This reminds me of “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, which has a quote Aziz Ansari used in his series “Master of None”:
> "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
What I don't like about this quote is that it pretends you just have to choose between all these attractive and worthwhile goals and that the choosing is the difficult part.
In reality though you may opt for a career, leave the family but fail. Or you may put your career on a lower pitch only to have your wife and you decide it won't really work out. In reality, it's more like you start to climb for a fat purple fig only to find it rotten, or just edible. At least in some of the cases, and it won't be your fault and your success depends on how you deal with the said fig. Maybe you can still climb to another?
The quote makes more sense if you take a look at the life of its author, Sylvia Plath. [1]
She struggled with mental health issues and depression most of her life. She excelled academically and she was driven to write, but at the same time, she struggled with her own self. Her life is marked by several suicide attempts.
She married the poet Ted Hughes and moved around frequently during their short marriage. While she was ambitious, a deep sense of anxiety kept her from exploring and expressing her own identity through her writing.
Most of her poetry was written during a short burst of creativity, over the course of a few months, in late 1962. She died of suicide in 1963. Her famous novel, The Bell Jar, was published a month before her death. Major themes in this novel include "socially acceptable identity" and mental health. [2]
Your criticism is a certainly correct, but would have been removed to the author of the quote. As Plath received treatment and openly discussed her mental health issues, undoubtedly she was told this many times over.
> She married the poet Ted Hughes and moved around frequently during their short marriage.
My understanding is that Ted Hughes' contribution to Plath's mental health went beyond "mov[ing] around frequently during their short marriage" [1].
> In 2017, previously unpublished letters written by Plath between 18 February 1960 and 4 February 1963 accuse Hughes of physically abusing her months before she miscarried their second child in 1961.
Hughes also began an affair with another woman, Assia Wevill, in 1962 and (apparently) had a kid with her in 1965. Plath knew about the former and committed suicide in 1963. Wevill also killed herself as well as her child with Hughes in 1969 after, you guessed it, "Hughes began affairs with Brenda Hedden, a married acquaintance who frequented their home, and Carol Orchard, a nurse 20 years his junior, whom he would later marry in 1970" [2].
It might be too reductive to say Hughes just drove two women to suicide, but it seems like we can be confident that he had, uh, extensive personal failings?
My intention was to provide terse framing for the posted quote, rather then muse at length about the author's life, let alone that of her erstwhile husband, in their own regard.
Analysis paralysis and the paradox of choice (the idea not the book) have been known about since Aesop, though I agree that in the real world we must also make do without even knowing which paths even lead to good outcomes.
No, you can't. I'm in my mid 50s. I can't go back and change my decision (non-decision decision) to not have a family. I wanted one. The choices I made or the chances that came by depending on how you look at it got me where I am today. Mid 50s. I'm not going to birth kids. I'm also not likely to be able to change my career to anything that requires 10-15 years of study before I can get a good position in that career. Going forward I also need to choose things that payout so that I can afford to pay for my life once people won't keep giving me work.
I agree with you, that is why I said, maybe you can still reach for another. Maybe not. If things turn out differently than you though, happiness is still about how you deal with the fig you got, either on purpose or not.
You might try picking some of the figs that are at ground level and see how they taste, if good, generalize to the whole tree and decide if it’s worth the climb.
You might find someone climbing the tree and ask them if they could tell you how they taste up top.
Sitting in the crotch of the tree lamenting your situation is a fig too. We all bite into a sour one every now and again.
>What I don't like about this quote is that it pretends you just have to choose between all these attractive and worthwhile goals and that the choosing is the difficult part.
For sure, however it is better to have tried and experienced than not have. I have tried and failed at picking many of those figs, and it is worth it, the good and bad. Don't stand there, give yourself a time, and then chose freely.
for sure, depending what is important to each person. Success is a subjective. Maybe some live for exploration, and some for execution... It really just comes down to fulling what make sense for oneself. ;-)
Yes I agree, but maybe the quote means it in the sense that these were potential outcomes, which became impossible at some point. I agree it is arrogant to assume all these futures are within their grasp.
We aren't nearly as in control of our lives as we like to think, and we often construct stories and arcs to explain our paths. Actually, most of what has happened to us, whether we've been successful or not, is down to chance, starting with the family and location you were born into.
A large part of life is just luck. Think of all the chance events that had a big impact on your life. For me for example, almost all my success hinges on me randomly seeing a certain poster in a hallway in 2008.
Pretty much my entire social circle hinges on one of my sister's friends wanting to go see Iron Maiden in 2014, she asked me to go along with her, because she didn't want to go by herself.
I happened to reconnect with a childhood friend in that crowd of 15,000+ and that got the ball rolling.
Depends on your perspective, obviously. But personally I'd say we're much more a victim of circumstance than the other way around, and all success or failure is only very partially dependent on the choices we made.
I think this is something the author knew, but this is not an uncommon and painful thought many people have. It's exactly the falsity of this that makes it more painful. Of course life is far more complex than just picking, but this is a perfect example of that painful fantasy.
This reminds me of a speculative fiction story by Ted Chiang called "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom" which imagines an expendable device that gives users the ability to contact alternate versions of themselves in other branches, and explores the moral and psychological consequences of learning about those outcomes: https://onezero.medium.com/anxiety-is-the-dizziness-of-freed...
It reminds me a lot of "The Guy I Almost Was" (Patrick Sean Farley) http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/ . It's an old (from the early 2000s) comic about trying to get into the tech scene in the 90s. Alternate life paths are explicitly explored.
Reminds me of "Buridan's ass" named after a 14th century French philosopher who described a donkey dying of starvation while standing between two perfectly good stacks of hay, because it couldn't decide which to eat.
I am not sure why, but the quote triggered a memory of 8bit theater in my head:
"Life is funny. You start out with limitless potential, but time is always shaving away the possibilities. Every choice you make is the choice not to do a thousand other things. What's important, when all is said and done, is that you made a difference. Your choices, and everything undone, have to mean something. Otherwise, what is the point?"
We branch out, but we ultimately keep heading towards the very same outcome.
“Meaning” is just a construct in your head. What we perceive as “meaningful” is shaped by our biological and cultural evolution, a byproduct if you will. “Meaningfulness” is not something that exists out there, outside of our minds. When we see meaning, that’s a perspective we project on things, or a relation we have with things. It’s not a property of the things by themselves. We do crave meaning, and thus we have to come up with meaning for ourselves. Maybe it helps to realize that meaning is just something we create in our minds.
For a counterpoint, we can look to the Stoics who want us to focus on the present rather than dwell on the past:
"For although in regard of that which is already past there may be some inequality, yet that time which is now present and in being, is equal unto all men. And that being it which we part with whensoever we die, it doth manifestly appear, that it can be but a moment of time, that we then part with. For as for that which is either past or to come, a man cannot be said properly to part with it. For how should a man part with that which he hath not? ... that life which any the longest liver, or the shortest liver parts with, is for length and duration the very same, for that only which is present, is that, which either of them can lose, as being that only which they have; for that which he hath not, no man can truly be said to lose.
"XorNot" is a title inhabited by many different people over time: the person that held that title this time last year is not you, and the "XorNot" of today will give way tomorrow to yet another person. Each can only be properly considered in the context of the situations they inherited and those left for their successors.
