6 ms·

I don't entirely disagree, but the first thing that this article brought to mind is the old cliche "wherever you go, there you are". I'm 34, lots of ex girlfrie

I don't entirely disagree, but the first thing that this article brought to mind is the old cliche "wherever you go, there you are". I'm 34, lots of ex girlfriends and lots of past cities. There's a fine line between breaking out of the status quo hamster wheel and running away from your baggage. Moving cities, or relationships, or jobs isn't worth as much if you aren't simultaneously working on yourself

willio58 3y ago
>There's a fine line between breaking out of the status quo hamster wheel and running away from your baggage. Absolutely. I've had the urge to move from my hometown to escape baggage, mainly relationships. I've been close to pulling the trigger many times. But things got in the way and now I look back and I'm happy I didn't move. At least for that reason of escaping baggage. Odds are you'll have baggage anywhere you live if you live there long enough. Learning to grow and live with that baggage is part of being a human.
mattficke 3y ago
In certain contexts this is called “doing a geographic”. Notorious trap for people who look solely for external causes of their discontent and ignore internal.
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  It is fascinating to see old friends fall into this trap. Things seem great for the first few months but eventually the same old issues arise with time. There is a stereo type in Australia that the British complain about the country once here. A big part of this is believed to be that they leave their country to start over in a place that looks completely different, start a new job and meet new people only to find that they fall into all the same issues. Rather than realize the issues are just a part of the society, they can tend to blame the country instead. That said I used to work with someone from Nigeria, very smart fella, they had a lot of issues with the country but also understood why they left their country. All they said was "Different country, similar poison. Just pick your flavor." They fundamentally got the issue at hand.
- prawn 3y ago
  There's an equivalent in personal finance where people think that a payrise will solve their money woes. Their habits remain, their discretionary spending scales up, and they usually continue on with the same problems.
johnea 3y ago
DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS GUY!!! Blowing up your life is exactly that, a big frikin mistake. I've made several decisions that later revealed themselves as life blowing. It's not worth it. In youth it's easy to imagine that you have infinite tries to get it right. This is totally wrong. Decisions that set your life back years can only be overcome so many times, and never completely. So, instead of blowing it up, add it up slowly year by year, increasing your traction and equity....
- scarface_74 3y ago
  See my previous comment where I talked about blowing up my life. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966 I was in the perfect place to do it at 48. I had no dependents, a stable marriage and a wife who was excited to go along for the ride with me and I had built up assets to take chances. Now that I think about it, it really wasn’t that risky. Remote was a thing and I figured worse case, someone would hire me as a consultant.
  - svnt 3y ago
    Blowing up your life in the sense of the article would have involved leaving your wife. I imagine that or similar extreme changes is what the parent meant. A lot of people in this thread think selling all their furniture is a life explosion.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      You’re absolutely right. I reconsidered what I wrote later. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36307059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36307059
NovaDudely 3y ago
Alan Watts was the one that was always saying, "the you that is trying to be better is the same you that needs improving." Try breaking out of that trap! To some degree if you are going to change yourself for the better, you will already be doing it. It is a bit defeatist but also a little bit of truth. It is like how some folks try desperately to learn an instrument or get better are writing or whatever. They have this grim determination that it is something that needs to be done. To some degree you need that push through but for many it is just the process of getting to the goal, not a means of self improvement. What I mean by that is, look at those that just took to playing musical instruments as a child. It wasn't necessarily because they were forced to do so but because they had an innate drive to do it. The lessons and practice was just a means to improve on something they were already trying to do. All the Gibbs brothers in The BeeGee's (and Andy) took to instruments before the age of 3, they didn't do it to be better, it was just something they did.
- hnzix 3y ago
  In creativity, unless you are a savant it takes grinding to increase your ability to match your taste. If you started very young, then bravo, the grinding is out of the way and you were likely to be able to focus on the fun parts and have fewer distractions. If you're starting as an adult, then it's gonna take some grit to get to a level you're satisfied with.
  - NovaDudely 3y ago
