What If You Could Do It All Over?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/what-if-you-could-do-it-all-over

by jonas21 • 6 years ago

447 436 6 years ago

newyorker.com

person_of_color7• 6 years ago

Definitely not be a software engineer. No one told me how incredibly low the social status is.

EDIT: I guess it was suspicious that 99% of my high school circle picked law or finance or business courses instead.

telesilla• 6 years ago

Couldn't you build something beautiful and useful and add to the world's treasures? That's not the mark of a low status person.

spacechild1• 6 years ago

How many software developers actually get a chance to “add to the world's treasures“? Building yet another CRUD web app doesn't meet the definition in my book. I'm not saying it's not possible, but you have to be rather lucky.

api3• 6 years ago

Hah. Nope. A career where you can make money and move up over time is not low status. Try being a blue collar member of the working poor, or someone deep in debt from a useless degree working a dead end service job. Software is a very cushy job compared with what more than half this country has.

person_of_color7• 6 years ago

It's the lowest of the white collar jobs.

courtf• 6 years ago

I've done those things, and so has my husband. Not sure either of us would go back, but software has some uniquely frustrating aspects and tends to attract a certain type of oblivious, entitled asshole. You get real tired of fiddling with tiny complicated things for hours on end while some puffed up middle management bro breaths down your neck. I've thought more than once about going back to serving drinks at the bars, but I guess I have higher aspirations now. Sort of a blessing and a curse.

imgabe4• 6 years ago

Don't get a job based on how impressive it sounds when you tell people about it at parties. You will spend far more time doing the job than you will talking about it at parties.

nickthemagicman2• 6 years ago

Yeah but you'll take home way more dates at those parties.

sanderjd2• 6 years ago

Talking about your job at parties is way down the list of reasons social status matters. It's a fair point that people shouldn't make all their decisions with status in mind, but it is also wrong to belittle it as a consideration.

bonoboTP6• 6 years ago

Also, there will always be higher status people around you. If you're a successful doctor, and move around in fancy doctor circles, you will know more accomplished doctors, directors of famous hospitals or whatever. You can always be bitter from envy if you're blinded by the status game. The struggle never ends, there's no "arriving". Software dev salaries (in the US) let you live way beyond material needs and allows tremendous luxuries (relative to other times and places).

It's a self inflicted mental suffering that people bring on themselves. Instead of enjoying that high wealth they fume about why they aren't as impressive as fancy lawyers, ceos, politicians and doctors...

selimthegrim5• 6 years ago

You could try being a grad student in New Orleans. The James Earl Jones quote from Conan is apt here (my point being they will be thankful for what they have).

If it makes them feel better I have to teach the 99% of their high school they are talking about and they all seem pretty one track minded.

nickthemagicman2• 6 years ago

Conan O'Brien or Conan the barbarian?

Nav_Panel• 6 years ago

Status is always relative to social context. I'm sorry you feel that way about your place in whatever your local social world is.

ronyeh• 6 years ago

Upvoted though I disagree with you. I'm sure there is a wide variance of outcomes in software, but I think if you work at it, you can make a fulfilling career out of software. Don't give up, as it is possible your current job just isn't a right fit for you.

Counter anecdote: I know law and finance and business folks who wished they studied more computers.

sanderjd2• 6 years ago

In my experience that's because they think our work is easier and that we do less of it than they do, for more pay. But that actually goes to the parent's point; lazy entitled and overpaid is part of the low status perception.

konjin• 6 years ago

Just curious what do you think a high social status position is and what does that entail?

Tade0• 6 years ago

Care to elaborate?

I find this take really interesting, because my (and my peers') experience so far has been very different.

mhh__2• 6 years ago

Are you Indian by any chance? I'm curious because - at least from Indian people I've seen and met - it (social status) seems to be hugely more important than what I see around me locally.

I do think about my literal social status (i.e. friends, sex, etc.) but I don't think thought along those lines has ever really influenced my decision making - beyond a vague desire to outdo people born better than me.

WrtCdEvrydy• 6 years ago

What exactly is the social status you were looking for?

bcrosby95• 6 years ago

Funny. I'm disappointed by the status it's gained over the last 20 years. I miss when it was even lower status than it is now.

throwaway1892622• 6 years ago

Haha do 500 hours of leetcode and go work for FAANG. It's a totally different level of social status than regular engineers and the only qualifications needed is leetcode mediums in 20 mins

person_of_color7• 6 years ago

Er, I work for a FAANG, but I'll never reach investment banking status.

akhilcacharya4• 6 years ago

of leetcode and go work for FAANG

I work at a FAANG and the people that I work with aren't terribly different social status from the ones I worked with during my first internship, they're just ~20 years younger.

kulig• 6 years ago

Lmao. Start lifting weights and learn how to dress. Nobody gives a damn what your job is.

If you actually think lawyer is a high status job then youre watching too many movies.

selimthegrim5• 6 years ago

I don’t know why people are downvoting you, the median lawyer isn’t

randomopining• 6 years ago

Yeah legit no one of importance cares. If you’re in good shape, look good, and have enough disposable income to do fun stuff when you want (any software engineer does)... anybody will find you interesting enough.

offtop52• 6 years ago

Depends on where you come from.

Half my friends are doing service jobs or gig work.

I can invest in my best friends studio , planing on seeing another friend in Asia next year, can take multiple international vacations per year.

I have no credit card debt.

All from wanting to learn a bit of Unity once upon a time. You can't compare yourself to the top 5% of income earners while ignoring the bottom 95%

gen2203• 6 years ago

Some scattered thoughts.

I'd recommend talking with your friends, and asking them if they find their work fulfilling. If it falls short of their expectations, ask which dimensions contribute the most to the diff.

This might give you some perspective on what life would be like in another vertical. It probably isn't as rosy as you imagine, but you might have done this already.

---

I would recommend to younger people, that they shouldn't make their career choice through the lens of prestige, because time has demonstrated that social standing is flimsy and unpredictable.

A profession's relative prestige varies regionally, temporally, socioeconomically, and in the eye of the beholder. These are mutable dimensions for the duration of a normal career.

It's kind of like the old advice: if you're interested in marrying someone for life, don't marry based on one dimension alone (looks, money, health, personality, family). Any of these can invert completely.

In finance terms, it's like betting your financial portfoilo on the 40-year performance of a single ETF: not outright stupid because some people will be successful, but it's not super wise.

If this doesn't help you feel better, maybe you should consider changing careers? As a SWE, you have enough intellectual capital, time and domain-specific education is the only thing standing in your way.

saltyfamiliar• 6 years ago

What are some higher status jobs where I can use my above average ability to work with computers and sheer tenacity to compensate for my woefully underdeveloped social skills?

person_of_color7• 6 years ago

Actuary.

closeparen3• 6 years ago

Social status associated with book-smarts and STEM jobs is very culturally dependent. Try hanging out with immigrants.