Another, more modern translation, from the Oxford world classics edition by Robin Hard:
14. Even if you were to live for three thousand years or ten times as long, you should still remember this, that no one loses any life other than the one that he is living, nor does he live any life other than the one that he loses, so the shortest life and the longest amount to the same. For the present is equal for all, and what is passing must be equal also, so what can be lost is shown to be nothing more than a moment; and no one could lose either the past or the future, for how could he be deprived of what he does not possess? So always bear in mind these two points: firstly that all things are alike in nature from all eternity and recur in cycles, and it therefore makes no difference whether one sees the same spectacle for a hundred years or two hundred or for time everlasting; and secondly that the longest-lived and the earliest to die suffer an equal loss; for it is solely of the present moment that each will be deprived, if it is really the case that this is all he has and a person cannot lose what he does not have.
As someone who feels like I've wasted most of my 20s since graduating university (turning 29 in 2021) with a job(s) I don't see any future in, man this hits hard. My lack of risk taking, and an unfortunately timed death in the family in 2016, really are me sitting there watching these figs dry up. Damn.
I executed a major career pivot at age 32 and now that I'm approaching 40, I'm so glad I did. It was hard but worth it. You have plenty of time, as long as you can put aside the feelings that you've waited too long and start looking for a path from your current life to the life you want. Those feelings will only hold you back. Now is a good time to pick a fig and start eating it. :)
It's never too late. I was drowning in debt a few years ago, in a bad career, and I was older than 40 [actual age undisclosed]. I don't have a solid retirement, but I'm now doing well and have some peace in my life.
My one life advice: Don't search for greatness, search for peace.
The initial diagnosis was crap. Add in some surgery and the diagnosis improved dramatically, different type. As far as a cancer diagnosis goes I got off really well in the end.
It was the initial stage where I felt I had a death sentence that shifted my outlook on life. When you think you're going to die you re-evaluate some things. I looked at my life, thought about what I'd regret, and made 5 year plans to get things on track. I'm now in the habit of setting plans for 5 years to ensure I don't regret the life I do have.
I am just a year younger and also had an unfortunate family death at the end of 2016. I have a lot of the same feelings. My current resolve is to quit my job around the time the pandemic ends, and start taking more risks with how I choose to spend my life. I am lucky to have enough savings at this point to do so. Maybe I'll figure things out a bit better before I hit the big 30. I hope you can find a path that works for you too.
Yeah, the pandemic is the only reason I'm still in my job currently. I had an option to go do a masters, but I was talking to a recruiter in that country and they mentioned how badly the market had dropped, so I decided to postpone it once again due to wanting stability in a pandemic. Hopefully it'll work out this next year.
46 year old here. Wave I remember feeling like I'd wasted so much time and was irreversibly behind in my twenties. Like, it was all decided. There are so so many figs left. Many many chances ahead of you!
That said, time is ticking and while it isn't too late, now is the best time to start!
Yeah, when I was younger I remember feeling like I kept abandoning all my ideas. Years pass, and you realize that the ideas are still there, and it's more like you're rotating between them. Which is kind of a nice way to be. Work on one for a while, set it down, go to the next one, etc.
I suppose the feeling itself came from comparing myself to others (which is natural), and it was having some success in some field relative to others that gave me the feeling like I could succeed, I wasn't behind everyone in everything, forever. I guess for the mental health aspect of this, it's probably good to pick something you are good at, better than others, and actively appreciate it. It's not good to feel completely behind in all things. Good luck! :)
> It is never too late, but do not let that be an excuse to delay any decision.
Beautiful, this is the explanation I was looking for because whenever I'd hear that "it's never too late," I just felt like that enabled procrastination, but your explanation solidified that life is not long, but rather it is short indeed. It's true that it's not too late for many of your future opportunities, but eventually, time will run out.
I certainly hope so. But man, it's a sinking feeling when so many others seem to have it figured out at an even younger age. And knowing that the clock is ticking to actually go get those figs.
If the purpose of life is the journey to get there, not the destination, how could anyone younger than you have figured it out? Life is the one thing where people will never catch up and pass you.
Fair, but I feel the journey is stopped/halted by the crippling student loan debt that will just get worse if I try to change via more education (which is likely, as I want to change countries and it's the easiest way). Really, that might be the worst part of it all, the student loan burden.
I've never really understood what this means. Did people in their 20s have their life pretty well together in the past? or does it mean when you're in your 30s is the best time to start partying and throwing caution to the wind? Is your 30s when you first leave home and get a higher education? It's really a really confusing turn of phrase to me. I must be missing context
In my parents' generation, there was a lot of pressure to have children before 30. There was a widespread belief that giving birth after 30 risked the health of the mother and the child. As medicine advanced and neonatal care greatly improved, that deadline was pushed back and women started to seriously entertain the idea of careers before having children.
There are other cultural and societal factors at play, but the greater longevity and better medical care have opened up the time period for the expectations that previous generations had for their 20s.
It’s also not just about giving birth, but a woman’s body is probably far better at recovery after birth in their 20s than 30s.
Not to mention the energy to keep up with little ones, and if you ever want the option of more than 2 kids. And of course if you’re 30+ when you have kids, and your kids are 30+ when they have kids, you are pushing 65 to 70+ which makes playing with the grandkids not as much fun and you’re soon to be less of an asset in terms of help and possibly a liability for your kids due to declining health.
On the other hand, you may have increased your chances at having a higher paying career, but I suspect, for many, the extra savings don’t quite make up for the trade offs.
Also a good point, trade offs all around to consider!
I had mine in 30 to 35 range, but if I could go back in time and had found my spouse, I think I would have opted to have them in 25 to 30 range. However, no one in my social circles has kids in their 20s and barely anyone is married by 30 so we also may have been socially isolated if we had chosen to do that.
But I try to think back to what I did in my 25 to 30 range that I thought was worth delaying starting a family and I can’t come up with anything, other than being a little bit further ahead in the rat race. But all the other rats are thinking the same thing, so who is really benefiting?
So it would seem the trend is very much to settle and stabilize in your 30's. I do hope we figure out even better and safer ways to allow women to give birth a little later, if they so choose.
It also seems useful to become a parent with that extra decade of life experience. And if we incentivize exercise in the later years, it could offset the "feeling tired at 70" thing? My fiancé's grandpa runs marathons and honestly has more energy than I do!
Most of what we do in our 20s doesn’t seem that important after the fact (unless you’re an Olympic athlete or otherwise very lucky) but I think it’s an important part of growing up and feeling secure — in yourself, your career, and your relationship. All three types of security are very important to being a good parent.
You can't have kids when you are in your 20s if you are a man who cannot find a woman willing to date you who also wants to have kids while you are in your 20s.
The bottleneck is the same as it is for any issue regarding children.
This is interesting because I'm 25 and sometimes worry that I'm going to miss out on the opportunity to start a solid family. It feels so difficult to find anyone my age who wants more than just a fling, and women in their 30s don't even bother with someone my age or they already have kids. From what you're saying, maybe I'm not going to miss out, I'm just thinking about it too soon.
Don’t sweat it too much. I feel like my life got a lot more stable in my 30s. I moved countries, met my now wife, bought a house together, had two kids and finally married. Even personally and career wise it’s been a period of stability and growth.
I also don’t think you’re thinking about things too soon. We’re all slightly different. Also don’t make decisions for other people by writing them off. Just because they present one way doesn’t make that the sum total of who they are. You’ll need to have relationships in order to meet someone to have kids with.
Most people would be married with families by their late 20s. Now many enter into a sort of second childhood and settle down in their 30s or beyond. Hell, I still have some acquaintances from school who are slowly transitioning into the creepy old guy hitting on 24 year olds.
I've always taken it to be about your peak - when life is at its best. In your 20s, you're generally in good health, maintain a good social network from school or college, active social life, etc. I'm in my early 40s and feel like I have it more together now than in the past: fewer but better friendships, more interesting conversations, more means to do what I want in terms of travel or entertainment.
