>Be comforted, that in the face of all irridity and disillusionment, and despite the changing fortunes of time, there is always a big future in computer maintenance.
There are a number of interesting links from that page, including Invictus, but perhaps the most interesting is the reference to this from Theodore Roosevelt (which has a wonderful connection to Rugby and Nelson Mandela):
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Yep, that was the passage that Nelson Mandela gave to Francois Pienaar before the final, not Invictus. I'm not sure why Eastwood chose to use the latter poem instead.
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss
Show me a startup founder that could do that without blogging about it.
The title revision is less clear. The original title, along the lines of "How to live life at any age" I believe was referencing a post from earlier yesterday titled along the lines of "How to live your 20's".
The larger conversation (and intent of the post) is lost now.
I like this, even though I tend not to like pithy life advice. Granted, it's usually poorly-written compared to this (think the sort of stuff you might see on your Facebook feed), but life is too complicated, has too many circumstances and exceptions, for good, general, actionable advice to exist, like, at all. So when I do enjoy single-line observations, it's because they powerfully communicate something I already understand. Or, even better, they bring forward something I understood all the pieces of but had yet to put together.
I feel that the value in a poem like this is not that it teaches you how to live life, but that it gives you a tool to keep in mind good general principles. A sort of mnemonic device for consciousness.
I gave this to my parents as a birthday gift, one of my favorite writings on life wisdom and finding inner peace. There's so much written on self help, yet this summarizes it all well. Various stanzas keep coming up in different situations and it keeps making me remember how to handle that situation. There's so many -isms out there that everyone fights about but this combines the most basic, common sense elements of them all.
Funny, about half the links I've put in comments end up as submissions soon later (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5119372). I'm not saying people are using my comments as fodder, just a funny coincidence.
My grandfather had this poem framed and hanged in his home office and has since been cherished in the family (especially after he passed away). Also a personal favorite.
For example:
> Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself; and heed well their advice, even though they be turkeys.