Bakary5• 6 years ago

Wanting high status out of just being a type of professional is like expecting status out of purchasing an iPhone.

wait_a_minute• 6 years ago

Software engineers in the USA get paid well enough on average that you can live a modest life, save up serious capital, and then bootstrap your own company or side hustle. That will get you more status.

pdog• 6 years ago

“Someone once told me the definition of Hell: The last day you have on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.”

sebmellen3• 6 years ago

This reminds me of David Goggins talking about how he wanted to "do better than God's chart."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fx1mGhTXdg

borroka4• 6 years ago

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.

drpgq• 6 years ago

Sartre's definition of Hell was other people.

andi9995• 6 years ago

Which means he had a pretty good opinion about himself?

newerduder• 6 years ago

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.

tolbish• 6 years ago

The implication is that living life with an innate sense of agency leads to a better outcome.

Does that mean the definition of Heaven is when the person you ended up becoming meets the person you could have wound up being?

qntty• 6 years ago

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.

ALittleLight• 6 years ago

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.

krustyburger• 6 years ago

I propose a synthesis: hell is having your arm broken with a baseball bat by the best possible version of yourself.

borroka4• 6 years ago

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.

acwan932• 6 years ago

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."

Alex3917• 6 years ago

On the same topic, one of my favorite Moth stories is Alternate Ithaca Tom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70CCXXz0qzo

Felony_Fred2• 6 years ago

Excellent break down of the concept by Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto ( 9:18 );

Jordan Peterson Pick Your Sacrifice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5--W9mhC4zA

anoxor• 6 years ago

Yes, this.

war10254• 6 years ago

Youtube has been recommending a lot of Jordan Peterson to me lately.

I know there are people who hate on him for basically misinterpretations of things he has said regarding transgender issues.

But then on top of that, there are right wing people that hate him equally much and think he's basically a nonsense-spouting sycophant.

I guess listening to the things he has to say, I think they are on par with the more useful things I ever heard from a professor at university.

Anyway, he seems to be someone people love to hate.

locusofself• 6 years ago

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.

ternaryoperator2• 6 years ago

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.

acwan932• 6 years ago

Yeah I got the book as soon as I heard that quote from Master of None. It’s an eloquent novel that really highlights mental health and self-identity.

superkuh• 6 years ago

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.

bartwe• 6 years ago

Thanks, that was an enjoyable read

andi9995• 6 years ago

Thanks! That was very interesting. Luckily today's new hip culture (IT nomad) is original and not pushed by some authors..... Wait a minute...

pansa2• 6 years ago

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.

madeofpalk• 6 years ago

Given some games have their own scripting systems and languages I’m not sure if that’s all so true!

contravariant• 6 years ago

I consider 'generalist' to be a speciality, though I might be a bit odd.

ubertoop• 6 years ago

I think everyone wrestles with this a little bit.

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.

anderspitman• 6 years ago

I couldn’t be both a successful programming language designer and a successful game developer

Why not? Jonathan Blow seems to be making a pretty good run at it.

mysterydip• 6 years ago

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.

hnal943• 6 years ago

Rob Gilbert is a counter example. He famously designed SCUMM and then made amazing games with it.

dorchadas5• 6 years ago

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.

costcopizza• 6 years ago

I feel the exact same way, and am the exact same age.

But we’re 29, not 49 or even 39. There’re still figs on the tree.

xvedejas• 6 years ago

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.

bonniemuffin• 6 years ago

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. :)

MaximumYComb2• 6 years ago

I wasted my 20's and got diagnosed with cancer at 30. It changed my perspective quite a bit and so far my 30's have been the best time of my life.

jjklmn2• 6 years ago

Similar situation here. If you don't mind me asking, what did you study and what's your current job?

F_J_H2• 6 years ago

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.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 6 years ago

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.

XorNot2• 6 years ago

Quotes like this have gotten a lot less comforting as I've aged. It all ends in darkness and black holes, and in the end not even those.

The best I've got these days is that I suspect none of it means anything. But I hope I'm wrong.

ffhhj• 6 years ago

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.

Buttons840• 6 years ago

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.

baby2• 6 years ago

And yet mistakes in late game can end up costing you the whole game.

baby2• 6 years ago

And yet stupid mistakes in late game can end up costing you the whole game.

bmc7505• 6 years ago

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...

tunesmith2• 6 years ago

There's a pretty good 4-season tv show about that concept called Being Erica. It mostly aired in Canada.

aruss• 6 years ago

The title is a Kierkegaard quote :)

ekianjo• 6 years ago

sounds like Stein's;Gate

Waterluvian• 6 years ago

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.

hn_99• 6 years ago

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.

twelvechairs• 6 years ago

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")

teekert2• 6 years ago

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?

shortandsweet2• 6 years ago

Why do you assume it's not your fault?

ben_w• 6 years ago

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.

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

dm3192• 6 years ago

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.

0df8dkdf2• 6 years ago

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.

CaptArmchair2• 6 years ago

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]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Jar

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.

state_less• 6 years ago

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.

ivvve• 6 years ago

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.

gfxgirl3• 6 years ago

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.

mellosouls• 6 years ago

That's a beautiful rendering of the anxiety of choice and FOMO.

quickthrower22• 6 years ago

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?

jackcosgrove• 6 years ago

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.

sokoloff2• 6 years ago

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.

chki• 6 years ago

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.

throwaway1892622• 6 years ago

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?

User23• 6 years ago

Raising kids is what every single one of your ancestors did. It’s entirely orthogonal to those other things.

manwe150• 6 years ago

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).

porknubbins• 6 years ago

Most rich people I’ve met are on average thoroughly ordinary. Its what made me realize I deserve wealthy as much as they do.

quickthrower22• 6 years ago

Sure it depends on you audience though.

rayiner2• 6 years ago

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.

selimthegrim5• 6 years ago

What if your kids reject you and want nothing to do with you?

indigochill3• 6 years ago

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.

Retric3• 6 years ago

with your God is a rather major point you just ignored from that line. No offense intended, I simply thought it was quite interesting.

p0d• 6 years ago

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.

gfxgirl3• 6 years ago

I'm going to say I find this a very poor POV.

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.

someelephant• 6 years ago

Value your life based on your own opinions not those of others. If you must value others, do it after you appreciate the human underneath.

0xbadcafebee• 6 years ago

The distance and the slope, I'd say.

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.

ReactiveJelly4• 6 years ago

For me?

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.

rewgs• 6 years ago

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.

flopunctro• 6 years ago

I wish I was happy.

IMHO, this is a mistake, if not _the_ mistake.

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!"

tailspin201910• 6 years ago

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.

For more on this, Google "gratitude journal".

burntoutfire• 6 years ago

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.

onecommentman5• 6 years ago

“‘I raised kids’ doesn’t have the same boastworthyness in a lot of circles...”

Wait twenty years and it will be the only thing...

latexr• 6 years ago

“I raised kids” doesn’t have the same boastworthyness in a lot of circles, but arguably it’s more interesting.

