6 ms·

At the risk of sounding cynical, I wonder how much it actually matters. We tend to live our lives thinking as we go that we should be striving to end up at some

by dkrich 15y ago

At the risk of sounding cynical, I wonder how much it actually matters. We tend to live our lives thinking as we go that we should be striving to end up at some optimal place and that the purpose of our lives is desperately trying to keep us exactly on that course. If we don't ask the girl to the dance, or give up on an idea, or spend extra nights at the office to get a promotion instead of hanging out with our family we think that we are drifting off of our optimal course and we drive ourselves crazy wondering at every step if we are losing our way and strive to keep our future regrets to a minimum. But the reality is that life is no more valuable at the end than at the beginning or the middle. Why worry about what our future selves will regret while forgoing present happiness? Why should I worry today about what I will feel tomorrow if I know I can be happy today? When I hear somebody say "I wish I would have spent more time with my family" I wonder whether they really wish they had spent more time with their family or if they just miss their old family and wish they could have them back. That is to say I wonder whether people confuse nostalgia with regret. As you get older you regret not taking advantage of some things in the past, but I tend to think that what you feel as regret is actually just longing for being young again.

foobarian 15y ago
To add to your comment, I wonder what the "regret bulletpoints" look like for the people who actually did all those things that PG listed. Maybe they wish that they worked more instead of hanging out with friends all the time?
- drzaiusapelord 15y ago
  My old stoner underachievers who never finished school still live in the same shitty hometown, got married young to the same high school girlfriend, have mental illness/drug issues, have kids who hate them, and otherwise live miserable lives. I think the whole "be an underachiever, there's happiness in it you stupid capitalist" is something of a myth. Truth is, life is little more than trade-offs and opportunity costs. Truth is that if you want something of a comfortable life, want to not live in the ghetto, and do things like have expendable income, take foreign vacations, etc you need to give a good chuck of your life to work.
smashing 15y ago
Advice rarely comes with the caveats, and free advice is worth every cent. Ever hear anyone write on a blog, "I wish I didn't have to spend so much time with my family." or, "Given the Dunning–Kruger effect, don't follow your dreams as you are unlikely to achieve your unrealistic expectations given your current skill level."
DanBC 15y ago
> If we don't ask the girl to the dance If you don't ask the first girl to the dance you might not be brave enough to ask the second girl to the dance and before you know it you're in a self-reinforcing loop of not asking anyone to any dances until you're old enough to realise and break out of that loop. > Why worry about what our future selves will regret while forgoing present happiness? I'm not sure how to grok that sentence. Here's two responses. i) Exactly. Don't miss out on current happiness just to keep the future you happy. That's the point - future you does not want to look back on a life of hard grind and no fun just so you can do the looking back from a gold bed on your huge yacht. ii) Because seeking contentment now is a way to ensure that you'll be contented in future and the future you won't look back on a life of missed opportunities. Missing out on happiness now is sometimes important in the short term, but it's not a great way to live a life. Perhaps a lot of grind now means you can retire early and relax and enjoy stuff. But you have to live long enough to retire, and by that time you may have missed some really fun things like babies growing. > the reality is that life is no more valuable at the end than at the beginning or the middle Yes. That is the point. Don't grind today to provide future you with excessive luxury. A bit of grinding might be needed to avoid future financial hardship, but other than that you should seek things that fulfil you today. Happiness today will make future you happy. Future you is not more valuable, but s/he will have the benefit of hindsight.
