15 ms·
At 31, I have just weeks to live. Here's what I want to pass on
- tenbino 6y agoLots of things matter but nothing matters without relationships.
- kyuudou 6y agoSome nearby introverts quietly disagree then dream of hiking in the mountains in nature. I guess that's a relationship of sorts.
- emerged 6y agoI've never really liked platitudes like "family is everything" and "nothing matters without relationships" -- they don't seem to come from a good place. People who lack these things may enjoy their lives every bit as much, what's the point of denigrating their life?
- nonbirithm 6y agoEvery time it is me that ends up losing interest in the people around me. At some point I decided to recognize that if I was not going to put in the effort to build relationships then there was no sense in putting myself down for not having them built up later. But at the same time when I meet new people, no matter how many things we both like, if they are not purposefully inviting me over then I will stop caring about them and return to having no friendships again. That is entirely on me. It isn't like they are bad people, but there are other things I will inevitably end up gravitating to instead. But it isn't like I'm alone because I have other things to occupy my time. There are times that I did wish I had other friendships but I end up putting those feelings aside when I start working on something. For better or worse I am lucky to be able to say this. Some artists say they can only survive and keep working by being able to be alone for extended periods of time. When I don't get too attached to anyone the pain of losing them doesn't really come. And the people I do care about I've actually made miserable and angry by the number of times I've brought up that I am going to die someday and that I'm trying to live in the moment with them and acknowledge the transience of being alive with them. At some point continuing to acknowledge the fact that being alive and having known them is a miracle in front of them is counterproductive, and in the end it probably doesn't make dying any less painful. After doing all that I don't understand what else I can possibly do but continue being alive.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- somjeed 6y agoLikely projecting their own existential fear of loneliness. Fear is not a good place
- asgard1024 6y agoI think you're right - according to category theory, only relationships of the objects matter, not the objects themselves.
- The_Colonel 6y agoI wonder if you're joking or not.
- johnwheeler 6y agoIt’s actually somewhat profound and fitting if you read it without cynicism.
- The_Colonel 6y agoIt's not the idea itself which seems to me absurd, it's the process - let's take something from abstract mathematical field and apply it on a vaguely "topologically" similar subjective experience and think that "it's proven by math".
- exolymph 6y agoTopological similarities can be meaningful. Shape and structure are like form and function.
- The_Colonel 6y agoTopological similarities can be meaningful as in they often provide great source of inspiration. However, it's just an inspiration and it must be proven in its newly applied field - proof in context of category theory is not valid in the context of inter-personal relations.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoThat's almost all of math, really
- 6y ago
- DyslexicAtheist 6y agohighly relevant: M. Scott Peck "The Road less Traveled", in a nutshell the relationship to ourselves is what gives us the ability to be in a fulfilling relationship with others. I wanted to emphasize this because too many I know (including my former self) would rather be with somebody else ("to fulfill them or -worse- "make them complete") than develop a good relationship with our "self" first. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_Road_Less_Traveled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_Road_Less_Tr...
- biolurker1 6y agoI wish more people would learn about cryonics. It's either 0 or something above zero probability.
- libertine 6y agoEither that or learn to accept death.
- podgaj 6y ago...or understand you were never born in the first place.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mp3k 6y agoexplain
- podgaj 6y agoWe are told we are born form our parents and from our culture. What if there was another story? what if we are dreaming, asleep? Or as I said before, maybe our birth is actually a death. Logically and superficially, yes, there is a thing we call birth. But what is it if you do not name it? What did your face look like before you were born?
- croon 6y agoBut not giving your family closure, and an indefinite cost to the environment/them, for 0 or something above 0 success.
- Smaug123 6y agoAlcor, for example, charges what amounts to a fee to perform the preservation and a fee to go into a fund that will be invested to pay for your ongoing preservation. "Not giving your family an additional $80,000 on your death" amounts to the same thing as "taking $X from them in perpetuity", but it's psychologically different. It's all about the cost-benefit analysis, whose outcome may be different for different people; some people just don't value their lives very much and are more willing to die the true death, some people have family who are getting on just fine without the cash injection provided by their death so are more willing to spend the money on preservation, and so on. "Not giving your family closure" is something you just have to discuss with your own family. I, for one, would treat cryopreservation as effectively death with a rather unusual body-disposal mechanism, for the purposes of grieving etc; there's certainly almost no chance I'll see a cryopreserved person again before my own first death. For a family made up of people like me, that particular argument holds no water at all.
