4 ms·

Just out of interest ... My life has been much, much better as a result. How do you know this? You didn't live the other life, so you seem just to be specula

Just out of interest ... My life has been much, much better as a result. How do you know this? You didn't live the other life, so you seem just to be speculating about how the other life may have turned out. You know know that the life you chose really is better. Or do you?

impendia 15y ago
I am comparing my life now to my life eight years ago, and also to some extent the life of my friends who are still living in the same town and working at the same company. As far as how my other life may have "turned out"... I guess I'm not really sure what that means. I think the one comparison I can really make is if I had not made a lot of changes. Of course it is possible that I could have changed my life in some totally different direction, maybe without leaving town, and life would have been even better than my life now. That, of course, I can't guess. But I feel conviction in my bones that I did right.
- keeptrying 15y ago
  If you hadn't made any changes your life would have been exactly the same. And if you had made changes at a later point hen it would have been similar to ones your making now. I think people underestimate how much work/effort/time it takes to change ones perspective.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
"How do you know this?" This question is, in my experience, the crux of many people's depression. I realize that may seem to be hyperbole but consider that it is a question that cannot be reasonably answered. Even when it seems like it can, for example a friend of mine was stressing over the fact that they did not take a job offered to them by a startup, the startup was acquired and the person who did take the job did quite well. They felt like they had been 'stupid' to not taking the job, but everyone knows a company is the sum of its people. With the different mix the outcome could have been different. I sometimes joke about knowing that I never invent time travel, because if I had I would have gone back to the summer of 2000 and told myself to cash out of equities. My wife said, but what if doing that prevents you from having the set of experiences that lead to you inventing time travel? Or maybe future-you sees the value of the path you took vs 'other' road you did not take. Fundamentally you have to decide, move on, and accept. As a parent it is especially hard to do since you not only don't have any sort of manual on what the right thing to do is, everyone's child is different and so the 'right' thing is really impossible to know apriori. So perhaps its not so much knowing that your life has been better because of your previous decisions, its more about understanding that the quality of your life, its 'betterness' if you will, is a combination of variables and that you've always decided to be true to your principals. So having solid principals for making those decisions you can be satisfied with your part in how your life has turned out.

impendia 15y ago

I am comparing my life now to my life eight years ago, and also to some extent the life of my friends who are still living in the same town and working at the same company. As far as how my other life may have "turned out"... I guess I'm not really sure what that means. I think the one comparison I can really make is if I had not made a lot of changes. Of course it is possible that I could have changed my life in some totally different direction, maybe without leaving town, and life would have been even better than my life now. That, of course, I can't guess. But I feel conviction in my bones that I did right.

keeptrying 15y ago
If you hadn't made any changes your life would have been exactly the same. And if you had made changes at a later point hen it would have been similar to ones your making now. I think people underestimate how much work/effort/time it takes to change ones perspective.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

"How do you know this?" This question is, in my experience, the crux of many people's depression. I realize that may seem to be hyperbole but consider that it is a question that cannot be reasonably answered. Even when it seems like it can, for example a friend of mine was stressing over the fact that they did not take a job offered to them by a startup, the startup was acquired and the person who did take the job did quite well. They felt like they had been 'stupid' to not taking the job, but everyone knows a company is the sum of its people. With the different mix the outcome could have been different. I sometimes joke about knowing that I never invent time travel, because if I had I would have gone back to the summer of 2000 and told myself to cash out of equities. My wife said, but what if doing that prevents you from having the set of experiences that lead to you inventing time travel? Or maybe future-you sees the value of the path you took vs 'other' road you did not take. Fundamentally you have to decide, move on, and accept. As a parent it is especially hard to do since you not only don't have any sort of manual on what the right thing to do is, everyone's child is different and so the 'right' thing is really impossible to know apriori. So perhaps its not so much knowing that your life has been better because of your previous decisions, its more about understanding that the quality of your life, its 'betterness' if you will, is a combination of variables and that you've always decided to be true to your principals. So having solid principals for making those decisions you can be satisfied with your part in how your life has turned out.