Studied physics with the intent to go to grad school. Realized after graduating I didn't want to do it because of the perverse incentives in academia (I'd still love to do research and get a PhD eventually if I can fund it myself and not be reliant on academia). Worked as a substitute teacher for a year, then in a mortgage bank for a year. Left that to accept a Fulbright grant, which I eventually had to decline because of the death in the family at the worst possible timing.
Since then I've been a teacher. Looking at pivoting into finance in Ireland/Europe (with a masters in Quantitative Finance) next year; was planning on doing it this year but, y'know, corona kinda destroyed finance jobs over there and I'd need a work visa (thankfully it's a high need field so it's a bit easier)...
Forgive my nerding. This week I've been playing dark souls. I couldn't commit to a plan this time around and so now I'm part mage, part rogue, part knight, and I can't use any of the good weapons and I have like five weapons all partly upgraded. My figs all rotted and my character is just so mediocre.
It's definitely easier to commit to one path. I've played bloodborne and DS3 twice and dark souls remastered once. I completed all my playthroughs with a quality melee build. Despite these 5 playthroughs, my understanding of the game is quite narrow. I have no idea what playing as a sorcerer, pyromancer etc would be like, so at least you get that.
Fantastic analogy. To go a bit further, what surprised me when trying to choose which branch to take was how narrow each branch is. It’s not enough to pick the “software development” branch, you have to pick a specialty within that.
And, it has to be a single specialty. In my particular case, it was hard to accept that I couldn’t be both a successful programming language designer and a successful game developer.
Should you really dig in and focus on mobile, web, server, game, firmware? If so, should you focus on one language?
I don't so much question paths in my life as I feel very lucky to have ended up where I am. I do question on a daily basis, whether I should stop learning and adopting new technologies, and focus on ONE domain for the rest of my life.
It seems I am destined to be a jack of all trades, master of none, if I let life continue to unfold as it has over the last 10 years, bumping around as needed from my employers to new or different domains.
There's probably an analogy here in cost of task switching. Switch too much and one finds themselves with too many tasks and too little time. Switch too little and the doings or learnings may become monotonous. As with most things good, it takes skill to play it well.
Maybe, but you could be a successful programming language designer and a hobbyist game developer. Depends how you define success. Making money at games is something very few do, but many have fun just for the creative outlet.
While Diogenes was relaxing in the morning sunlight, Alexander, thrilled to meet the famous philosopher, asked if there was any favour he might do for him. Diogenes replied, "Yes, stand out of my sunlight." Alexander then declared, "If I were not Alexander, then I should wish to be Diogenes." "If I were not Diogenes, I would still wish to be Diogenes," Diogenes replied.
Reminds me of the game of Go. Infinite possibilities in the beginning, but as the game progresses the end state of the board becomes clearer and clearer. Also, you can't have it all, sometimes you try to control the whole board and end up losing a lot of what you could have had.
That book contains some the finest writing ever done in the English language. Her ability to capture emotions and present them in detail-perfect images is breathtaking.
Reminds me of the famed Jacques Brel song 'La chanson de Jacky' - He sings through many possible exotic futures for himself, but what he really wants to do is return to his childhood where he can be "Beau, beau, beau et con à la fois" ("Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful and stupid at the same time")
I don't expect everyone to love Jordan Peterson, but how badly he is maligned by so many people really disappoints me. His maps of meaning lectures on youtube were hugely inspiring (and entertaining), and part of the reason I married my girlfriend and had our daughter. I attended one of his conversation/debates with Sam Harris in Vancouver and that was a lot of fun as well.
The dude is really hard to understand. He says a lot of stuff that just seems like vague unactionable self-help advice.
So I err on the side of caution by assuming he isn't worth listening to. He also reeks of certainty, like I'm wrong just for asking what the fuck he's trying to tell me because it's so obvious... to him.
The clip that OP linked to is a 9 minute segment of a semester long, graduate level psychology class. It shouldn't be surprising that it is hard to follow without some additional context.
He often uses false dichotomies to advocate his views, for example, the left is against freedom and liberty, you have to decide if you are for the Gulag Archipelago society or a capitalistic society etc; as if they were the only two possible options.
I can possibly sift through YouTube to get to the videos where he claims these things, but it will not be the most palatable of chores.
Having just gone through and looked up a bunch of articles criticizing Jordan Peterson (Most of them seem to be written by Matt McManus, so I guess he's trying to make some sort of name for himself by association), it seems to me that basically the people who like Peterson like him for his life advice and the people that don't like him don't like him because of his political and philosophical views.
I guess it seems completely unremarkable that someone would have useful things to say in one regard while having less useful things to say in another.
Also I guess I view him in the context of a university professor who wrote a book and has some lectures online, not in the context of the mega-celebrity he became. I think being catapulted to fame like that is bound to mess up pretty well everyone and probably also muddy their message quite a bit.
I mean, at its core none of the things Peterson has to say are really all that revolutionary, they are pretty basic life advice. "Take responsibility for your life", etc.
Obviously there is an unmet need for that basic life advice because people (particularly young men) ate it up.
One article complained about him relaying a story of getting a kid to eat. My only conclusion is the person that was complaining doesn't have kids, because his story was extremely relatable, and I'd guess basically universal among parents.
Anyway, yes if you try putting Jordan Peterson up on a pedestal, he'll probably fall off it. If you view him as someone that maybe could give some good advice while you'd otherwise just be killing time anyway, I guess I think he holds up to that metric pretty well.
> I guess it seems completely unremarkable that someone would have useful things to say in one regard while having less useful things to say in another.
No, he has a long established pattern of attracting a crowd by talking about basic self-help and then sneak in politically charged ideas like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th... , "people are lobsters", and plenty of sexism.
> I view him in the context of a university professor who wrote a book and has some lectures online, not in the context of the mega-celebrity he became.
You can't pick and choose the context: a person is responsible for they say in public.
Besides, even as a university professor a person is responsible for speaking honestly.
> being catapulted to fame ... muddy their message quite a bit.
No, he was playing the same tricks since the beginning. There are a lot of old videos on youtube.
I agree with what you are saying, but there is a huge gap between a pedestal and the advocacy of evidently false and polarizing dichotomies -- Gulag or conservative capitalism, pick one; terrorists attack us because they hate our freedom etc, etc.
Given the yard stick / metric you are measuring him with there would be teeming millions who would qualify -- anyone who is capable of a half decent parenting. In the kind of life advice he offers, Peterson feels quite unremarkable.
I live in the US and not that interested in US politics, so no dog in the fight -- just an fly on the wall observation.
Also the same guy who bashes established disorders like ADHD publicly and the whole field of psychiatry(calling them engineers) saying the disorder has deep psychological roots, while himself taking anti-depressants to treat his depression isn't someone worth listening to for anything substantial. This dude thinks a disorder like ADHD is just bad conscientiousness that can be fixed by reading his 12 step book.
Perhaps for some the placebo effect is enough, and Peterson becomes their savior with devotees.
I don't know, I've listened to some of his stuff and what doesn't come across as simplistic platitudes has baked in assumptions that seem unnecessary, like defining truth to be an evolutionarily useful principle.
That he inspires people doesn't surprise me, the religion of my youth did the same and was more hokum than Peterson's mythological substrate mappings.
Much of my life hasn't played out how I expected. I had dreams like many people in high school and none of them came true. Instead of finishing college I joined the military after the stock market collapse in 2008/9. Impressions were left on me throughout my early life that I only came to know as an adult. My family got sick, I ruined the relationship that I'd worked for, and at times I alienated people close to me out of my own sense of self-defense. I pushed myself to the brink repeatedly. My twenties were filled with stress, frustration, confusion, and at times anger. These things taught me acceptance and forgiveness of both myself and others. Looking back, I would not trade them for an easier or more prestigious life.