    It isn't so much that it is hard, it is a case of how much you are put off by the potential hard work. How much drive you have regardless of the challenge. It is some religious monasteries or teachers they use this to weed out those that they figure might not be up to it. They come to the student and say "You know if you are to get this, it will take over a decade or more before you will even begin to get the ideas we are working with!". If the student is not worried about this and see it as merely what needs to be done to get to their goal - then they will be a good student. The barriers are not seen as a problem but a process.
  - bombolo 3y ago
jrumbut 3y ago
It sounds like this author believes in going really big. They didn't move cities, they moved continents. They didn't date and break up, they married and divorced. I think there is something to be said for getting some big experiences. Moving from Pittsburgh to Cleveland might be a waste of energy. Moving from Pittsburgh to Paris is a guaranteed adventure. I don't know if I agree or not, but it is interesting to think about.
- butitsFake 3y ago
  [flagged]
- 3np 3y ago
  While moving from Pittsburgh to Paris to Hong Kong to Singapore to Berlin to Cape Town is more likely a waste of energy again and risks burning you (not mentioning the planet) out. It's a lot easier to turn the adventure-o-meter up than to turn it down.
  - jrumbut 3y ago
    I suspect you're right that the first time is an adventure and the fifth time is a chore. After your first or second big move you might need to change careers or something instead.
  - zerbinxx 3y ago
    Agreed. This brand of self-aggrandizing “I did it my way” advice adverts always exemplify a special brand of narcissism; the speaker is unaware that they aren’t the center of their own life. The truth is that “blowing up your life” isn’t usually good or laudable: if you regularly find yourself in situations where you think it’s best to hard reset you’re probably very confused about what you want and need and, ironically, would probably benefit more from figuring out how to renegotiate an undesirable situation than eternally storming between grand schemes.
    - superhuzza 3y ago
      "the speaker is unaware that they aren’t the center of their own life" What does this even mean? Of course you are the center of your own life. That's the human experience.
resolutebat 3y ago
"People travel to change themselves, but they only manage to change the scenery." (Not my quote, alas, and my memory has butchered it enough that I can't find the original.)
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  Except that traveling is already requiring change in a person, opposed to being stationary. You have to face new situations all the time - requiring a different state of alertness and consciousness. And new sceneries have different people, climate etc. also literally changing people (microbiome for example). So yes, some people travel to run away from problems they never dare to solve, but some people just like to be on the move, like our nomadic ancestors.
  - llamaimperative 3y ago
    Nomadic ancestors traveled with their (extended) tribes. Very different from people who are straining or destroying their relationships to go have some croissants in Paris or whatever.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      Yes, this is very true. But there are new nomadic tribes forming right now. Some actually very close bonded and always together like in the original tribal meaning, some very loose and casual. Just like minded people, who like to be on the move, but not alone.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  Encountering a foreign culture, with foreign ways of thinking and behaving, can stretch and change you by forcing you to encounter assumptions and habits you didn't even know you had.
lm28469 3y ago
It's as old as humanity > Do you suppose that you alone have had this experience? Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate. Seneca, 2000 years ago More people should read the classics, lots of wisdom you can speed run instead of discovering you fucked up the better part of your youth chasing ghosts
- hcks 3y ago
  At the same time it’s hard to understand something before you experienced it yourself. Something like a limitation of written communication.
  - max68 3y ago
    It seems fairly straightforward and real wisdom is learning from others mistakes
    - SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
      I think this is fairly myopic. Surely you’ve experienced firsthand someone telling you something, you not “getting it” or believing them, only to be like “oh shit this person was totally right” later on? Or maybe you can like, imagine that this is a fairly normal interaction other people have?
    - matwood 3y ago
      It depends. Nothing teaches better than failure. Of course I don't need to try heroin to know it's bad, but there are many other things that are worth trying and learning from. To tie it to HN, the vast majority of new companies fail. Wisdom would say don't waste time on a new company, yet many of us do just that.
    - twh270 3y ago
      Not necessarily. "Inner wisdom", wisdom about yourself and who you are, usually can only come from your own experiences (both mistakes/failures and successes/victories). You can learn a lot about yourself by "blowing up" your life. (And you don't have to go to the extremes the article describes.)