- dkrich 15y ago
  Well I don't think it all breaks down that cleanly in reality though. Everybody has dreams and some people pursue them 100% doing what they have to to get by in the interim, and some just categorize them as dreams and never really pursue them. My point is that those who tell themselves "I'm not going to let outside pressures influence me and I'm going to do what makes me happy" very well may end up miserable in the short term while they are working to achieve their dreams. In the end, if they do not achieve their dreams (or even if they do) they have traded time that they could have succumbed to those pressures and been more comfortable with the end result of regretting not having had the guts to go after what they really wanted to go after. Then again, if you succumb and work forever in a job you hate and are miserable anyway then you haven't really succeeded in satisfying yourself now either. That's really a bad position to be in. I think Jim Coudal put it best in a talk he gave (actually he was quoting somebody else whose name I can't remember) where he said "The reason most of us are unhappy most of the time is that we set our goals not for the person we will be when we achieve them, but the person we are today." I have found that that is really true. For example, people often go to law school thinking that they will end up happy if they get a job that pays a certain amount and it will look good to their current friends so they spend a bunch of money and work their asses off to get through law school. Then they graduate and feel compelled to take a job as an attorney and they absolutely hate it. I know this because I have many many friends who are attorneys and they all are trying to find a way out. I think the mistake people make in those cases is not cutting their losses and being truly honest about what kind of life they want. There is so much pressure to maintain the status quo that they feel trapped.
AznHisoka 15y ago
You're right, it doesn't matter. Life is absurd is death is the final word. Just live it however you want.. just don't toil 60 hours working for some company, that's the worst.
maigret 15y ago
>We tend to live our lives thinking as we go that we should be striving to end up at some optimal place and that the purpose of our lives is desperately trying to keep us exactly on that course. This is very US (and now occidental) thinking. Many cultures in the world don't have people thinking like that. You've got to have a family and integrate well and support the community. The rest is not as important as our current society wants us to think.
drzaiusapelord 15y ago
>That is to say I wonder whether people confuse nostalgia with regret. This is such an excellent point. This "dying patients" list greatly ignores the opportunity cost of getting to where you managed to get to in life. Lets say I grant these wishes. I wave my magic wand and you work less. Now your memories are full of being poor, sending your kids to some shitty school, getting robbed in a poor neighborhood as opposed to working more but being able to live in a better neighborhood, going on more vacations, having extra money. So its like saying, "I want my cake to eat it too." Well, that wasn't possible when you were younger and its certainly not possible on your deathbed.
- Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
  There are two issues with your argument: 1) Money doesn't equate to happiness - economists have shown this. It increases up to an annual income of about $60,000 then flat lines completely. So yes you need to have a solid income, but the point extra stops making a difference comes surprisingly early. 2) Even if that weren't true you've turned in into something of an all or nothing situation (I may have misunderstood here in which case forgive me). There are obviously levels within everything - yes you could work the least you can get away with or work 100 hours a week and always be on call, but you could also work 40 hours a week and take regular holidays, or work flat our for a couple of months then take a month off. Maybe some of us are spending too much time on cake acquisition. If we spent less time doing that we may not have such a large cake but we would at least be able to eat the smaller cake that we had.