When I came back from Afghanistan I had to scratch, claw, and climb a ladder without a degree thanks in much part to people who saw in me what I could only hoped to have seen in myself. I looked around me when I arrived and I saw Ivy League and top school graduates with multi-million dollar homes, Teslas, and their own literal fig trees in their back yards that complained about everything in life. I've now had the opportunity to live in multiple cultures with varying degrees of prosperity. These things taught me to know my value but to have perspective on what I'm really asking for.
Here I am considering selling all my belongings, buying a truck and an RV to go embrace the new open road that is remote work. Life isn't about looking back. It isn't even about getting what you want. It's about navigating the road in front of you and making the best of the opportunities in front of you and for everyone around you. All that to say, I've embraced the idea that whatever lies ahead is where I'm supposed to be and I needn't look at what my neighbors value or what they have because I don't care. This life is mine to live.
This isn't as uncommon a path as you might believe. I was enlisted in the USAF from 2005-2010, spent months and months Iraq and Afghanistan etc. I have a $500k house with a literal fig tree in my backyard now. I don't assume people in my position or better had an easier time just because they went to college. One of my best friends is a Physics PhD from an Ivy League and he's a complete wreck so, it doesn't necessarily guarantee anything in particular lol
I have a hard time believing that a computer scientist or engineer from a top school will not have an easier time gaining admittance into software engineering than someone not. Anyone not will always have a proverbial hill to climb. I would agree that continued success has diminishing returns from a degree. This is often the argument for designing interviews that reflect real world work.
That said, my point was really that if you can afford a house with a fig tree in Silicon Valley then in some way your stars aligned and to see people unhappy over frivolous things was an enlightening experience that taught me something. My stars didn't align, until they did, and I had to learn to appreciate that. It doesn't mean those people didn't need to overcome adversity or have a story worth listening to or admiring.
> This isn't as uncommon a path as you might believe. I was enlisted in the USAF from 2005-2010, spent months and months Iraq and Afghanistan etc.
I'd be interested in knowing the statistics on veterans in Silicon Valley and tech in general. I've met some, but I wouldn't call it common. I might agree that it's somewhere between common and uncommon, but who knows? If these statistics are collected they are not published or widely disseminated. When I usually meet veterans they're not enlisted, they're officers. The most public activity I've seen is a group at Google that has 2,000 members, I do not know how many of those work in engineering roles.
> I have a hard time believing that a computer scientist or engineer from a top school will not have an easier time gaining admittance into software engineering than someone not.
I think you both may be right. I would imagine that the formal education makes it a bit easier to "get your foot in the door" in the first place, when you're competing "on paper" with others. But once you are in the industry, performance and track record counts for a lot more.
In other words the degree probably does make it easier. But it might be only 20% easier and perhaps not 80-90% as some might assume.
Depends on your chosen specialisation too of course. I managed to pick a career in just the right area of software development where I could get away with having had a pitiful amount of education :-)
It also depends what you're going for. It's true, if you want a career in the most prestigious silicon valley firms, they were interviewing recent CS grads at high prestige schools.
But outside of that world, I was honestly surprised how little it mattered that I didn't have a CS degree. In a lot of ways, if I saw how friends in other fields were progressing and what it took for them to get there, it was objectively easier to be an uncredentialed developer.
The broader point about stars aligning is absolutely correct.
Sorry I'm in Austin, not Silicon Valley. There are a lot of enlisted veterans here in IT, but theres just a lot of veterans here in general so it might be exceptional ;P
Ah, yes. I restarted my career in Dallas as opposed to Austin, so I can definitely believe that. Maybe once I'm done touring the US that's where I'll go. Thanks for your perspective!
>I’d be interested in knowing the statistics on veterans in Silicon Valley and tech in general.
I’ve met quite few while living in the Bay Area. I moved to Austin a few years ago and there are even more of us here. You and I have made some similar choices in life though. I enlisted in 09 and got into tech after returning from Afghanistan as well.
Obviously if you think digital nomad live is for you then go for it. For me I want friends and companionship. My experience is that's not what nomads get. Friends requires you to be near by and spend time when them else they drift way. Sure you can keep in touch online but you won't really be a part of their life nor them a part of yours if you're not there to share your life with them. The same goes for a long term companion unless by some luck of the draw you manage to find someone that can join your open ride lifestyle. Some people don't need that. I do which I learned the hard way.
Depends too. If you’ve moved around a bunch already then your friends are probably scattered around and you don’t get to see them much. If you’re RVing around maybe you’ll see them more
I've had a very strangely similar path, however I still haven't given up on my teenage dreams: call me delusional! I like to think the military gave me the will strength to push until I get some (imperfect) version of what I want, and not let setbacks paint my forward outlook too much.
I'd agree with your conclusion and encourage you to sell everything and go have fun.
I haven't given up, I'm still here, still working in software. I'm just doing it my way now, with some new priorities, I suppose. The military is a complex subject for me and my friends. There are good things I can say and there are awful things I can say. Regardless, I will always be proud of what I did and accomplished in that time. It makes me proud you've made something of post-service life though, veterans will always hold a special place in my mind.
This is a fascinating subject. It looks like many people are commenting about alternative realities and that exploring them is a fool's game (BTW. I concur with that).
The thing which bothers me is upbeat comments about living here and now and planting the seeds for future changes. It feels like current problems (and desire to wish them away via woulda/counda/shoulda) didn't happen entirely randomly. These problems are a result of systematic behavior/decision making.
As an example, it's too easy to say to yourself, "I will start doing sport tomorrow". However, you wake up tomorrow and notice that your day is so busy that you don't have time to do sport until 9pm and by that time you are exhausted and can't do sport. And you repeat the cycle saying, "maybe tomorrow". You start teasing your day apart and find that to squeeze in sport won't require you just to add it, but also to kick something out. And that all the things you have the energy for in the day, you implicitly regarded as more important than sport. And as a result, you are stuck in the loop wishing to do something better but being limited by your other priorities.
And frankly, this bothers me way more. The immutability of the past is normal. Being so set in your ways that you can't change the future - this is what scares the shit out of me.
For me it's been helpful to understand who benefits from my actions in that particular moment, and then prioritized the ones where I benefit too.
In personal finance context they say to pay yourself first. I think this also applies when e.g. prioritizing health. And when paying yourself first, this also means doing things when most energy is available and leaving other things for when you're tired.
Other things could be a _higher_ priority than a new thing. Just to give you an example (for huge amount of people priority to earn money to be able to have food on the table trumps almost everything else).
I answered below. I chose sport activity, because it's so simple and clearly benefits everybody and still only 30% of adults do it.
If you go to more complex things and on the opposite side of scales put a lot of complex and tangled priorities, it becomes very unclear what benefits most and how to pay yourself first.
You're almost there. You're on the cusp. If you're really drawn to something you'll sacrifice everything before 9pm to make that thing happen. It might not work, it might not be a good idea from other perspectives, but if your desire drives you to what you think the world needs, you'll make time anyway possible.
Well.. I chose the simplest possible example. It has obvious benefits, and the only thing you have to figure out is to sacrifice some unknown other activity.
I wonder why "Less than 5% of adults participate in 30 minutes of physical activity each day; only one in three adults receive the recommended amount of physical activity each week." (https://www.hhs.gov/fitness/resource-center/facts-and-statis....) happens?
The answer is that there are so many other things that can stand between "desire drives you" and reality. Just to give you several examples: financial needs, physical or mental health issues, other priorities (kids, family, friendship, etc).