But it doesn’t make you happier: https://youtu.be/2EiV4-ClcIs?t=2180

rewtraw• 6 years ago

I recommend the book "Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch for a fun techno-thriller take on the idea of "alternative lives". Great read!

buggy7593• 6 years ago

Agreed!

ljm• 6 years ago

What if I could do it all over?

I wouldn't. I used to think I could, now I don't want to.

Where would I like to be? Don't know that either. I'm happy with not knowing.

Haul4ss• 6 years ago

You can't, so don't bother thinking about it.

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.

antisthenes• 6 years ago

I came to the same conclusion.

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.

ImaCake• 6 years ago

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.

Felony_Fred2• 6 years ago

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. - Chinese Proverb

zappo29382• 6 years ago

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.

jdsalaro2• 6 years ago

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!"

~ The art of doing science and engineering

cprayingmantis• 6 years ago

Agreed.

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.

dave_sid• 6 years ago

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.

joncrane• 6 years ago

Exactly. Try to imagine the "what if" games you will be playing in your own head in 10 years, and try to optimize for that.

ljlolel• 6 years ago

And this is quantum time travel

snakeboy• 6 years ago

Reminds me of a touching moment in Before Sunrise.

colmvp• 6 years ago

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.

brabel2• 6 years ago

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.

tailspin201910• 6 years ago

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.

secondbreakfast• 6 years ago

You can do what you wish you did yesterday, today.

WalterBright• 6 years ago

It's a popular fantasy. See "Replay" by Ken Grimwood. Or all those endless movies where someone gets to do high school over again, like "Peggy Sue Got Married". Or even "Groundhog Day". "A Christmas Carol". "It's a Wonderful Life". And on and on.

dredmorbius• 6 years ago

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind another, with its own twist.

Apocryphon5• 6 years ago

Palm Springs came out on Hulu this year and continues in that mold.

I do think certain scenarios like Replay or Groundhog Day accord additional advantages because the relived lives stack up, and one’s knowledge, even mastery, accumulate.

matwood• 6 years ago

I came here to mention Replay. I’m glad someone beat me to it. Great book, and really made me think a bit more about what’s important.

lovecg• 6 years ago

“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”

— Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

buggy7593• 6 years ago

Great book

aazaa• 6 years ago

It’s likely, Miller thinks, that capitalism, “with its isolation of individuals and its accelerating generation of choices and chances,” has increased the number of our unlived lives. “The elevation of choice as an absolute good, the experience of chance as a strange affront, the increasing number of exciting, stultifying decisions we must make, the review of the past to improve future outcomes”—all these “feed the people we’re not.” Advertisers sell us things by getting us to imagine better versions of ourselves, even though there’s only one life to live: it’s “yolo + fomo,” a friend tells Miller, summing up the situation nicely. The nature of work deepens the problem. “Unlike the agricultural and industrial societies that preceded it,” Miller writes, our “professional society” is “made up of specialized careers, ladders of achievement.” You make your choice, forgoing others: year by year, you “clamber up into your future,” thinking back on the ladders unclimbed.

Freedom is a weird thing. Most would say that more personal freedom is a good thing, at least for themselves. Yet so many behave in exactly the opposite way. I'm reminded of Paul Graham's recent essay How to Think for Yourself, and this passage about ideologies:

The independent-minded thus have a horror of ideologies, which require one to accept a whole collection of beliefs at once, and to treat them as articles of faith. To an independent-minded person that would seem revolting, just as it would seem to someone fastidious about food to take a bite of a submarine sandwich filled with a large variety of ingredients of indeterminate age and provenance.

http://paulgraham.com/think.html

Nobody forces an ideology on someone, and yet the number of people who gleefully latch onto ideologies seems to be exploding.

Could there be a connection between greater freedom and greater desire to restrict that freedom - not from the outside, but from within?

Apocryphon5• 6 years ago

Kierkegaard said that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

glovett• 6 years ago

Measures of happiness and satisfaction are subjective states of mind. This is what I try to remind myself when I am feeling wistful and longing.

A relevant folktale: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/japan.html#stonecutter

JustARandomGuy• 6 years ago

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.

[1] https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Tapestry_(episode)

MeinBlutIstBlau2• 6 years ago

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.

throwaway98797• 6 years ago

You aren’t “supposed” waste your youth. Those who waste can’t stand seeing others doing it differently.

It does not mean that you live right, but people’s opinions are often reflections of their own insecurities.

mikewarot• 6 years ago

I watched said episode, and it does make you think.

learnstats2• 6 years ago

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.

AnIdiotOnTheNet2• 6 years ago

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).

richajak3• 6 years ago

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?

aurizon• 6 years ago

World economic domination by foreseen stock booms/crashes etc...

Swizec• 6 years ago

The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best is now.

m23khan• 6 years ago

This...I love this answer. Resonates with quiet few of my experiences lately. Cheers Friend!

andi9995• 6 years ago

What about bitcoin?

sebmellen3• 6 years ago

Unfortunately, the ways of men are such that we cannot truly be ourselves. How strange, that the very thing which makes us human, makes us so anti-human, and yet… In that case, is our anti-human-ness not also the most human thing possible? Never did I think it would pay to make such bad decisions, and never did I think that, had I made better decisions, I might have been worse off. Perhaps the very things that put me here are the challenges God has set out for me to face, and that means that I am right where I should be, and I always have been all along!
So what is there to do? Should I adopt a strategy of total non-action, of being a passive observer to my thoughts and my bodily emotions and my neuroses? Should I somehow elevate myself to a point beyond my own mind, where I am exposed to fewer neuroses?
No… I am in a checkmate, a cosmic checkmate. And the only thing to do is to do what I can as best I can, and hope the rest of my life may continue unfazed.

[0] https://bedaring.org/post/free-writing/2020-12-21/

buggy7593• 6 years ago

Many people would say that if you do it all over it would end up exactly the same.

offtop52• 6 years ago

Skimmed over this.

What an amazing way to make yourself sick. Remunerating is an absolutely horrible habit. Don't assume anyone else has a perfect life. My last partner was divorced, but put up a nice front for family and friends up until she seperated.

As far as I'm concerned until the day I die I don't have a second to waste on things I can't change anyway.

sevagh• 6 years ago

Did you mean ruminating?

MeinBlutIstBlau2• 6 years ago

As far as I'm concerned until the day I die I don't have a second to waste on things I can't change anyway.

This is the real ticket to happiness imo. Once you realize there are just an enumerable amount of things you cannot directly change and start thinking "Why am I so angry about this?" you eventually learn to be happy.

kodah6• 6 years ago

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.

AYBABTME• 6 years ago

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.

kodah6• 6 years ago

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.

tailspin201910• 6 years ago

You're not delusional

pram2• 6 years ago

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

kodah6• 6 years ago

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.