- wombatmobile 6y ago"Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things." -- Arthur Schopenhauer
- podgaj 6y agoSo if I never loose my money it is worthless! Ha! Sorry, no. It is our attachment to things that determine their worth.
- lioeters 6y agoSchopenhauer studied Hindu and Buddhist philosophy - of course he was aware how our attachments determine our value system and lead to suffering. Your comment is just a re-statement of the same truth. Our attachment to things are determined by the subjective weight of their loss.
- sacado2 6y agoIt's a well known psychological phenomenon though. Losing a given sum of money is more painful than earning that same amount. if you find a $20 banknote on the sidewalk, you wont be as happy as the guy who lost lost it is pissed off.
- podgaj 6y agoWhat you do not have you cannot become attached to. You can still have something and not be attached to it. That is Buddhism/Daoism in a nutshell.
- johnnujler 6y agoDid you note that the OP said it is a well known psychological phenomenon and not some utopian enlightened state that most of us can only aspire to attain? And fwiw, Schopenhauer knew about Buddhism very well and talks about it in length in his essays on pessimism. What he means by attachment here is in fact, the Buddhist equivalent of craving. What you own can add to your vanity, but it is what you do not have or are longing for(in this case more money) that shows your true inclination, which Schopenhauer describes as worth. It does not mean that money has no worth, it means that the money that you already own has way less worth than what you don't. Aphorisms are pithy for a precise reason ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- dhsysusbsjsi 6y agoThe nicest bit for me was where he talked about growing old being a privilege and not to lament every grey hair and wrinkle. Puts it in perspective.
- goodcanadian 6y agoAs I often say, "Growing old sucks, but it is better than the alternative."* *I can't take credit. I got it from someone else, but I don't remember who.
- macjohnmcc 6y agoWell admittedly when you get older you tend to forget these things. :)
- ponker 6y agoI’ve heard it ascribed to Oscar Wilde, although according to Whistler he probably stole it from someone himself.
- goodcanadian 6y agoIt's clearly been around a lot longer than I realized!
- dijit 6y agoMy grandfather says this, and meets his age with a reverent smile. It's so unburdening to embrace age. The fear of it is encompassing and I feel it on the edge of my mind at times. But it is _so_ incredibly liberating to meet it with a warm smile and acceptance. Age is not a punishment, it's a gift, a privilege, to carry the memories we have and to wear our lives on our face like we're able to.
- kinleyd 6y agoI have to stash this gem somewhere safe. Thanks.
- deleted 6y ago
- testemailfordg2 6y agoIt's not over, till its over.
- podgaj 6y agoThe worst time to start thinking about death is when you are facing it. So let me tell you after thinking about this for the last 50 plus years; There is no birth so there is no death. You think there is birth and death, but it is just a thought. To be alive means you would have had to be dead already for am infinite amount of time before your birth, so what are you scared of? Maybe we are "dead" right now, and this "life" is the "death" of the infinite life we had before our "birth". You see, this article is nothing but a fluff piece that just adds more fear and thought into the world. Live your life to the fullest? Ha! Life is for enjoyment? Ha! This is death porn, that's all.
- johnnujler 6y agoHow do you conflate not existing before birth to not existing after death? Comparing cosmic duration to one's lifespan is not the same thing. It might sound very profound, but it is not, believe me. Also, I don't think you are 50+. You seem like a young kid who has just read some pop-philosophy to me. Anyone who has had a life-threatening experience or a grave illness will tell you that philosophical solace that is existential in nature does not carry well(See: PsychoNeurosis in patients with grave illness), that is why most people resort to things that provide them happiness in this lifetime and to things like mindfulness, being in present etc.
- podgaj 6y ago"How do you conflate not existing before birth to not existing after death?" How can you not? Do you remember what it was like before you were born? Do you know of anyone who told you what it is like to be dead? If we do not know what death is how do we know what life is? We only know it by it's external appearance, which really tells us nothing. I am not an existentialist or a nihilist, I am a Daoist who is indeed over 50 although I wish I was a young kid again. I was also a Theravada Buddhist for 20 years and have studied a large chunk of the Tripiṭaka. The things I am talking about are not appreciated with a moments thought. The goal of enlightenment is understanding and escaping Samsara, the endless cycle of birth and death and the suffering that comes along with it. This is why I am a Daoist now, I just do not worry about these things and do not live in fear of my life and feel like I have to run out and "live life to my fullest" because of death, I do it because of life.
- robviren 6y agoHaving just turned 31 this hits home. I appreciate the positivity he could find in the twilight of his days. I can't help but feel I may lack the courage to face death the same way. His focus on gratitude really does seem to match what I understand to be the best way to find joy in the often bleak life we find ourselves in. There is almost always someone or something to appreciate in our lives.
