people involved, but the first five sentences made it clear that this is a piece by a woman whose husband has just died. It didn't really make me dig for it.

I think the GP was trying to preemptively answer the question "why is this on HN?". Usually when there is a story about someone's recent death here, it's either someone relevant to the community (e.g. death in the family of one of fellow HNers) or relevant to the technological world (e.g. famous computer scientists, physicists, etc.).

who's the husband of facebook coo...

If you can't understand why Sheryl Sandberg and David Goldberg are important to the Hacker New community then I fear you have a misunderstanding of what Hacker News is.

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