That said, I'm happy to fanboy one of my favorite authors and Silicon Valley veterans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Fick

tailspin201910• 6 years ago

I think we're a similar age. Based on this comment I wish I had half the wisdom that you do.

My twenties were filled with stress, frustration, confusion, and at times anger.

Similar for me, but like you, I'm a different (I think better) person as a result, so it's difficult to wish I'd had an easier time.

...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 will be forever grateful to the people I had in my life that did this for me too. I've been exceptionally lucky in this respect.

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.

This sounds awesome. Good luck!!

gfxgirl3• 6 years ago

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.

monkeynotes• 6 years ago

If you are young enough there is time for a year or two on the road and time after to settle and build relationships.

redisman8• 6 years ago

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

pkid• 6 years ago

At some point you might find comfort in knowing you are on the right track, regardless of how far back in line you might be.

_nckn• 6 years ago

I always consider my life is strange. Born in a 3rd world country in a broken home, families fight like in drama, many divorces and remarriage. I went where whoever my current father at that time went, moving from city to city, school to school. Then I find myself in the US, from odd jobs such as dry clean, laundry, sushi, deli, to church admin, to now working as SWE in one of big US tech company in NYC. Married a wife from another country as well. Me and my wife are different culturally, language, faith, and socio-economic background. One day I woke up in a remote village where her grandparents cultivate rice, in a traditional home and where the bathtub is still traditional, hearing the sound of cicadas and see the morning sun, and I thought to myself "how did I end up here?"

It's strange, I left my home country and now wherever I go I see people that speaks different language than me, buildings that I'm not familiar with. My community where I am active with is also different than me. It is a strange feeling. I hate airports because whenever I am in airports I always have a mixed feeling. The feeling of leaving my current place to visit another home in another place.

Now my heart is in three different countries (or cities, to be precise). Every vacation season I have to decide which country to visit and to which family. Life is short. I saw my brother's baby, and then on the next vacation that baby already knew how to walk. My parents and grandparents are getting older. My kids and my brother's kids will speak different languages, grow up differently, and so does my wife's kids with her sisters'. I have a dream of uniting them in one place during vacation and see how those kids react to one another even though they can't communicate in one language, I think that'd be a hilarious sight but very wholesome. I hope there will be faster way to travel invented within our lifetime, maybe Concorde again?

I guess this is the life of immigrants. We are immigrants, this is our way of life. I often asked myself what would happen if I stayed in my home country? I'd marry my current girlfriend at that time, maybe help my family's business, or do something else. I don't know.

For anyone curious: I was born and grew up in Jakarta (Indonesia), and my wife grew up in Tokyo (Japan), and now I work in NYC. Life is surely strange. I feel very insignificant every time I think about this and I realize, there are millions, and billions of people in this planet with stories as unique or more unique than me. The world is is a strange place.

One day, maybe we will retire in Japan, or in Indonesia. Who knows. It's too far in the future. What I do now is cherish every moment I have, knowing the future will be different.

ReactiveJelly4• 6 years ago

I feel very insignificant every time I think about this and I realize, there are millions, and billions of people in this planet with stories as unique or more unique than me.

And less unique.

From my house, I can drive to my hometown, visit my family, and drive back in one day. I left the USA once, except for that I never spent a continuous week outside of the state where I was born.

A lot of people online say that travel makes you a better person. But it's expensive, so I have to just hope I'm not missing too much.

christiansakai5• 6 years ago

I'd say its not the travel itself, because travel by itself is pretty shallow. I'd say the experience of living with other people who are especially socio-economically or racially different than you, that changes things.

xyzelement4• 6 years ago

> A lot of people online say that travel makes you a better person.

Probably every experience you have can make you a better person, it doesn't need to be travel.

I used to travel a ton for work and fun (there was a year where I hit 6 continents in a 10-month window) but spending the last 9 months in a one-bedroom apartment with my wife and our newborn is no less mind opening.

In fact, like everything, travel gets old. At some point you know that you "got it" - you can be dropped in a random point on the earth and make something out of it - and yet you may not know how to be at one place for a long time (I am learning that now.)

Also, it makes things less special. In a way I am jealous of people who are dreaming of going to Paris and then experience it for the first time.

You do you - save your money, invest in relationships around you, learn things on line, be a good child and parent. If that's "all" you have to show against someone who has been everywhere but doesn't have what you have, you're ahead.

rochak4• 6 years ago

Thanks for sharing this. Really put things into perspective.

christiansakai5• 6 years ago

You're welcome!

brabel2• 6 years ago

I have a similar life, though without the part of a broken home at childhood (parents fought but not out of ordinary I think). It's really hard not being able to visit family often, at most once a year (if you're lucky and if there's no pandemics stopping you!).

The hardest part for me is that my wife doesn't like my family, so she refuses to visit them... as half the family lives in one country and half in another, and we're in yet another country, it's almost impossible for us to unite the whole family. My parents never met hers... and I only met my brother's youngest child when she was already 5. Last time I went to visit my parents I went alone... and again last time I went to visit my brother (who lives on the other side of the planet from my parents - I live almost in the middle). Sometimes I wish I hadn't started the wave of moving to some other country (which my sister, then my brother followed years later)... as they moved to the country I'd been in, I had already moved again to another country because of my wife. Now I am finally planning to have kids (quite late but still time) I wonder how we're going to manage without any family nearby... and how my parents will feel when we never come to visit... that's if I convince the wife to get a kid, we're running out of time quickly and she doesn't seem at all bothered by it.

I'm in a position I must make a decision: perhaps go back to my country and get a new wife there (even though I would hate to go through a divorce) close to at least some of my family... or just let the time pass by and wait for the inevitable, letting old age arrive and die without a family on a strange country. How can I know what to do?! Leaving this great country where I am will probably be the biggest mistake I will ever make (I have a good job, great house and extreme social security here - none of which I would have in my own country), but staying here will likely lead to a meaningless, though comfortable life. What would you do?

lioeters• 6 years ago

Wow, what a question. This is exactly the kind of situation that can branch out to completely different lives.

There's an interesting contrast: the risk-taking choice into the unknown, or the comfortable but boring choice to stay.

If you choose to take the easy path, when you're old you might look back and ask, "Did I make the right choice? What kind of different life would I have had?" Or, if things go well, you might be a satisfied person.

If you choose to go into the unknown, there is a chance that things will not work out better. Maybe you'll have a more difficult life of struggle. Then you might wish that you had stayed in the comfortable but boring life you had.

good job, great house and extreme social security here - none of which I would have in my own country

That's what you'd be risking for an unknown future..

I imagine people would recommend that you take the risk, take a chance to create a completely different life that's more interesting. But, I also imagine that those same people would choose for themselves the comfortable path. From your story, I think you'll regret it later in life if you don't take the chance.

christiansakai5• 6 years ago

I think if I were you I'd try to think about the future. I am lucky that my wife's family really welcome me even though my family background, not only that we are foreigners, but also not quite a good background to have. Due to my family's side financial situation, both families from Indonesia and Japan never met each other physically, only through skype, maybe one or two times and we are in our 3rd year of the marriage. Pretty much I went to get married on my own, in Japan, without any side of my family coming. We just spent a nice dinner.