BTW. I am not saying that change is impossible. However, I am not buying "You're on the cusp". Over time you accumulate priorities, which you got by sacrificing a lot 5-10-15-20 years ago. These priorities are dear to your hard. Sacrificing (or even chipping away) from them is way harder than when you are a blank slate.
I'm 61, male, and started in software back in the mid 70s. First computer that I could physically touch was a PDP-8/M with an ASR-33 teletype with paper tape reader and punch.
In my mid-50s, I started listening to Alan Watts and learning about ancient Indian religions / philosophies. My world-view today is some kind of cross between Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. I'm a free will skeptic, as well.
While I'm not paralyzed by it, I've come to think that we can't know how any decision we make is going to turn out. We can't know with certainty if doing X is going to be good or bad for us in the long run. All we have are our own estimates of probabilities, and I'm not sure how well we can estimate them, either, honestly.
I also don't know who "I" am, or where I begin or end. In infancy and childhood, I think we come to accept a belief that "we" are individuals, each residing in our physical bodies. Yet I understand the Universe to be a single thing (a quantum field? a simulation?) and so the idea of us being individuals seems a bit off to me. I think we are far more connected and interdependent than we usually recognize.
One good outcome of my world view is that I don't really worry about passing away. A less pleasant outcome is that my world view is so out of the ordinary that I don't often connect with people that I can talk about this with in any serious way.
I share a lot with how you view the world, but could probably stand to learn a lot from you as well. I'm in my mid 30s, software developer, and generally open to spirituality but not in the conventional, western, judeo-christian sense.
One of my foundations of belief is that life is entirely about probabilities and chance. It's a sort of guiding force that I follow. I view everything similarly to how you do, in that we cannot possibly know for sure it's outcome. By extension, we cannot possibly know what the right choice is for us. Sometimes, you have to close your eyes and roll the dice.
I'm deeply interested in the random nature of the world / life. When you stop to think about it so much of our existence is truly random in nature right down to our conception. It boggles the mind to think how little control we had over even our own existence.
As for identity I'm also a free will skeptic as you put it.
Anyways, just thought I'd let you know that people like you are out there. I also find it a bummer that we're a huge minority, but such is life I suppose.
Being a skeptic of free will, do you believe your belief in determinism makes the knowledge of living in a deterministic world a moot point?
Even with things being predetermined, our conscience minds still desire to optimize our existences with what we ultimately see as choices and decisions.
I’m this case, free will can then be preserved as an ideological concept that emerges within a deterministic system that breeds consciousness.
That's funny, I just got a few books on Zen and while I don't know what to think of a lot of it, it's definitely a very new way of thinking (or not thinking I guess). It's almost an alternate universe version of Stoicism which I was pretty interested in when I was younger and harder on myself.
I definitely agree people way overestimate what they can predict about their choices. There are a few choices you can't take back but most of the time you're continuously choosing (mainly on auto-pilot) along a path, it's not a binary choice. Like most of us could, tomorrow, stop working in software and/or move to a different country for example. It would be hard but it's not like you chose once and now you're stuck forever.
Probably the literature about ten is better these days. When I read about it, it was mostly from D. T. Suzuki. I was surprised when I attended a zazen meditation in Kyoto a few years ago about the differences. It seems (after reading about it) that Suzuki was part of a fringe branch and not telling us about 'mainstream' Zen.
It sounds like you are going through what the math community went through upon the discovery of Godels Incompleteness Theorems.
While it’s important to know logic systems have limitations (somewhat of an analogue to our understanding of the world), it’s important that we make use of that knowledge by trying to find different mental frameworks that are useful to us and help us move closer to our desires (whether it be a framework for the discovery of more math or a framework that guides us further along our pursuit of happiness)
I’m in my 30s and have a similar world view though I’ve never paid much attention to religion and just sort of landed here by default. The system we’ve created for ourselves doesn’t care much for world views though. Its important to adapt to our micro environment as well as macro. This is probably why it’s rare to bump into likeminded people. You probably wouldn’t know I think like this if you met me either.
I have a similar view, although probably much more influenced by Nagarjuna and the Mulamadhyamakakarika. I noticed most of the western philosophers who I thought got closest to the truth - Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Wittgenstein on language, Hume on the self, Parfit - all seemed to have either been influenced by or have a lot of crossover with more eastern thought, which I hadn't taken as seriously as it deserved.
Normally I can get friends to agree with most of the propositions, even that 'they' don't ultimately exist in the conventional western sense, but I don't think they buy into it emotionally, which is probably where it counts.
> One good outcome of my world view is that I don't really worry about passing away. A less pleasant outcome is that my world view is so out of the ordinary that I don't often connect with people that I can talk about this with in any serious way.
I used to think like this, but then I saw the Star Trek TNG episode Tapestry [1] where the premise is much like this question. Picard accepts Q's offer to relive his life, and it turns out that even the negative things in Picard's life help to shape the good qualities he has.
I consider my life to be much the similar: even the negative things or the things I wish would change have helped shape qualities that I would not give away.
I think about that episode a lot in perspective of my life. I actually lived my life like Picard reliving his life. What really hit home was when he was transported back to the present and was questioned Troi and Riker about getting into command. They pretty much laughed at him. To me that really opened my eyes about who I am as a person. I liked being wise even young that it almost has created a retroactive effect my future prospects simply because of it. I've often been told "are you an old man?" by many adults when I was younger and in hindsight now I understand why. However I find it very stupid that human culture (or just western values) find that as a negative. For some reason were supposed to waste our youth and engage in risky behaviors. I just never saw it that way.
Whilst I enjoyed that episode, it was fictional. Did Picard really need to be stabbed in the heart, just to learn his lesson? (And, his 'unremarkable career' seemed to be a bigger criticism of Starfleet/the Federation than we normally see - what's wrong with an ordinary life?)
I would be happy to remove the trauma that I experienced in my past. I'd take the risk of being a different person - with different good qualities.
This is Q we're talking about. He's not the kind of character who would sit down with Picard over a cup of tea and talk him through why changing his past would change who he is. Humbling Picard by showing him the folly of his wish to change the past, while he lay on his deathbed, by making him choose to get stabbed through the heart is definitely more his style.
Also, I don't believe they portrayed Picard's "unremarkable" career negatively, except in Picard's own view (and Q's I guess).
I always like to do new and different things. It is the main reason I migrated several times and changed job many times. Currently I am doing my own startup. Sometimes I wonder what life would be if I live a simple boring life? Will I be more successful? or end up like Captain Picard in his alternate universe?
“Did you ever wonder what life would have been like if you’d said yes?” said Ridcully.
“No.”
“I suppose we’d have settled down, had children, grandchildren, that sort of thing…”
“What about the fire?” she said.
“What fire?”
“Swept through our house just after we were married. Killed us both.”
“What fire? I don’t know anything about any fire!”
Granny turned around.
“Of course not! It didn’t happen. But the point is, it might have happened. You can’t say ‘if this didn’t happen then that would have happened’ because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say ‘if only I’d..’ because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you’ll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking about it. So I don’t.”
Haha. This is exactly the kind of mindset I am trying to develop. I have spent a lot of my past overanalysing things and it has almost never helped me. All I got was tension, loss of hair and dark circles. I am going through the book “The Power if Letting Go” and it is fantastic.
Having read every Discworld novel and without looking it up, that sounds right. As I recall Mistress Weatherwax had been seeing alternate timelines as part of a side effect of the Elve's world intersecting the reality of the Disc, and she's married to Ridcully in some of them, as they apparently were involved in their youth. She does later note to Ridcully that, from what she saw, their alternate selves that had married appeared happy.
In my personal opinion it is one of the worst Discworld books, which still makes it pretty good mind you.