- podgaj 6y agoHow do you know he is not just lying and saying it for the clicks? It could be all appearance. Listen, you want to be like him, it is easy. Just be like Christ or Buddha or Lao Tzu. Liberate yourself from the attachments of the world. That is the only thing death forces us to face, the ultimate attachment, the attachment we have with our body/self/ego.
- diegoperini 6y agoI prefer to assume people may lie for everything but not for their soon to be happening death. If they fool me, I accept the consequences. The opposite, as in being cynical for even these kind of things, is much scarier and unhealthy for my mental state.
- shekharshan 6y ago“All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will become otherwise and will become separated from me”— Siddhartha Gautama. As a Buddhist we do “contemplation of death” meditation on a regular basis. It involves imagining our last few hours on our deathbed. It is a wonderful exercise to help put things in context. It makes you behave differently towards people you meet, even strangers.
- podgaj 6y agoI have spent hours mediating in graveyards. Also helpful is the mediation on the 32 parts of the body to help you loosen your attachment. https://www.imsb.org/contemplating-the-32-parts-of-the-body/ https://www.imsb.org/contemplating-the-32-parts-of-the-body/
- shekharshan 6y agoThank you so much! I have Shaila Katherine’s book “Focused and Fearless” but not completed the reading. She is an amazing teacher.
- _nalply 6y agoElliot Dallen said: "Life is for enjoyment." True. In other words you shouldn't do the 32 body parts contemplation if you are not yet ready to drop attachment to life enjoyments.
- pegasus 6y agoI meditate regularly, but I think this type of exercise is misguided and betrays the body-denying/denigrating bias that can be often found in religious traditions world-wide. It encourages an ignorant attitude towards the body: instead of contemplating the miracles of the muscular system, see it as amorphous flesh. Amplify the spurious association of the skeleton with the malnourished body it resembles, instead of marveling at the ingenious way it serves it's (many) purposes, and so on.
- andreilys 6y agoYou are not your body nor your mind. That is a core tenant of most Buddhist philosophy.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoRainn Wilson's Soul Pancake has a long playlist of videos featuring dying people. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzvRx_johoA8ITQgxBpeJTaDUhhIB7bfX https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzvRx_johoA8ITQgxBpeJ...
- podgaj 6y agoDeath porn!
- dang 6y agoYou've posted 15 comments in this thread, most of which have been flamebait or outright trolling. You can't do that on HN, whether death is real or not. Please stop.
- podgaj 6y agoI am just different from most people. You see the term is meant to explain how people get enjoyment out of watching these sad stories, but they are just some dysfunctional replacement. why do people go see sad movies? It is the same thing. People on here talk about how bad trolls are and then they talk about stoicism and Diogenes. Diogenes would have been banned here as well, called a troll, etc. He pissed in the street like a dog right in front of people!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- voisin 6y agoHas anyone else read “Tripping Over the Truth: The Metabolic Theory of Cancer”? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23496164 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23496164
- unrequited 6y agoI recently came across a quote that was en eye opener. "Its better to be grateful than to be regretful."
- nickthemagicman 6y agoIt's also better to be RATEful than regretful. Rate that stuff on Yelp so other people don't have to have regret.
- andrewclunn 6y agomeh. Turns out even termibal cancer can't force one to mature faster. It's too bad, but there's nothing really deep or poniente here.
- esemor 6y ago”But everybody dies, and there will always be places and experiences missing from anyone’s life – the world has too much beauty and adventure for one person to see.” Damn gut punch...
- war1025 6y agoI was 28 when my dad died. He was 58. It has definitely shifted how I think about life and what matters. If I live as long as him, I've already passed the midpoint. Really helps you put things in perspective.
- apricot 6y agoI remember precisely when I had this particular epiphany. I was 12 years old, in love with books, and thanks to my parents who had signed a form, I had just gotten my first library card for the real (read: non-kiddie) section of the public library. Awed by the sheer number of tall bookshelves, intoxicated by the library smell and my newfound source of knowledge, I asked the librarian how many books they had, she said more than 100,000. I was duly impressed. But then I started thinking, and did some arithmetic on a piece of scrap paper. And I realized that even if I read one book a day for the rest of my life, I would only be able to read a fraction of all the books on the shelves. Right there in the same room with me was provably unattainable knowledge. I could decide to read any book, but I could not read all of them. If I decided to read this book, then that other book would remain forever unread. Years before I would be able to put the words on it, I had stumbled upon a kind of incompleteness theorem, and I started to understand how small one's life actually is. This thought never left me.