Maybe your wife isn't ready yet to see your family. My wife, being raised in a clean 1st world country, still is not used to the living condition when we visit Indonesia. It is understandable, so most likely we will retire in Japan instead of Indonesia one day.

As immigrants we already accepted our way of life. We will grow older, and our kids too, without being able to grow together with their contemporaries within the family circle.

I understand what you say about staying here you might end up having a meaningless life. Trust me, I thought about it a lot too. Hence that's why I set some things straight with my wife. Who knows what will happen in the future, but I said we gonna work here for a while, maybe until kids go to college, and we gonna go back to Japan. We decide that we aren't taking any long and expensive mortgage, but if possible, only 10 year mortgage. 10 years is a short time. Once we finish that mortgage, we can do whatever we want, and see where to go next.

Again, it is too far to think of the future, but my current plan gives me and my wife hope and goal to aim to. We'll enjoy the journey while we are here.

richajak3• 6 years ago

Keep CGK, Insert SIN, replace NRT with TPE, JFK with YYZ, then add CGK again after that. That is my life :-) Nice to meet you, Chris. We are in similar journey. Maybe I will add another destination after this, see how life goes.

Brabel, I moved back to home country and brought my wife. That can also be a solution for you.

christiansakai5• 6 years ago

Wow, a fellow traveler on this many road. Greetings!

Ahh, one day I will. Today I still can't afford it. My family's side, parent, grandparent, etc messed up a lot financially and lost everything. I can't afford to go back right now or even move to Japan, my current salary is a reserve for in case anything goes wrong with them.

redisman8• 6 years ago

That’s the life of an immigrant. You lose the concept of “home”. You can try to build one for the next generation but for you it’s most likely gone forever. It’s very strange because I don’t feel at home in my new country but I’ve also been gone for so long that my old country feels just as alien.

christiansakai5• 6 years ago

Yeah I guess this is the life we have now. It is really strange. Now I understand why mankind want to achieve immortality. Life is too short, and distance is too far. There's no greater value in life than living in the moment with people you treasure.

handojin• 6 years ago

You could find yourself living the Strange Life of Ivan Osokin?

Impossible• 6 years ago

I once pitched a startup idea that would enable this if I was given "infinite money and infinite time". Most folks ignored it, but my elderly parents still tell me to start a business to work on this right now

neonate• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/OiAdj

whiddershins• 6 years ago

I would do nothing differently.

I’ve yet to meet someone I would trade lives with. What more can I aspire to?

ddingus• 6 years ago

For a long time, I thought about this in terms of different choices.

Truth is, one could make those choices and arrive at an outcome leading right back to this very question.

Unable to resolve that, I started to think about the scope of human experiences.

If I were to do it over, I would do it as a very different person. Roll the die, and go, same as happened this time.

Even then, it could be very similar...

war10254• 6 years ago

My dad got brain cancer when I was 25. That event accelerated our decision to have kids, and as a result our first daughter was born a few days after I turned 27.

The reasoning I came to is that given the probabilities of how children are conceived, if my dad didn't have cancer, our first child would have been someone else than our daughter.

So basically wishing anything different for my dad would be wishing that my daughter didn't exist.

And I guess that made his death easier for me to accept.

xyzelement4• 6 years ago

Amazing wisdom. In Judaism we say that bad things that happen to us are enablers of the good things. Whatever one believes, it's a really good attitude. Thank you for sharing your story.

Bakary5• 6 years ago

At the risk of sounding vulgar, moving your hips at a slightly different rhythm or conceiving half a second later or any number of completely minute changes to the timeline would also have resulted in a completely different child.

This reminds of the moment when Emil Cioran's mother mentioned how she should have aborted him outright. This led him to the insight that his life was largely an accident contingent on small factors, and that it therefore need not be taken so seriously.

war10254• 6 years ago

I guess that's my point. Wishing for anything different in the past means wishing away anything good that happened after that moment.

missedthecue• 6 years ago

"any number of completely minute changes to the timeline would also have resulted in a completely different child."

Can you prove this?

prawn2• 6 years ago

You might appreciate the film About Time. Ignore the cover image which sells it short. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2194499/

The cover and premise push it as a rom com, but I enjoyed the relationship between the son and father much more.

icebergonfire• 6 years ago

Seconding this recommendation, under the dressing of a rom-com it thoroughly explores the _what-if_ aspect we are discussing here.

hn_throwaway_99• 6 years ago

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.

Bakary5• 6 years ago

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.

rubicon332• 6 years ago

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.

juhatl• 6 years ago

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.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I

ZephyrBlu2• 6 years ago

I like Derek and his videos, but his point is a lot easier to make from the position of a very successful person.

For most people this is a very bitter pill to swallow.

ChrisMarshallNY• 6 years ago

Probably wouldn’t change a thing.

Everything that has happened to me; good and bad, has made me who I am today.

I’m cool with that. I’ve had a pretty big share of bad, and there’s lots of folks who think I “haven’t lived up to my potential,” meaning that I didn’t give them what they wanted from me.

At this stage in my life, I am strangely satisfied. Never thought I’d be happy, the way I am, but it’s a funny old world.

It could have turned out a lot worse. I am truly blessed.

Reminds me of Sliding Doors. Interesting movie.

woahisme• 6 years ago

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.

klyrs2• 6 years ago

Sometimes I encounter this thought and it trips a silly cycle. Maybe I'd go back and sink my money in bitcoin when it crashed at $37? But then I remember that I was an undergrad, so even at that price I could afford 10 BTC or so without regrettable consequences. Shit, that isn't even enough to buy a house. Turns out my education was the better investment. Placing my attention on today, and the future, is a better exercise.

michaelsbradley• 6 years ago

While everyone can look back with regret, wishing to correct one's mistakes or redo a failed attempt, we know that it is beyond our power to do so. But it is not beyond God's power to bring some good out of it. I don't see how we can read the Gospels and come up with any other answer. Nor do the lives of Christ's saints lead us to any other conclusion.

If we do not always understand why God allows certain events in our lives — why He permits the evils we do or endure — the saint's witness assures us: the same mercy that restores life, that can reunite mother and son, may also permit death as the prelude to restoration.

— Fr. John Henry Hanson, O. Praem., Saint Monica and the Child of her Tears, 2019

https://stjosemaria.org/saint-monica-child-of-her-tears/

benlivengood• 6 years ago

The Everett interpretation implies that I took most of the forks in the road.

rdlecler12• 6 years ago

Most of us feel this, but an Elon Musk or Bill Gates may find this thought of an alternate life foreign, or at least horrifying.

xyzelement4• 6 years ago

Funny, I'd think the other way. Everything I know about these guys is they constantly want an alternate life - and they work to make it happen.