I went to a specialized high school (as a semi-anonymous account don't want to give too much detail), and as such more than a few of my close high school friends went on to be famous in their chosen profession, and a couple starred in some fairly well known movies. I ended up going to a top university, and one of my roommates ended up founding a successful internet company you've all heard of. My first job out of college was at tech company with a "boot camp" like training program for new recruits. One of my close colleagues eventually co-founded a financial trading company that made him phenomenally rich in his late 20s, and another colleague founded a well-known unicorn.
Perhaps because I was inculcated fairly early in a competitive environment, it's hard for me to look back and not woulda/coulda/shoulda it. Mainly I'd like to ask some of my successful ex-colleagues and friends (some of whom I'm still in contact with, so wouldn't be too hard I guess) if they have any significant regrets. One on hand they must know how incredibly lucky and fortunate they've been, but of course their lives have their own trials and tribulations. And my life is good, I have close friends and family, quite mundane, though at least a good mundane. But still, I find it hard sometimes to not at least wish for a future reincarnation, one where I have the natural talents or extra drive or whatever that is needed to grab that brass ring.
> one where I have the natural talents or extra drive or whatever that is needed to grab that brass ring.
It's interested that you didn't explicitly list "luck". I get that it's considered distasteful, but it's the reality of the world we live in - much of one's success comes down to dumb luck.
That said... I feel the same way as you do. For some reason I have always wanted more than I seem able to achieve. I strive, and I strive, but because of this or that short coming, or chance, I don't seem to reach the "brass ring".
I'm trying these days to just find peace and happiness with my life. I haven't jumped off the treadmill entirely, I've just turned down the speed. If I start a company and make millions some day, great. If I don't... if I end up a career man my whole life, but live comfortably with my wife... well, that's great too. I'm going to let go of the rudder a little bit and let the boat sail itself for a while.
You did win a lottery, just that it was against 99.999% of humans ever to live. It's natural to want more but it's also just as naturally feasible to bask in the lottery you did end up winning.
This topic of success and what contributes to it always makes me think back to this great video by Veritasium (aka. Derek Muller) titled "Is success luck or hard work?" [1].
While it's probably impossible to prove one way or another, I've personally grown to accept that I will never be fully satisfied with everything in my life. Accepting that fact has given me some kind of peace, because I no longer dwell on the what-ifs as much as I used to. It doesn't matter if I reach the goals I have in mind right now, as I'm bound to come up with new ones that are just out of my reach. I believe bettering oneself is good, but I also believe it's important to accept that there's never a goal to be reached there.
I wasted a lot of time in my life. I was into C++ programming many years before the first dotcom boom. But I did not really profit from it. Instead I studied for many years, then slacked off for a few years, and only started working full time as a software engineer at the age of 30, working on satellite operations and the ground system of the international space station.
I could have been a millionaire many times over if I had realised how valuable my skills at the age of 16, 18, 20 were.
On the other hand, only due to my weird, suboptimal path through life did I meet my wife, which is for me a global optimum. I literally can not think of anybody I would rather spend the rest of my life with.
Now I work at a startup at an age where most software engineers in SV are retiring. So it's all good.
> On the other hand, only due to my weird, suboptimal path through life did I meet my wife, which is for me a global optimum. I literally can not think of anybody I would rather spend the rest of my life with.
This got me choked up. You're a richer man than just about anyone else in this thread, my friend.
> On the other hand, only due to my weird, suboptimal path through life did I meet my wife, which is for me a global optimum. I literally can not think of anybody I would rather spend the rest of my life with.
I wasn’t working yet in 2000 but I’ve talked to a lot of people who were and the median outcome was that your stock wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on in the end.
It’s worth thinking about how we measure how “good” a life is and if that is superficial and too much influenced by fashion. For example the cliche is go travelling or get rich starting a business. “I raised kids” doesn’t have the same boastworthyness in a lot of circles, but arguably it’s more interesting. Or maybe not. What’s the life well lived metric?
I grew up Christian, and among Christian young people a common question was "What's God's plan for my life?"
In that context, I came across Micah 6:8 which spells it out about as plainly as you'll find anywhere:
"He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"
That seems like a standard that everyone can get behind. It gives you a standard by which to measure how well you're living, but your options remain open to do whatever you want as long as you do it justly, kindly, and humbly.
Thanks for your comment. I have enjoyed reading through these comments but I can't consider my own 'what could have been' without considering that which is outside of my self, namely God. My own beliefs do not see this life as the end. Therefore my present actions are shaped by my future hopes. I hope some day to be rewarded by God for my actions today. This seems more important to me than thinking about how my past actions may have made me more successful today. Many of the great moments in history were defined by men and woman giving up their lives for what they hoped for in the future. Not what they hoped would have happened in the past.
In my mental model it's implied, since people are the image of God and so being humble towards them is being humble towards God (and I'm not sure there's a context where humility exists independently of other people).
Humility is also useful when alone. I think X is true but let me double check can easily save your life irrespective of a belief in god or the presence of other people. Using a checklist before flying for example is an important recognition of your imperfection. Measure twice cut once is again the same idea.
Yes, something along this line occurred to me after posting, but I'd agree with you. Integrity is also arguably a case where humility can come into play even when people don't notice.
The idea is that everyone has unifying motivations, often in a higher power, where they derive their personal sense of morality from. Whether religion, family, tradition, survival, knowledge, the invisible hand of the market, a love of humanity or life for its own sake, sheer pleasure, whatever.
The point is that regardless of the original intent of the Judeo-Christian text, it seems an admirable enough message that can be recontextualized easily enough to fit those of different ethical and theological viewpoints on this forum. No hair-splitting or holy wars necessary.
The allusion to Alcoholics Anonymous is that the “acknowledging a higher power” step, while commonly assumed as pushing crypto-Christianity, can be reinterpreted by each individual participant as their own unifying motivator.
The paradox of twelve steps is that you are supposed to consider yourself at powerless and submit to your higher power yet at the same time every failing is only down to you and resets all progress.
I make no claims about the program as a whole, I was just dropping a reference to another situation where people ascribe religiosity to a reference to god or higher power that could easily be secularized, if preferred, for the sake of personal development.
The Christian POV is basically, "it doesn't matter how bad your life is because it will be great in the after life". In other words the good parts are ahead, period.
But if you don't believe then there is no guaranteed good parts ahead and the line above has no meaning.
I recently became acquainted with the teachings of Epicurus. He advocated living a simple life of simple pleasures surrounded by friends. It's almost a truism that seeking fame and fortune is a route to unhappiness. Not necessarily because these are bad things, but because the desires that drive these choices seem to be insatiable.
For me, (very) modest fortune and essentially zero fame seems to be the ideal situation. Like a paid off house, a nest egg that throws off $10K/month, and only family/friends know who I am.
My goals are about the same, and sometimes I worry whether they're ambitious enough. But they really are. It takes a very particular reference frame to make them "simple" or "modest." $120k is a 90th percentile income! And that's among people working full time for it.
The nice thing about a culture that exalts “I raised kids and they turned out well” as a “life well lived metric” is that its broadly accessible. You can be born below average in intelligence and creativity and still be a good dad or mom, participate in local civic organizations, etc.
That life isn’t for everyone, and it doesn’t work out for everyone. But it’s also worth considering the average person. The average person isn’t going to be professionally successful, or travel the world, or do anything significant. But they can raise kids who probably love them and come to thanksgiving, etc. I think our modern ways of thinking are leaving the typical person behind.
I know of a few cases where this has happened. In one case the parents were abusive, so this is on them. The other case was great parents and an immature youth. With time that youth will mature and come around when he recognizes the goodness in his parents. In the end, it’s success if you raise your kids with love.