willio58 3y ago

>There's a fine line between breaking out of the status quo hamster wheel and running away from your baggage. Absolutely. I've had the urge to move from my hometown to escape baggage, mainly relationships. I've been close to pulling the trigger many times. But things got in the way and now I look back and I'm happy I didn't move. At least for that reason of escaping baggage. Odds are you'll have baggage anywhere you live if you live there long enough. Learning to grow and live with that baggage is part of being a human.

mattficke 3y ago

In certain contexts this is called “doing a geographic”. Notorious trap for people who look solely for external causes of their discontent and ignore internal.

NovaDudely 3y ago
It is fascinating to see old friends fall into this trap. Things seem great for the first few months but eventually the same old issues arise with time. There is a stereo type in Australia that the British complain about the country once here. A big part of this is believed to be that they leave their country to start over in a place that looks completely different, start a new job and meet new people only to find that they fall into all the same issues. Rather than realize the issues are just a part of the society, they can tend to blame the country instead. That said I used to work with someone from Nigeria, very smart fella, they had a lot of issues with the country but also understood why they left their country. All they said was "Different country, similar poison. Just pick your flavor." They fundamentally got the issue at hand.
prawn 3y ago
There's an equivalent in personal finance where people think that a payrise will solve their money woes. Their habits remain, their discretionary spending scales up, and they usually continue on with the same problems.

johnea 3y ago

DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS GUY!!! Blowing up your life is exactly that, a big frikin mistake. I've made several decisions that later revealed themselves as life blowing. It's not worth it. In youth it's easy to imagine that you have infinite tries to get it right. This is totally wrong. Decisions that set your life back years can only be overcome so many times, and never completely. So, instead of blowing it up, add it up slowly year by year, increasing your traction and equity....

scarface_74 3y ago
See my previous comment where I talked about blowing up my life. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966 I was in the perfect place to do it at 48. I had no dependents, a stable marriage and a wife who was excited to go along for the ride with me and I had built up assets to take chances. Now that I think about it, it really wasn’t that risky. Remote was a thing and I figured worse case, someone would hire me as a consultant.
- svnt 3y ago
  Blowing up your life in the sense of the article would have involved leaving your wife. I imagine that or similar extreme changes is what the parent meant. A lot of people in this thread think selling all their furniture is a life explosion.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    You’re absolutely right. I reconsidered what I wrote later. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36307059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36307059

NovaDudely 3y ago

Alan Watts was the one that was always saying, "the you that is trying to be better is the same you that needs improving." Try breaking out of that trap! To some degree if you are going to change yourself for the better, you will already be doing it. It is a bit defeatist but also a little bit of truth. It is like how some folks try desperately to learn an instrument or get better are writing or whatever. They have this grim determination that it is something that needs to be done. To some degree you need that push through but for many it is just the process of getting to the goal, not a means of self improvement. What I mean by that is, look at those that just took to playing musical instruments as a child. It wasn't necessarily because they were forced to do so but because they had an innate drive to do it. The lessons and practice was just a means to improve on something they were already trying to do. All the Gibbs brothers in The BeeGee's (and Andy) took to instruments before the age of 3, they didn't do it to be better, it was just something they did.