They both could have "stopped" decades ago and have achieved more than 99.999999% of people who ever lived, but instead they are pushing against something different continuously.

rdlecler12• 6 years ago

Do they want an alternative self or an alternative world?

fortran77• 6 years ago

I'm wondering if the point of this article has been missed. To me the point was here:

We seem to find meaning in what’s never happened. Our self-portraits use a lot of negative space.

That what we didn't do, the choices not made, are as essential to us being us as the choices we did. It's what "The Road Not Taken" is really about--as Joshua Rothman knows, but many people miss, including the guy who wrote that sticky-sweet self-help book.

sircastor• 6 years ago

I think if I could “do it all over” it wouldn’t be any particular life choices I’d make differently, but to seek mental health treatment earlier on. I learned only recently that I suffer from depression, and I feel if I would have learned that earlier, I could have/would have understood myself a lot better. I don’t know if that would have changed my decisions, but I can tell you just knowing that information has change my life.

tailspin201910• 6 years ago

Good luck with your treatment. Mindfulness, a bunch of good books, and later some drugs all helped me in different but significant ways!

victorronin3• 6 years ago

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.

alltakendamned• 6 years ago

If everything is a priority, nothing is.

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.

victorronin3• 6 years ago

If everything is a priority, nothing is.

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.

8bitsrule• 6 years ago

Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops. - H. L. Mencken

shortandsweet2• 6 years ago

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.

victorronin3• 6 years ago

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.

Bellamy2• 6 years ago

There are tools like Habinator to change your long term behavior. You just need to know what you want, which is the tricky part.

Bellamy2• 6 years ago

https://habinator.com

stakkur• 6 years ago

Happiness is giving up all hope of a better past.

the_only_law• 6 years ago

Hell yes I would. Sure, you can’t change the past, sure , you can work now to try to correct those past mistakes, but often they’re made too expensive to be worth fixing now.

Razengan• 6 years ago

I for one would love to reincarnate with my memories from this life intact.

The best combination of starting over + immortality.

Funnily enough, this might actually be quite possible to achieve with sufficient technology.

at_a_remove• 6 years ago

Perhaps the only productive thought that comes out of ruminating on this topic is, come the revolution, the guidance counselors will be first against the wall. Honestly, I had no idea that the profession of actuary even existed, but I would have likely been rather good at it, having built my own primitive statistical laws as a kid playing with dice and taking grad-level courses in stats as an undergraduate. And gracious did I ask the guidance counselors what was out there.

I entered college as a Nuke E, then rather quickly realized that (at the time), there wasn't much of a career in it if you didn't want to work in a submarine. A guidance counselor could have clued me in to that kind of thing. I switched to physics, as it would be more general, only to, after observing the actual lives lived by the faculty and the PhD students, that the competition was quite fierce for such meager stakes. Noticing that my brilliant professors might have second jobs or rustbuckets to get to work, noting that a few of them were looking a bit threadbare, it was quite a shock.

Guidance counselors ought to have a lot of this information on tap. Perhaps they do now, but at the time, it wasn't available at my high school.

Perhaps we are drawn to this topic if only for the younger generations.

kortilla2• 6 years ago

Guidance counselors often have this but have to walk on eggshells because they can’t tell most kids that their parents’ careers were terrible decisions. That results in rage calls, complaint letters, etc.

So they have to take this dumb approach of “assist the teenager with the barely developed brain do whatever whimsical shit he/she wants that might haunt them for life”.

“Sure son, being a clown sounds pretty cool. Here are some 4 year acting degrees that cost $180k. That sounds high but don’t worry because you can easily take it all out in government loans. But it probably be worth it because these are the top schools in the country!”

darren_• 6 years ago

“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.”

rochak4• 6 years ago

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.

tailspin201910• 6 years ago

Had to look this up. Looks like it's from Terry Pratchett's "Lords and Ladies"?

AnIdiotOnTheNet2• 6 years ago

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.

kmlevitt• 6 years ago

I used to daydream about what I would do if I woke up in my 17 year old body as a high school senior, complete with all the knowledge I had gained since. What would I do differently if I knew then what I know now?

Getting married and having a kid killed it, though. Doing things from scratch would at a minimum mean having a different kid with the same wife, so now when I fantasize about this all I think about is what I would lose.

cookingrobot• 6 years ago

Five years ago I tried to rent a house I liked and didn’t get it. A couple months ago I saw it was for sale with two days left to the sale date. I bought it and am sitting in it now. It feels very strange, like I got on a train I missed.

nraval1729• 6 years ago

For anyone wanting to have a fictional take on this subject, I'd recommend reading Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.

jes• 6 years ago

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.

rorykoehler• 6 years ago

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.

rubicon332• 6 years ago

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.

alkank• 6 years ago

I am quite excited to hear someone having almost identical views as I do, also being a software engineer (almost) in my mid 30s.

As you also indicated I genuinely struggle to find people with similar frequencies and views.

derangedHorse3• 6 years ago

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.

redisman8• 6 years ago

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.

andi9995• 6 years ago

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.

AQuantized• 6 years ago

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.

cantexplain• 6 years ago

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'm in exactly the same boat, and I am only 28.

jffhn• 6 years ago

we can't know how any decision we make is going to turn out.

Reminds me of: "The man quite often knows what he does, he never knows what does what he does." (P. Valery)

I also don't know who "I" am.

"Only the shallow know themselves." (O. Wilde)

derangedHorse3• 6 years ago

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)

seibelj• 6 years ago

”It’s likely, Miller thinks, that capitalism, “with its isolation of individuals and its accelerating generation of choices and chances,” has increased the number of our unlived lives.”

Wouldn’t be a New Yorker article without a dig at capitalism. Capitalism is individuals choosing how to invest their own money. Any deviation from private capital is socialism and we live in an extremely socialist society already.

dokem• 6 years ago

What if I could fly?

dmje• 6 years ago

Lovely piece.

I'm struck by how many of the comments revolve entirely around career choices. I wonder if that's a us bias or a world bias or just a HN bias. Career can be consuming but it's only a facet of life's choices, not the whole thing. Maybe it's the bit we feel we have most agency over. Either way, interesting.

fy20• 6 years ago

Last year I had my first kid, and it has really got me thinking about a lot of things in life including whether I want to continue my career in software developer. Sure the pay is good, it's a pretty cushy job (compared to something like a labourer), and I feel I'm pretty good at what I do... but I wish for something more fulfilling.

I just feel that in my career path, all my jobs have been about making other people (investors) more money and extracting value from markets rather than building something truly valuable to the world. I did actually work in a stint at an NGO, but that was so filled with a bureaucracy and wasting money I had to go back to a for-profit company.

I'm feeling that maybe I should leave the software engineering career and do something completely different (what I don't know), but I'd still like to do programming on the side. I just fell into this career as it was what I was good at.

