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The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and
by cl42 5y ago
The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality.
The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal.
But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them.
- John Williams in Augustus
- teamtestbot 5y agoMan, I feel like I skipped those Middle Years and went straight to living my life one meme at a time after college.
- sillysaurusx 5y agoAll of 4chan did. It seems optimal for most people.
- sjg007 5y agoThis is basically what Fox News does. Meme of the week or month.
- gunfighthacksaw 5y agoReality does surprise me now and then by reifying a meme I laughed at a few years ago. Usually the physical manifestation is less funny than the original meme though. I think it was all related to the 2016 US election which is when those 4chan chaos magicians joined forces to elect ‘orange Pepe bad’ to troll normies.
- Forgeties79 5y agoMan what a funny prank that was. Truly hilarious.
- oonerspism 5y ago50 million tonnes of sarcasm pressing down upon this comment has produced a diamond.
- oonerspism 5y ago-1 points? OK, I won't attempt good-natured humour here again... lesson learned. :/ Thanks a lot.
- Forgeties79 5y agoI wouldn’t take a few downvotes so personally. Just means a few people didn’t like it, it’s not a big deal.
- roci-ceres 5y agohow would one go about skipping directly to the thrid?
- mathematicaster 5y agoJust do it (tm).
- cl42 5y agoUnfortunately, I don't think you can. I think each phase builds on the prior one; the life experience informing the emotions you feel. The tragic phase is a result of not living up to the unrealistic expectations one has, and the comedic phase is a result of dealing with those tragic emotions.
- theguru2323 5y agoMaybe you are closer to it than you realise. I don't think there are age limits to any of this stuff. A decade of life for one man, is but a Tuesday of another.
- Sevii 5y agoYou can't skip to wisdom.
- nradov 5y agoSure you can. Learn from people wiser than yourself. A lot of them have written books.
- robbedpeter 5y agoAnd there's always Tony Robbins, Jordan Peterson, and a wealth of other self-help types. Picking any system is better than nothing, and gives you context for selecting good ones once you're familiar. Coast on other people's wisdom until you earn your own.
- dgfitz 5y ago
- narrator 5y agoWe are very rarely the main character in the various stories that would get written about the time we are alive by an omniscient narrator. Most of our lives are much too boring to hold the reader's attention.
- balaji1 5y agoknowing this, should we do intentionally lift-and-coast? Get out of the rat-race? Going to a medical test center in America is insightful. Old folks who drive alone to get tests they know the results to, to take prescription drugs they know don't work. Tax money and or insurance is supporting this right?
- yial 5y agoWhat about making the choices you want each day - and doing the very best you can for yourself, and also those around you? I don’t mean just monetarily. Doing the best you can ethically, morally, etc. I realize some of that is subjective - but “don’t let perfect get in the way of good”.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- moviewise 5y ago> But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy I think this is the secret to living well. Find the humor, find the positives, be jolly even in difficult circumstances because life is short, so why not laugh as much as possible? https://moviewise.substack.com/p/facing-lifes-difficulties https://moviewise.substack.com/p/facing-lifes-difficulties
- volume 5y agoin poker tournaments the winner (and all the other loser) can't win (lose) without the collective choices of all other opponents.
- Spivakov 5y agoSecond on John Williams quotes as his novels were my favorite. I just want to mention that in Williams original narratives he is far from being sarcastic/playing wits or suggesting life meaninglessness. Instead, it is in the sense of indifference (neither positive nor negative). If you plan to read his novels, I suggest reading both Stoner and Augustus and explore their interlacing
- kafkaesque 5y agoThis is similar to Soren Kierkegaard's stages of life theory, which he was fine-tuning 130 years earlier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard#Three_stages_of_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_S%C3%B8ren_Kierk...
- 8bitsrule 5y agoFatalism. Likely? that we're ants in an antfarm in which the course of every sand-grain, every ant, every molecule in the zephers is decided? Observation destroyed that deist clockwork universe. There's no comedy in the catastrophic death of 100,000 people, in one man starving in the midst of plenty. We can do better, we can care for and feed and respect one another, as well as the worms. That's meaning we're empowered to create. Not for laughs but smiles. However humble, that is by far the more interesting experiment. And then when our moving finger moves on, no 'Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line.'