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It’s only soul destroying if you let it be. As someone who grew up in poverty and spent most of my 20s working at a call center and pawn shop, I feel like the l

It’s only soul destroying if you let it be. As someone who grew up in poverty and spent most of my 20s working at a call center and pawn shop, I feel like the luckiest person in my family with my soul destroying corporate job. It sounds cliche but happiness is truly a state of mind. You don’t have to wait for something in the future to be happy now.

spacephysics 2y ago
The illusion paradigm By saying you want to be happy, you’re already telling yourself there’s a gap between your state currently and that you wish to accomplish “I’ll be truly happy WHEN” When comes and goes, rarely have I heard someone say “well I said I’d be happy when this happened, it’s happened, and now I’m happy. All done” Fully agree, it’s a state of mind. I’d also add most people who say they want to be happy don’t seem to be looking for happiness but rather contentness, but I digress
- bccdee 2y ago
  > rarely have I heard someone say “well I said I’d be happy when this happened, it’s happened, and now I’m happy I've heard this, but only from people who had been in an very shitty situation and then got out. Happiness is a state of mind, but misery is a set of circumstances, and the latter precludes the former unfortunately.
mlsu 2y ago
These conversations where highly paid software people complain about insanely minor things (the code linter is the worst part of your job??) are actually kind of nice to read, in a funny way. The privilege of having pixels be the most stressful part of your life... it's actually really nice to read that. Having perspective from hardship is good, and everyone will have at least some perspective at some point in their life when hardship is forced upon them. But hardship in and of itself isn't good. I'm happy it is being completely eradicated from life, at least for some of us.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  Yea, that linter thread was wild! Sometimes I think we are totally pampered and out of touch! I've cleaned McDonalds bathrooms, worked in a plastics factory where the chemical stench left my nose nonfunctional for weeks, hauled heavy sacks of shingles up onto a roof in 100+F degree summer temperatures. I am utterly grateful and consider it a lucky privilege to now be typing into a computer in a climate controlled office, where my biggest stressor is a deadline.
  - mlsu 2y ago
    Yeah. Amazing, isn't it? I will say: I don't necessarily like to say "lucky," or even "privileged". Luck incites tricky emotion because there's an implication with luck that you didn't deserve it. A gambler who won at the slot machine should have lost his money -- luck carries that "should have" connotation with it. Likewise, privilege carries a zero-sum connotation, because we always mean someone is privileged in relation to another, which introduces almost an adversarial tone to it. For me, a better term is fortunate. I am fortunate that I have a job in a nice office, solving interesting puzzles all day, getting paid (relatively) a lot of money doing it. Fortune has come upon me. I work hard, although not really harder than any other reasonable person. I was born in the right zip code, to the right family, had access to an amazing education, had the stability in my life to pursue it. Fortune. I will never look down on anyone who is fortunate. I wish most people could have fortune in their lives. If the price we pay is a few complaints that the soda machine is down today, so be it!
  - chasd00 2y ago
    I don't mean to pile on but i feel the same when software devs here talk about how becoming a farmer is their salvation from their workplace suffering. As a kid I remember watching my cousin lie on his back with a stick welder underneath a horse trailer in 105F Texas summer heat. No thanks, i'll stick with my coffee, desk, and computer. edit: different strokes for different folks, i don't want to sound too presumptuous. For some people what i described is exactly what would bring them joy.
    - 2y ago

spacephysics 2y ago

The illusion paradigm By saying you want to be happy, you’re already telling yourself there’s a gap between your state currently and that you wish to accomplish “I’ll be truly happy WHEN” When comes and goes, rarely have I heard someone say “well I said I’d be happy when this happened, it’s happened, and now I’m happy. All done” Fully agree, it’s a state of mind. I’d also add most people who say they want to be happy don’t seem to be looking for happiness but rather contentness, but I digress

bccdee 2y ago
> rarely have I heard someone say “well I said I’d be happy when this happened, it’s happened, and now I’m happy I've heard this, but only from people who had been in an very shitty situation and then got out. Happiness is a state of mind, but misery is a set of circumstances, and the latter precludes the former unfortunately.

mlsu 2y ago

These conversations where highly paid software people complain about insanely minor things (the code linter is the worst part of your job??) are actually kind of nice to read, in a funny way. The privilege of having pixels be the most stressful part of your life... it's actually really nice to read that. Having perspective from hardship is good, and everyone will have at least some perspective at some point in their life when hardship is forced upon them. But hardship in and of itself isn't good. I'm happy it is being completely eradicated from life, at least for some of us.

ryandrake 2y ago
Yea, that linter thread was wild! Sometimes I think we are totally pampered and out of touch! I've cleaned McDonalds bathrooms, worked in a plastics factory where the chemical stench left my nose nonfunctional for weeks, hauled heavy sacks of shingles up onto a roof in 100+F degree summer temperatures. I am utterly grateful and consider it a lucky privilege to now be typing into a computer in a climate controlled office, where my biggest stressor is a deadline.
- mlsu 2y ago
  Yeah. Amazing, isn't it? I will say: I don't necessarily like to say "lucky," or even "privileged". Luck incites tricky emotion because there's an implication with luck that you didn't deserve it. A gambler who won at the slot machine should have lost his money -- luck carries that "should have" connotation with it. Likewise, privilege carries a zero-sum connotation, because we always mean someone is privileged in relation to another, which introduces almost an adversarial tone to it. For me, a better term is fortunate. I am fortunate that I have a job in a nice office, solving interesting puzzles all day, getting paid (relatively) a lot of money doing it. Fortune has come upon me. I work hard, although not really harder than any other reasonable person. I was born in the right zip code, to the right family, had access to an amazing education, had the stability in my life to pursue it. Fortune. I will never look down on anyone who is fortunate. I wish most people could have fortune in their lives. If the price we pay is a few complaints that the soda machine is down today, so be it!
- chasd00 2y ago
  I don't mean to pile on but i feel the same when software devs here talk about how becoming a farmer is their salvation from their workplace suffering. As a kid I remember watching my cousin lie on his back with a stick welder underneath a horse trailer in 105F Texas summer heat. No thanks, i'll stick with my coffee, desk, and computer. edit: different strokes for different folks, i don't want to sound too presumptuous. For some people what i described is exactly what would bring them joy.
  - 2y ago