How anyone here been at a similar cross roads in life? Which path did you choose?

ck425• 6 years ago

I'm in the same position. No advice yet. I've been trying to figure out why I want a meaningful career/job so much (rather than being satisfied with cushy) but no insights yet.

redisman8• 6 years ago

I would recommend keeping it for a few years. Working from home is a godsend for infants and toddlers. I’m also often thinking what else could I do but the problem is that almost no career is portable like software engineering. There are credentials and local requirements and relationships which are not as important in software.

My current thinking is to de-emphasize work for the kid years. Maybe get a more boring stable job with minimal hours and focus on the kids. There are a lot of adventures and experiences with them that no job will replicate.

spidey1• 6 years ago

I, very fortunately, landed a small NGO as my first dev job out of boot camp. We're a team of 3 with full autonomy over how we structure ourselves and the tools we use. Also, the bureaucracy is little to none.

Based on what I've read here, other sites, friends and colleagues, I should have changed jobs at least a couple of times by now but I've been here almost 4 years now and don't regret it. If you've found a place that you find fulfilling then I don't think I need to follow conventional advice. The downsides are less exposure to different project types and not working with a bigger team of experienced devs. I need to compensate for this by putting in extra effort on my side but I still think I've made the right choice for now.

I think if I ended up in a commercial dev job, I would have started looking at other options as well. It makes a real difference when you see you work being used for a greater good.

While you're considering other options, maybe also consider joining a smaller dev team where you have more autonomy and less red tape.

bvcvbuiy• 6 years ago

Do something meaningful in your free time (and try to work less and have more free time).

Jaxtek4• 6 years ago

I am in my early 20s and in my first job.This thread is eye-opening.I am gonna pay my loans,quit the job and build (or start) something.I didn't know if it's the right thing to do.But after reading this thread,I feel like I am in the right path.Thanks to everyone for sharing their thoughts.

rochak4• 6 years ago

I am glad you are attending to your calling, but do take time to analyse everything - pros and cons - before making any rash decisions.

Jaxtek4• 6 years ago

Yes sure! I don't have any responsibilities at this age.So there can't be a better time than now to try things out.We (I) have the energy ,time and "freedom" required to do something crazy.I might lose some time and energy but there can't be a better time than now.So we (I) should keep building things and learn a lot.Many millionaires wish they started earlier[1].I already regret wasting my college years.So I don't wanna "miss out" this time.Thank you everyone for your advice

[1]https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/heres-what-these-20-million...

ZephyrBlu2• 6 years ago

I'm also in my early 20s. Don't quit your job. Your job is stability.

If building/starting something doesn't work out then you'll be in a bad position.

Build/start something on the side, then if it becomes successful you can safely quit your job.

You might also find inspiration, collaborators or opportunities from your job. It's not all bad.

Jaxtek4• 6 years ago

Thanks! I am building something on the side and I'll quit my job only if the side project gains some traction. Also finding a job is not that tough in my area.

galeos• 6 years ago

Ken Grimwood's book 'Replay' [1] tackles this subject, with the story of a man who is able to relive his life and take different paths.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/068816112X

ahoyhoy• 6 years ago

I think about this book all of the time. What rang true to me is that the protagonist never really "figures things out".

rklaehn• 6 years ago

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.

rochak4• 6 years ago

It all works out in the end, I guess. If it hasn’t, it isn’t the end.

tailspin201910• 6 years ago

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 is inspiring. Thanks for sharing!

honkdaddy• 6 years ago

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.

redisman8• 6 years ago

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.

te• 6 years ago

"You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” — C S Lewis

yason• 6 years ago

If you really could go back and choose differently the first thing that would happen is you would eventually become lazy. You wouldn't have to think too deeply or listen to your guts in making your choices because you could effectively just undo and retry.

Your life would basically revert to depth-first search instead of carving out your own, unique path in life. This would also mean it would be much, much easier to be unhappy because you could just switch to another branch and see if the grass is greened on the other side instead of having to learn to see the green you have now.

The inability to redo choices is like death: without death, life itself would be dead. It could not pressure you to make choices, to overcome yourself, dare to go for the love of your life or that enormously ambitious career, and eventually navigate yourself into a life where you grow to be happy with what you have instead of what you want. Without the clock ticking you wouldn't make the best of you in life. Similarly, if you could backtrack to your old choices you wouldn't be compelled to learn from them and they would be rendered worthless.

grenoire• 6 years ago

I do agree to some extent, but depth-first search is not the correct allegory for the algorithm. You do follow a node to the end with depth-first. I think you meant breadth-first.

jeffe• 6 years ago

I think it would be most accurate to say its a backtracking algorithm, since you presumably would be exploring a certain path continually until it becomes unsatisfactory.

XorNot2• 6 years ago

Pontifications on the idea that life is meaningless without death are a bit rich coming from members of a species which is still mortal.

Get back to me when it's choice not an inevitability and I bet we find much different answers.

unixhero• 6 years ago

Great discussion here and interesting topic too. But I am out, trigger warning, may cause depression.

jjklmn2• 6 years ago

Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken revolves around the fact that both pathways inevitably lead to the same end though:

" Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,"
" I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

Ironically, a close friend of Robert Frost joined the army and died in WW1, as a result of Frost's poem, believing he had to choose another path as well.

[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken]

_leo• 6 years ago

I used to wonder about the different life paths I could have taken, or could take in the future, and it would make me very anxious. Anxious that I would "waste" my life, that I wouldn't seize the opportunity to make the absolute best of it, that I would fail the only thing that mattered in my existence.

I changed my perspective. In a way I now compare life to what it would have been to never have been born, and it's wonderful. I feel privileged and gifted to have been "given" (metaphorically for me, but it's up to one's beliefs) the chance to live, to experience the truly insane thing that it is to be a human being! Sure, maybe I could've had more, but in a way it's like being upset because you sold your startup for 1 billion instead of 2 billion...

mvellandi• 6 years ago

I would have punched a kid at 16 and kissed Cassandra at 19. That's about it -- many years later, I'm happy with a family today :)

tailspin201910• 6 years ago

This made me chuckle

beardyw• 6 years ago

"What If You Could Do It All Over?" - well without the benefit of hindsight it would be exactly the same of course. Free will exists up to the time we make a choice, but that is just the weighing up of the situation. The choice itself is inevitable.

When we release a dice from our hand it could land on any face, but the face it lands on isn't truly random, it is just too hard to establish the factors which caused it. So with our choices.

A sure belief that my choices right or wrong were all I could do at the time has saved me from endless doubt and speculation. The only choices I can make are today.