hnzix 3y ago
In creativity, unless you are a savant it takes grinding to increase your ability to match your taste. If you started very young, then bravo, the grinding is out of the way and you were likely to be able to focus on the fun parts and have fewer distractions. If you're starting as an adult, then it's gonna take some grit to get to a level you're satisfied with.
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  It isn't so much that it is hard, it is a case of how much you are put off by the potential hard work. How much drive you have regardless of the challenge. It is some religious monasteries or teachers they use this to weed out those that they figure might not be up to it. They come to the student and say "You know if you are to get this, it will take over a decade or more before you will even begin to get the ideas we are working with!". If the student is not worried about this and see it as merely what needs to be done to get to their goal - then they will be a good student. The barriers are not seen as a problem but a process.
- bombolo 3y ago

jrumbut 3y ago

It sounds like this author believes in going really big. They didn't move cities, they moved continents. They didn't date and break up, they married and divorced. I think there is something to be said for getting some big experiences. Moving from Pittsburgh to Cleveland might be a waste of energy. Moving from Pittsburgh to Paris is a guaranteed adventure. I don't know if I agree or not, but it is interesting to think about.

butitsFake 3y ago
[flagged]
3np 3y ago
While moving from Pittsburgh to Paris to Hong Kong to Singapore to Berlin to Cape Town is more likely a waste of energy again and risks burning you (not mentioning the planet) out. It's a lot easier to turn the adventure-o-meter up than to turn it down.
- jrumbut 3y ago
  I suspect you're right that the first time is an adventure and the fifth time is a chore. After your first or second big move you might need to change careers or something instead.
- zerbinxx 3y ago
  Agreed. This brand of self-aggrandizing “I did it my way” advice adverts always exemplify a special brand of narcissism; the speaker is unaware that they aren’t the center of their own life. The truth is that “blowing up your life” isn’t usually good or laudable: if you regularly find yourself in situations where you think it’s best to hard reset you’re probably very confused about what you want and need and, ironically, would probably benefit more from figuring out how to renegotiate an undesirable situation than eternally storming between grand schemes.
  - superhuzza 3y ago
    "the speaker is unaware that they aren’t the center of their own life" What does this even mean? Of course you are the center of your own life. That's the human experience.

resolutebat 3y ago

"People travel to change themselves, but they only manage to change the scenery." (Not my quote, alas, and my memory has butchered it enough that I can't find the original.)

hutzlibu 3y ago
Except that traveling is already requiring change in a person, opposed to being stationary. You have to face new situations all the time - requiring a different state of alertness and consciousness. And new sceneries have different people, climate etc. also literally changing people (microbiome for example). So yes, some people travel to run away from problems they never dare to solve, but some people just like to be on the move, like our nomadic ancestors.
- llamaimperative 3y ago
  Nomadic ancestors traveled with their (extended) tribes. Very different from people who are straining or destroying their relationships to go have some croissants in Paris or whatever.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    Yes, this is very true. But there are new nomadic tribes forming right now. Some actually very close bonded and always together like in the original tribal meaning, some very loose and casual. Just like minded people, who like to be on the move, but not alone.
marssaxman 3y ago
Encountering a foreign culture, with foreign ways of thinking and behaving, can stretch and change you by forcing you to encounter assumptions and habits you didn't even know you had.

lm28469 3y ago

It's as old as humanity > Do you suppose that you alone have had this experience? Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate. Seneca, 2000 years ago More people should read the classics, lots of wisdom you can speed run instead of discovering you fucked up the better part of your youth chasing ghosts

hcks 3y ago
At the same time it’s hard to understand something before you experienced it yourself. Something like a limitation of written communication.
- max68 3y ago
  It seems fairly straightforward and real wisdom is learning from others mistakes
  - SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
    I think this is fairly myopic. Surely you’ve experienced firsthand someone telling you something, you not “getting it” or believing them, only to be like “oh shit this person was totally right” later on? Or maybe you can like, imagine that this is a fairly normal interaction other people have?
  - matwood 3y ago
    It depends. Nothing teaches better than failure. Of course I don't need to try heroin to know it's bad, but there are many other things that are worth trying and learning from. To tie it to HN, the vast majority of new companies fail. Wisdom would say don't waste time on a new company, yet many of us do just that.
  - twh270 3y ago
    Not necessarily. "Inner wisdom", wisdom about yourself and who you are, usually can only come from your own experiences (both mistakes/failures and successes/victories). You can learn a lot about yourself by "blowing up" your life. (And you don't have to go to the extremes the article describes.)