- koheripbal 6y ago
- weregiraffe 6y ago"Women are directly adapted to act as the nurses and educators of our early childhood, for the simple reason that they themselves are childish, foolish, and short-sighted — in a word, are big children all their lives, something intermediate between the child and the man, who is a man in the strict sense of the word." -- Arthur Schopenhauer
- GavinMcG 6y agoWhat are you trying to accomplish, here? Do you think the quote you responded to was wrong? Do you think no one should ever quote Schopenhauer? Something else? Being more straightforward about your criticism would be fair.
- J-dawg 6y agoI'm curious about the point you're making here. Clearly the quote you selected is pretty objectionable by modern standards. Is this intended to invalidate the quote in the parent comment? Does "cancel culture" apply to long-dead philosophers now? Perhaps I'm reading too much into it!
- krageon 6y agoNo doubt you are making a fair point about not putting people on pedestals, though perhaps not in the right context. When you spend your whole life thinking about things and writing those things down, some of those things will be objectionable. Thankfully it is up to the reader to take away what they want to learn from and leave behind what they do not.
- seibelj 6y agoAnd this is why wisdom tells us that all people are complex figures that can’t be put into “good” and “evil” buckets. If you look close enough at any historical figure they have lots of skeletons. I have yet to find the pure person who passes all of the current year’s litmus tests. I still respect MLK even though credible reports say he observed and encouraged a rape, and John Lennon even though he beat his wife, and Michael Jackson’s music despite horror so unmentionable I won’t describe it here.
- dang 6y ago
- mmhsieh 6y agorawls' social utility theory stated that by maximizing the welfare of the worst-off person, you improve all of society; at the time i learned it it seemed like a strange idea. but then i thought: every moment in your life can be valued according to how much life you have ahead of it. the present moment is the most valuable; and the very last moment, the least -- you have nothing ahead of it. i thought: if you live your life such that the last moment, which is the least valuable in that sense, is as good as possible -- perhaps that would improve the totality of the rest of your life. this has all been covered by the buddhist concepts on this thread but i thought it was interesting that we can come to this same idea somewhat independently. (maybe rawls was inspired by buddhism? i don't know.)
- specialist 6y agoThat "live today as though it's your last" was too dark for me. Fatalistic or something. To get out of my rut, I needed something forward facing, optimistic. I eventually settled on "live every day as if it's your first." More of "new mind" mentality. I needed something that emphasized awe, joy, wonder, discovery. Vs the addict's group therapy cliche "today is the first day of the rest of your life." FWIW, my first brush with death was 34 years ago. Having done the bereavement cycle a few too many times kinda moots the exercise. Needs to be done. But it's just a stepping stone.
- sombremesa 6y agoI'd like someone to explain to me why this is on the front page of HN. Personally, I didn't find any remarkable insight in the article and the author seems like quite an average person with average advice. My best guess is that people have upvoted this out of sympathy for a dying man, or perhaps they want to make space for discussing premature death. Which for me begs the question, exactly what is HN all about?
- luxurycommunism 6y agoIt was a deep article. I get that this place is full of nerds with mild autism but try some empathy once in a while.
- naringas 6y agocomputer technology (and related) news?
- Stratoscope 6y ago"Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- maksimilian 6y agoIt is ok to show a little humanity once in while...even on HN
- tomhoward 6y ago> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- THE_PUN_STOPS 6y ago
- dfilppi 6y agoNobody ever dies from their perspective.
- jcims 6y agoMy wife passed this year from cancer. Looking back we had no idea how close we were to the end, and in the last few weeks her beautiful mind was influenced by the disease. I’m sure someone on HN is going through this at least adjacently and my recommendation is to not wait to the end to have important conversations. For those that aren’t going through this now, maybe for a little while live life like you are...it might inform your priorities and perspective. My 17 year old daughter was already dealing with a life-altering chronic disease and losing her mom plus all of this pandemic bullshit has really made a mess. She broke down crying last night struggling over the idea of death and that everything seems to be pitted against her. It’s hard to know exactly what to say in those moments, maybe some of these words from a person at the doorstep will help her. For what it’s worth we do have her seeing both a counselor and a psychiatrist but that only goes so far...at the end of the day it’s you and your thoughts staring at the ceiling while you’re trying to get to sleep for the 5am shift tomorrow.
- treyfitty 6y agoThanks for sharing your personal story. I think it’s important for everyone to realize that we are all human. Nothing more, nothing less. The world has become super competitive to the point that we all seem to forget this simple fact.