I saw the film About Time recently which is based on this whole idea of going back and doing it differently - with hindsight. Whilst it was quite enjoyable, the inconsistencies caused by the idea just shouted out throughout. Life isn't and can't be like that.

mikhailfranco• 6 years ago

The strong divergence of paths in the state space of life, based on small random serendipities reminds me of the film:

Run, Lola, Run

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130827/

On the general midlife crisis of regrets and time-running out, see:

2019 Wilkins–Bernal–Medawar lecture:

Life begins at 40: the demographic and cultural roots of the midlife crisis

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2020.000...

jwilk• 6 years ago

I also recommend Kieślowski's "Przypadek" ("Blind Chance"):

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084549/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxu7Z3uOLWg (full movie with English subtitles)

cubano• 6 years ago

If only.

I'd love more, judge less.

Laugh more, perhaps even cry more, but yell less.

I'd listen more, speak less.

And finally, I'd be so much less selfish, and so much more giving.

If I could do it all over.

paulpauper• 6 years ago

How does this guy know so much. Reading this article is like an phone book of name drops and references. I know ppl with master's degrees who do not even know nearly as much. I should have stayed in school longer and done more reading so I would know more. I guess that answers the question of what I would do I if had to do it allover again. Sure beats what I am doing now. I think being a success writer is one of the best jobs in the world even if the pay is not that great because it is high status and you have an impact, whereas many tech jobs may pay better but it feels like you are sometimes working in a vacuum and not getting recognized for your contributions.

TrackerFF• 6 years ago

Some thoughts on that

1. This is likely not some stream of consciousness piece, where he basically writes his article as it comes up with stuff. It takes time, it has probably been edited numerous times, there's probably been lots of research, etc.

2. He writes that he studied English in grad. school, so I'm just going to assume that he's well-read. Probably had his fair share of exposure to the classics, as well as modern literature.

redisman8• 6 years ago

I thought it was a bit too referential and it kept breaking the flow of the article. I get it you got an advanced English degree now let’s get on with it

borroka4• 6 years ago

The personal references were interesting, the literary references were way too many. This was not a scientific paper in which it is important to present what was done and when and how; here, the author is talking about a very common thought or reflection for any of us (what could have become of me if...?) and what a particular author thought about their un-lived lives at a certain point in time is largely irrelevant.

tluyben2• 6 years ago

Move away from my homecountry and from the city far sooner and care far less about money.

20thCB2• 6 years ago

My 20s were spent living the single bachelor party life in London in the 90s. Noughties I had 3 kids and emigrated to Australia. Then I hit 40...then 50. Now I'm 52, still in good health. I have a job, a partner, family, a few savings. Sure I haven't written the next great novel or got a PHD, but I sure as hell don't worry about what might have been.

ilamont• 6 years ago

I look at how my high school friends ended up and it’s amazing how personality traits/biases, career choices, life partners, residency in certain cities and fate (or chance) altered our trajectories. One person who I thought would go very far has struggled terribly after he and his spouse were dealt a string of bad hands. Another made a career choice that is poisoning mind and body but is too late to leave now. Others have done well and I don’t think would change anything.

cushychicken• 6 years ago

One of the wisest things my dad has ever said to me:

"Don't worry so much about whether you made the right decision. Instead, focus your energy on making the decision you made, right."

It's fruitless to think about making a different choice in hindsight.

It's really empowering to assign yourself the agency to make the best choices you can from the options ahead of you.

nullc2• 6 years ago

I don't often experience anxiety.

One day I came across a silly writing prompt thread on Reddit along the lines "What would your mind was transported back to you as a 14-year old?"... Presumably anticipating lots of comments about buying Apple shares and Bitcoin.

I was struck by the sheer impossibility of retracing my footsteps to get back all the things I've liked about my life, the loss of loved ones who only exist as they are as a result of interactions with me I could never reproduce.

It's just a silly hypothetical, but I find it crushing to even describe it in a comment. The anxiety it produces is physical, distracting, disorienting, and reliably predictable. It made the article even difficulty to skim. Like the author writes, I find it easier to imagine different lives for other people.

I like what I've lived very much and the people in my life.

What If You Could Do It All Over? -- I say: Thanks but no thanks. ... and please don't mention the idea again!

nullc2• 6 years ago

I feel less anxious about the form of this idea expressed by the artsy film Mr. Nobody.

hindsightbias• 6 years ago

The guys who stuck with mainframes have more hair, money and toys.

wyclif• 6 years ago

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” ~ Mae West

criveros• 6 years ago

There is nothing to do over, as I have not done anything. I am here through a series of events that have been out of my control.

As I currently lay on a bunkbed on a little cottage on a mountain somewhere in Europe, I could have never predicted or actively have made a choice to bring me here. If I believe I did, through consciously setting a goal, the series of events or choice to get me to that point would have been out of my control.

There is no control. Our decisions are influenced by all the previous decisions, decisions of others (our parents, our significant others, our bosses, etc), and external events outside of our control.

External events as insignificant as bus being late. Such an insignificant event but it could prevent someone from having meet their significant other, or to have lost a job, to have escaped a traffic accident, or to have heard an idea that completely changed their lives.

There is no free will. This is freeing and humbling. Freeing because you know you are doing the best you can, with the capabilities you have at this moment. Humbling because you know other people are too.

Sure my life would have been better had my parents stayed together, and my mom not immigrated but then I would have grown up in a third world country and would be confined to that normal life. Sure I went through a lot of trauma, but I have now the ability and freedom to travel the world.

All the trauma of my childhood and teenage years left me with intimacy issues, unable to sustain a long-term relationship. Do I wish that was not the case? I'm not too sure. I like my life, with the travelling and chaos. Had I not had emotional issues, I would probably have a family and kids by now, and be settle down. It's likely I would have enjoyed that, as I would be that guy who wants the family life, but I'm glad I'm this guy. It was not up to me anyway, who I will be in 10 years it's not up to me either.

creature_x• 6 years ago

This article is a somber reminder of the evanescent and translucent nature of potential. As I was reading it, I was reminded of a stanza from Woolsworth's Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day.

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

taylorius• 6 years ago

An excerpt from "The Blue House" by Tomas Transtromer, which talks about this.

-----

The house is like a child’s drawing. A deputizing childishness that grew because someone—much too soon— gave up his mission to be a child. Open the door, step in! In here there’s unrest in the ceiling and peace in the walls. Above the bed hangs a painting of a ship with seventeen sails, hissing wave crests, and a wind that the gilt frame can’t contain.

It’s always so early in here, before the crossroads, before the irrevocable choices. Thank you for this life! Still I miss the alternatives. The sketches, all of them, want to become real. A ship’s engine far away on the water expands the summer-night horizon. Both joy and sorrow swell in the dew’s magnifying glass. Without really knowing, we divine; our life has a sister ship, following quietly another route. While the sun blazes behind the islands.

lajt• 6 years ago

The book "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig does a good job easing that "what if" regret. It shows how each "ideal/better" life can come with its own major negative consequences.

TrueDuality• 6 years ago

Came here to say that, I just finished it a couple of hours ago. It's very bitter sweet, but I'm very glad I read it.

What If You Could Do It All Over?

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