by dkrich 15y ago

foobarian 15y ago

To add to your comment, I wonder what the "regret bulletpoints" look like for the people who actually did all those things that PG listed. Maybe they wish that they worked more instead of hanging out with friends all the time?

drzaiusapelord 15y ago
My old stoner underachievers who never finished school still live in the same shitty hometown, got married young to the same high school girlfriend, have mental illness/drug issues, have kids who hate them, and otherwise live miserable lives. I think the whole "be an underachiever, there's happiness in it you stupid capitalist" is something of a myth. Truth is, life is little more than trade-offs and opportunity costs. Truth is that if you want something of a comfortable life, want to not live in the ghetto, and do things like have expendable income, take foreign vacations, etc you need to give a good chuck of your life to work.

smashing 15y ago

Advice rarely comes with the caveats, and free advice is worth every cent. Ever hear anyone write on a blog, "I wish I didn't have to spend so much time with my family." or, "Given the Dunning–Kruger effect, don't follow your dreams as you are unlikely to achieve your unrealistic expectations given your current skill level."

DanBC 15y ago

> If we don't ask the girl to the dance If you don't ask the first girl to the dance you might not be brave enough to ask the second girl to the dance and before you know it you're in a self-reinforcing loop of not asking anyone to any dances until you're old enough to realise and break out of that loop. > Why worry about what our future selves will regret while forgoing present happiness? I'm not sure how to grok that sentence. Here's two responses. i) Exactly. Don't miss out on current happiness just to keep the future you happy. That's the point - future you does not want to look back on a life of hard grind and no fun just so you can do the looking back from a gold bed on your huge yacht. ii) Because seeking contentment now is a way to ensure that you'll be contented in future and the future you won't look back on a life of missed opportunities. Missing out on happiness now is sometimes important in the short term, but it's not a great way to live a life. Perhaps a lot of grind now means you can retire early and relax and enjoy stuff. But you have to live long enough to retire, and by that time you may have missed some really fun things like babies growing. > the reality is that life is no more valuable at the end than at the beginning or the middle Yes. That is the point. Don't grind today to provide future you with excessive luxury. A bit of grinding might be needed to avoid future financial hardship, but other than that you should seek things that fulfil you today. Happiness today will make future you happy. Future you is not more valuable, but s/he will have the benefit of hindsight.

dkrich 15y ago
Well I don't think it all breaks down that cleanly in reality though. Everybody has dreams and some people pursue them 100% doing what they have to to get by in the interim, and some just categorize them as dreams and never really pursue them. My point is that those who tell themselves "I'm not going to let outside pressures influence me and I'm going to do what makes me happy" very well may end up miserable in the short term while they are working to achieve their dreams. In the end, if they do not achieve their dreams (or even if they do) they have traded time that they could have succumbed to those pressures and been more comfortable with the end result of regretting not having had the guts to go after what they really wanted to go after. Then again, if you succumb and work forever in a job you hate and are miserable anyway then you haven't really succeeded in satisfying yourself now either. That's really a bad position to be in. I think Jim Coudal put it best in a talk he gave (actually he was quoting somebody else whose name I can't remember) where he said "The reason most of us are unhappy most of the time is that we set our goals not for the person we will be when we achieve them, but the person we are today." I have found that that is really true. For example, people often go to law school thinking that they will end up happy if they get a job that pays a certain amount and it will look good to their current friends so they spend a bunch of money and work their asses off to get through law school. Then they graduate and feel compelled to take a job as an attorney and they absolutely hate it. I know this because I have many many friends who are attorneys and they all are trying to find a way out. I think the mistake people make in those cases is not cutting their losses and being truly honest about what kind of life they want. There is so much pressure to maintain the status quo that they feel trapped.

AznHisoka 15y ago

You're right, it doesn't matter. Life is absurd is death is the final word. Just live it however you want.. just don't toil 60 hours working for some company, that's the worst.

maigret 15y ago

>We tend to live our lives thinking as we go that we should be striving to end up at some optimal place and that the purpose of our lives is desperately trying to keep us exactly on that course. This is very US (and now occidental) thinking. Many cultures in the world don't have people thinking like that. You've got to have a family and integrate well and support the community. The rest is not as important as our current society wants us to think.

drzaiusapelord 15y ago

>That is to say I wonder whether people confuse nostalgia with regret. This is such an excellent point. This "dying patients" list greatly ignores the opportunity cost of getting to where you managed to get to in life. Lets say I grant these wishes. I wave my magic wand and you work less. Now your memories are full of being poor, sending your kids to some shitty school, getting robbed in a poor neighborhood as opposed to working more but being able to live in a better neighborhood, going on more vacations, having extra money. So its like saying, "I want my cake to eat it too." Well, that wasn't possible when you were younger and its certainly not possible on your deathbed.

Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
There are two issues with your argument: 1) Money doesn't equate to happiness - economists have shown this. It increases up to an annual income of about $60,000 then flat lines completely. So yes you need to have a solid income, but the point extra stops making a difference comes surprisingly early. 2) Even if that weren't true you've turned in into something of an all or nothing situation (I may have misunderstood here in which case forgive me). There are obviously levels within everything - yes you could work the least you can get away with or work 100 hours a week and always be on call, but you could also work 40 hours a week and take regular holidays, or work flat our for a couple of months then take a month off. Maybe some of us are spending too much time on cake acquisition. If we spent less time doing that we may not have such a large cake but we would at least be able to eat the smaller cake that we had.