- jcims 6y agoFor me it's a bit cathartic, if it helps anyone see through the blind spots I had it's worth it.
- 12xo 6y agoThis is where faith steps in... There is wisdom in the ages that will help you and your daughter. Try and find a pathway of peace and guidance from the universe's deep pool of human experiences.
- jacobush 6y agoRegardless of what you, downvoter, believes - thinking on something outside yourself is helpful, even empirically. You might not agree with the specific flavour, but even something as bare and nonspiritual as Seneca can help.
- xyz134 6y agoyou guys really don't know that the virus if fake?
- xyz134 6y agoyou guys really don't know that the virus is fake? Laughing out Loud
- ErikAugust 6y agoFor those who would like to read, but stuck behind paywall: https://beta.trimread.com/articles/36666 https://beta.trimread.com/articles/36666
- kashyapc 6y ago"Meditating on death" and "premeditation of future ills" is a big theme in Stoicism (and the broader 'Hellenistic Philosophy'). Seneca's letters have many different exhortations on "preparing for death". Some choice quotes: • "Many people grasp and hold on to life, like those caught by a flash flood who grasp at weeds and brambles. Most are tossed about between the fear of death and the torments of life: they do not want to live but do not know how to die. Cast off your solicitude for life, then, and in doing so make life enjoyable for yourself. No good thing benefits us while we have it unless we are mentally prepared for the loss of it." — Seneca • "Epicurus says 'It is a fine thing to learn death thoroughly.' Perhaps you think it is a waste of time to learn something you will need to use only once. But that is the very reason we ought to rehearse: if we cannot test whether we know it, we should be learning it always." — Seneca riffing on Epicurus (not to be confused with Epictetus, a Stoic; he even has a discourse titled "Against Epicurus") • "As the water clock does not empty out its last drop only but also whatever dripped through it before, so our last hour of existence is not the only time we die but just the only time we finish dying. Death is not one event; the death that takes us is our last." — Seneca • "Years are not given out by quota. There's no way to know the point where death lies waiting for you, you must wait for death at every point." — Seneca • "Let death be before your eyes every day, and you will never have a base thought or an excessive desire." — Marcus Aurelius • "The torment we feel comes about through our own agency, because we become alarmed when we believe that death is close at hand. But isn't it close to everyone, ready in place and every moment?" — Seneca • "Think about arranging the present as best as you can, with serene mind. All else is carried away as by a river." — Horace ••• Sources for quotations: Seneca's 'Letters on Ethics' (full set of letters, excellently translated by Graver and Long); the others are from 'What is Ancient Philosophy?' by Pierre Hadot.
- Tade0 6y agoI'm the same age and not at all at peace with my mortality - the dominant feeling being envy of those who get to live after my death. If I wrote a book with ghosts, zombies or other undead I would give the antagonists this as their reasons for hating the living. Anyway that point about vulnerability is spot on. When I hug my SO I often reflexively blurt something among the lines of "softness is important", but what I really mean by that is vulnerability is important - this is something I had to learn from her and it's what helped me improve myself as a person.
- shrimp_emoji 6y agoI think: lose enough ego and entitlement, and you can not only find peace with death but even see it as a truly "happy ending" given the wondrous experiences of the uncountable people that will come after you (and what a petty, selfish distinction whose experiences those are is). But that's not easy. It seems to take years of thinking about death almost daily and thinking about space and time[0] and history and stuff. And maybe psychedelics, although I never tried those yet. 0: https://youtu.be/5TbUxGZtwGI https://youtu.be/5TbUxGZtwGI
- deltron3030 6y agoImagine that there's some form of brain time anomaly when you die, where your last moment stretches and you live on in a dream, with the dreams during your life being the test runs.
- reducesuffering 6y agoThere's theories about DMT related to this.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ghoomketu 6y agoMy great fear is not dying but leaving the people behind who depend on me. I mean as the only earning member of my family the scariest post part about dying is what will happen to family. I don't have a big life insurance and not a lot of savings. So it gives me chills that my wife and daughter will have to fend for themselves or live a lesser life should I cease to exist suddenly one day.
- jjeaff 6y agoGet some term life insurance. It is usually very inexpensive.
- auslegung 6y agoI really hope you can get enough life insurance for cheap, it will set your mind at ease. https://www.zanderins.com https://www.zanderins.com. The rule I've heard is get 10-12 times your income. If you're making 60k/year, that's 600,000 - 720,000 in insurance, which for a young-ish healthy-ish person is cheaper than most people expect.
- snori74 6y ago"First, the importance of gratitude" - so true