I wish I was happy. And I think some hard-to-treat mental illness is preventing my day-to-day happiness.
When I feel envious of others, it's not only that they're rich and they travel a lot. They also have friends. They might even have a family they care about. They have hobbies and they have _something_ to do. A lot of them say they have problems with mental health, but you can't film a year-long depressive episode and upload it to YouTube, so I have to take their word for it. And in truth I don't. The world seems clean-split between people who have everything and people who have it even harder than me, and I always just feel alone in this middle ground, where I have all the material elements to be healthy and happy but I can't put them together.
I have many things other people want, but I never find myself sitting back and saying "I'm glad I have this." I always want things I can't have, and it hurts a lot.
I feel like i've been in your shoes, in a past life. I've come to believe that happiness is like the horizon, or the sunset. It's a fuzzy concept, which disappears if you go too close to it.
The horizon is not a place, and the sunset is not a moment. They are aggregate phenomena. You can't set them as targets, because they don't exist physically. You can observe them as composite entities, emerging in the right context.
Such is happiness. You can't set it as an objective, because it doesn't exist. And chasing it directly will only cause you suffering. Instead, try to set smaller goals, and let it emerge on its own.
Take care of your physical health. Take care of your relationships. Allocate time, not much, but regularly, for activities that you like (hobbies). Widen your intellectual horizons, e.g. by reading or listening to diverse people. Get better at what you do professionally. Try to find some form of meditation that works for you.
Occasionally, try writing long, thoughtful comments on forums :)
Try to do these without looking too far into it; just trust the process. And at some point, you'll have the revelation "man, it's been quite some time since i felt unhappy!"
> I have all the material elements to be healthy and happy but I can't put them together.
I often have this same thought. I tend to try and phrase it as "I'm learning to put them together". I don't believe that we can't.
> I have many things other people want, but I never find myself sitting back and saying "I'm glad I have this." I always want things I can't have, and it hurts a lot.
There is one quick choice you have the power to make here which might help, which is to choose to be grateful about the things you do have.
And it's not mutually exclusive. I'm not saying you'll immediately stop striving for more. But while engaging in that striving (which is hard to stop!), you can choose, also, to notice and be thankful for the small things you do already have.
Recognise throughout the day the small things that could make you feel grateful if you let them. Just acknowledge those things briefly and try to build a small habit around that way of thinking.
> The world seems clean-split between people who have everything and people who have it even harder than me, and I always just feel alone in this middle ground, where I have all the material elements to be healthy and happy but I can't put them together.
You're not as alone as you think, because this just resonated like I can't even explain.
> The world seems clean-split between people who have everything and people who have it even harder than me, and I always just feel alone in this middle ground, where I have all the material elements to be healthy
You're not alone, there's plenty of people who prioritized career over all else and 10-15 years ended up with plenty of money but otherwise no life.
Raising kids is the "default" choice. More than 50% of people do it. Getting rich or traveling for your life are much rarer, hence more interesting
Edit: ah yes downvotes. Think about it this way. You meet someone with 6 fingers on each hand, kinda interesting right? Minutes later you meet someone with 5 fingers, also interesting?
Having kids? Probably not. Raising them? Probably yes. Same with fingers: having them is more interesting if they can do something novel with them (say, play an instrument). But this being HN, I know plenty of people that travel a lot (no idea if that’s typical).
I mean that's just straight-up asking for the purpose of life: You can't possibly give a rational logical answer. It's (quite beautifully in my opinion) one of those questions that everybody can only answer for themselves.
Life is like a long mountain trail in a great migration. There are criss-crossing paths everywhere, and you have to decide which to take. The goal is to climb until you reach the summit. There'll always be valleys and hills, so you won't always be going up. But each step you take forward, and each foot higher in elevation, is your life getting better. If you can say that most of the time you were moving forward and higher, to me that's a well-lived life.
Could you have taken a shorter path and gotten there faster? Sure! But the longer you're on the path, the more time you have to smell the flowers, listen to the birds sing, see the trees swaying in the wind. Maybe you're content to stay exactly where you are. But I think most of us should keep climbing, because there's always new trails to see. Who cares how we get there as long as we keep going up.
You can make changes today that will pay dividends in 10 years, so maybe focus on that instead.
I was widowed pretty young (as widowers go), so I have done my share of playing the what-if game with the past. Ultimately it is not a productive exercise, and I try not to do it. If I catch myself dwelling in unlived lives, I try to refocus on the one still in front of me.
> You can make changes today that will pay dividends in 10 years, so maybe focus on that instead.
Exactly this. No matter what your imagined and real futures turn out to be, the good ones all require effort and investment in the present. You can’t go wrong with making investments in your life now.
Technically I think the second best time would be 20 years ago less one Planck time. Which is to say, now would be the 11,700,454,120,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000th best time. :)
It's tempting to lay in bed after a bad life event, thinking about turning back the clock, but that never ever leads to anything productive or positive.
Best case scenario is you can't fall asleep until 4AM and screw up your sleep schedule for a week. Worst case is you start exhibiting learned helplessness and go into depression for a year or several.
I always try to refocus and think about what I can do for the people who were there for me during bad times, and how I can learn from my misfortune. (Sometimes, there's nothing to learn and it's just a bad stroke of luck. Even then - it's not going to help playing the what-if game)
Ultimately we are the people we are both because of good and bad things that happened to us.
I tell any young adult who will listen the mistakes I made. It's nice when they stop by with stories and whiskey the days before Christmas and see them come up strong, happy, and on a solid path towards success. It's only through the stories of our mistakes that we can escape the clutches of time.
I agree, partially, I'm adamant about the fact that it's even more important to talk about successes, than failures.
"Vicarious learning from the experiences of others saves making errors yourself, but I regard the study of successes as being basically more important than the studyof failures. As I will several times say, there are so many ways of being wrong and so few of being right, studying successes is more efficient, and furthermore when your turn comes you will know how to succeed rather than how to fail!"
I've gotten a lot more out of studying failures. Especially other people's failures. People who are honest with themselves can warn you around the mistakes they made, but people who succeed rarely have much luck identifying which selection of choices got them there.
I think the reason is that success is usually cumulative: each little win builds on the last until it's obvious you're going in the right direction. Those wins often depend on random or temporary things you have little control over. For example: CED was the perfect format for the decade RCA started developing it in, but it took until VHS redefined the market to finish it.[0]
Meanwhile one mistake can send everything tumbling down. Study enough mistakes and you might know enough of what to avoid to stay afloat long enough to find the right chain of wins.
In principle, I agree with the fact that studying failures teaches one more, whether more is better when it comes to learning stands to be discussed, however.
What I mean by this is that, although you may profit from your parents sharing a plethora of don't-dos such as avoiding drugs, staying away from toxic relationships, not dwelling on your insecurities, et cetera, having regular abstract conversations about how "thinking deeply about my predicament, my objectives and how to reach them despite the former" might be much more useful to you.
In short, the first approach teaches you, potentially, numerous, isolated lessons about specific circumstances you will likely never face. Yes, you certainly learned more things, but whether those things will be useful to you, particularly, is unclear and only time can tell.
If you and your parents, however, have a thorough discussion about what allowed them to lead a happy life, as in the second scenario, both pushing and pulling, trying to discover what it really was and looking to find consensus regarding attitudes, processes, ideas, roadblocks, etc, you might learn a framework what will be useful forever, regardless of the concrete circumstances you are faced with.
Nevertheless, this comment of yours is spot on:
> people who succeed rarely have much luck identifying which selection of choices got them there.
Therefore, I really emphasize that not only the mentor should share the reasons and methods behind their success, the listener must be able to understand why and whether they were as useful as the mentor portrays them.
Maybe. Trying to emulate other people's success always ended in failure for me whether in life or opinionated coding frameworks. Americas Test Kitchen approach to recipes when they first explain all the ways they failed is infinitely more valuable to me than just the one successful recipe.
I did give a considerable amount of time to thinking about the what-if scenarios one day and when I looked down those other paths of what might have been I realized I would have to give up something I had come to love to pursue those.
Who I am may not be the best but I made these choices. I can't travel to past to berate that version of me. If I'm dissatisfied it's up to me to change that for future me.
Any alternative choices I could have made in my youth would have prevented me from having the children I have now, so there’s no significant decision I would ever like to change.
I don't have a kid, but I tell my nieces/nephews that while they are young to search for and practice something that interests them. Could be painting, coding, dancing, chess, languages, music, karate... anything that they enjoy doing that involves being an active participant in the process. Because by the time they are in their late teens / early 20s, they'll have thousands of hours of practice under their belt and opportunities available to them by dint of that mastery.
I don't regret my childhood largely because it's immutable, but when I reflect upon it I would've preferred to have spent a lot less time playing video games.
Early teens is a time when kids should focus on social activities, not be obsessed by some individualistic activity... because the most important skill they can develop at this age is their social skill. I would trade my best technical skills for better social skills (which I didn't manage to develop at this crucial age) as I can see from experience now that that's what brings you what really matters in life: good friends, success in romantic relationships, even success at work where I observe that most people who get "promoted" are the people who others like, not necessarily the best technically.
> Could be painting, coding, dancing, chess, languages, music, karate...
> Early teens is a time when kids should focus on social activities, not be obsessed by some individualistic activity
I don't think GP is suggesting they spend their time exclusively on these activities. But it seems like good advice that kids to spend some time on such endeavours!
Besides, many of these activities could involve (or lead to) socialising with other kids in the process, towards a common goal. Which is an amazing way to develop social skills too.
3 years ago my marriage fell apart and few months after that my health fell. With a miracle I was given a second shot of life. What that meant however is that I lost a good part of my 30s. I sat there, 37, divorced and recovered from a major illness with nothing to show. My friends had kids etc and were getting in to the next chapter of life while I was left feeling what if I had done things differently, tried different things.
BUT its not productive to do so. Every one does it and its ok, but it should not be an obsession. I realized that everything doesnt go according to plan and I need to chart my path, not compare to others. Whats good for others, might not be yours. You have to decided what you want to do in the future.
I feel like this is a huge exaggeration of "hell" or a demeaning of the concept. For example, if you asked me if I'd rather meet my best possible self, or have my arm broken with a bat, it would be a no-brainer. I'm actually pretty curious to meet my best possible self and would probably pay some amount of money to do so, whereas I'd very much prefer to never have my arm broken again. And being hit with a bat is one of the most banal forms of suffering you could imagine.
I get that it is trying to say something abstract, like, you could be a lot better than what you are, but it just sounds so incredibly ignorant of how horrible things could be that it irritates me.
It is a sentence that makes no sense whatsoever, but it feels slightly profound and gives a sense of smugness when liked. Similar to the Heinlein's quote about specialization being for insects, which for some reason attracts nerds like catnip attracts cats.
If I ever meet a better or greater version of myself, I expect to get (figuratively) smacked upside the head and told exactly what to do with what little I have left of life.
In every case I can think of, it's better to know. Even when it doesn't seem like it.
Whenever I get annoyed by the relentlessly banal life lessons of Goggins, I remind myself that his audience is mostly made up of troubled teenagers who took their latest shower 3 weeks ago and middle-age professionals of some sorts who cannot close their trousers anymore because of additional calories brought on by family life.
I actually think Goggins's ideas are the opposite of banal. The concept of "limbic resistance", as brought up by Andrew Huberman when talking about Goggins, is really fascinating [0].
The concept that doing things that you hate doing is "exercising of the muscle of willpower" is very revealing. It's something I've tried to do adopt, and it's been a very powerful motivator in getting me to work out and reduce procrastination. As banal as it may sound — like the father in Calvin and Hobbes saying "it builds character" — it's also a great way of framing it.
And I assure you I'm neither a
> "troubled teenager who took my latest shower 3 weeks ago"
or a
> "middle-age professional of some sort who cannot close his trousers anymore because of additional calories brought on by family life".
Your comment doesn't paint you as a very positive person. Of course, it's fine if you'd like to be that way, but my question is: why? What good does writing a comment like this do you (or me, or anyone reading it)? To me, these sorts of despondent and cynical comments seem to come from the very types of people you think listen to Goggins.
I hate to contradict you, but I am being told I am quite a positive person who's helped many people on their journey to become more accomplished people. I did and I am doing quite well academically, professionally, and athletically. And I became accomplished by doing the exact opposite of what the Goggings, that other lunatic of Jocko Willink, Tim Kennedy and the Army, Navy Seals "influencers" recommend (I hope you are understand they are no different from the tik-tok dancers in terms of their ultimate motivation: money, spotlight, followers). In particular, I became accomplished by enjoying what I was doing, not f-this, f-that, let's run for 30 miles with the hips close to the ground (Goggings) shouting nonsense at our (poor) partner who is filming from the car. How can you listen to that guy if not for the occasional laugh at the lunacy?
Why someone who is not a troubled teenager (and all these influencers were troubled teens) or a middle-age disappointed man (the message is always for men, where are the women?) should wake up at 4:30 am to do squats, bjj, or running? There is no reason whatsoever if you are not in one of those buckets. It is counter-productive, it is silly, it is kicking oneself in the genitals to tell their troubled internal voice: see, I can hurt myself, I can take it, I am strong. What an insecure, troubled way of approaching life!
Why someone should give up on things and actions that have been pleasurable since the dawn of times for all, say, normal people? I am thinking, and these are all hated by the military influencers, about a glass of wine, an escapade, a sudden decision that is not joining the Navy Seals, a night out with friends that ends at 4 am (not staying up late shooting other people, a favorite of Goggins and Willink. Yes, to give them a better future, I know. I have always found funny that men join the military at 17 because they, as they never forget to repeat, want a better world, which is always also what the US want, a terrific coincidence).
"The concept that doing things that you hate doing is "exercising of the muscle of willpower" is very revealing. It's something I've tried to do adopt, and it's been a very powerful motivator in getting me to work out and reduce procrastination." - That's terrible (long-term, short-term anything can work) advice, outside the tails (like people who hate showers, kids who hate calculations, middle-age men and women who hate small portions). Why not working toward enjoying the run, the squats, the learning? Why not "following" people who have a sense of lightness around them, who are "fun" to be around while being accomplished, instead of these soldier-philosophers who seem always pissed and look incapable of not putting a life lesson even in the broccoli they had for dinner?
Let me give you an example: I don't like exercising in the morning, it often gives me an headache, I tend to go hard and it tires me out more than I like during the day, I prefer to workout after 5 pm (like many other people). Now, tell me: why should I do "something I hate to exercise my willpower", instead of— listen to this insight—exercising after 5 pm?
"What good does writing a comment like this do you (or me, or anyone reading it)?" - There is no big vision behind my comment; but since I have seen one too many people buying into this "hard-man for hard times" trope, I would like them to read my cynical comment and say to themselves: they (i.e., me) are right, I am not a troubled teenager that the Army can straighten up, I am not a disappointed man who needs to be radicalized by these early-risers lunatics, I am better than that.
That doesn't sound so bad actually. Once you have one foot out the door, who cares? If somebody told me that I once lived another life that I can't remember as some alien species, and I didn't accomplish any of the things that members of those species value, it wouldn't bother me.
> "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."