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I swear I am going to, on my deathbed, say "gee, I wish I'd spent more time at the office," just to stop this quote going around. In the last five years I've ha

by strken 2y ago

I swear I am going to, on my deathbed, say "gee, I wish I'd spent more time at the office," just to stop this quote going around. In the last five years I've had a few conversations about regret with elderly relatives who have now passed away. None of them regretted going to work. My grandparents met at work. One regretted that she'd been a draftswoman rather than an engineer, but that's almost the exact opposite. I don't understand why people think doing good work that inspires pride and then getting paid for it is going to be some kind of horrible deathbed regret. It has literally never been a deathbed regret for anyone whose deathbed I have attended.

amelius 2y ago
They should have said: "gee, I wish I spent more time influencing people into buying things they do not need".
psychoslave 2y ago
> I don't understand why people think doing good work that inspires pride and then getting paid for it is going to be some kind of horrible deathbed regret. Because there is nothing in the definition you give that remotely looks like the median job. Societies are not structured to maximize the number of jobs that fits this definition. If social structure happens to fit your Ikigai, congratulation you won the cosmic loto, enjoy. But maybe it’s not a relevant point to show surprise on this point. Consider how much people in the rest of humanity will have to go through major existential stressful abhorrent challenges, geopolitical struggles, being effectively reduced to dull task slaves by whoever happen to be their lord of the day. How then to be surprised that at the end of their life they can think "work moments were so shitty, I wish I had spend more enjoyable ones like those I experienced while taking time with people I deeply sincerely love". By the way, if you haven’t yet do that today, tell at least to at least three people around you how much you love them and care that they enjoy moment passed together. I promise you won’t regret it on your death bed. ;)
- strken 2y ago
  I'm talking about a wide range of jobs -- draftswoman, ship's engineer and structural engineer, typist, teacher -- held by people who grew up during the major existential struggles that were the great depression and the second world war. Working as a typist in the 1940s and 1950s was not some kind of utopian magical job full of meaning, but my grandmother could still hit a higher WPM than I can and she was proud of what she'd done. Earning an income was a means of doing things that she would never have been able to do otherwise. She felt lucky to be able to do things like take a ship to Europe without a chaperone and using money she'd earned, given that her mother's generation of women would have found it much harder. My experience has been that older people often have a different outlook on life than what people my age, including me, would predict. Part of that is experience, part is coming from a different time where the baseline for quality of life was lower, and I suspect part of it is rose-tinted glasses.

by strken 2y ago

amelius 2y ago

They should have said: "gee, I wish I spent more time influencing people into buying things they do not need".

psychoslave 2y ago

> I don't understand why people think doing good work that inspires pride and then getting paid for it is going to be some kind of horrible deathbed regret. Because there is nothing in the definition you give that remotely looks like the median job. Societies are not structured to maximize the number of jobs that fits this definition. If social structure happens to fit your Ikigai, congratulation you won the cosmic loto, enjoy. But maybe it’s not a relevant point to show surprise on this point. Consider how much people in the rest of humanity will have to go through major existential stressful abhorrent challenges, geopolitical struggles, being effectively reduced to dull task slaves by whoever happen to be their lord of the day. How then to be surprised that at the end of their life they can think "work moments were so shitty, I wish I had spend more enjoyable ones like those I experienced while taking time with people I deeply sincerely love". By the way, if you haven’t yet do that today, tell at least to at least three people around you how much you love them and care that they enjoy moment passed together. I promise you won’t regret it on your death bed. ;)

strken 2y ago
I'm talking about a wide range of jobs -- draftswoman, ship's engineer and structural engineer, typist, teacher -- held by people who grew up during the major existential struggles that were the great depression and the second world war. Working as a typist in the 1940s and 1950s was not some kind of utopian magical job full of meaning, but my grandmother could still hit a higher WPM than I can and she was proud of what she'd done. Earning an income was a means of doing things that she would never have been able to do otherwise. She felt lucky to be able to do things like take a ship to Europe without a chaperone and using money she'd earned, given that her mother's generation of women would have found it much harder. My experience has been that older people often have a different outlook on life than what people my age, including me, would predict. Part of that is experience, part is coming from a different time where the baseline for quality of life was lower, and I suspect part of it is rose-tinted glasses.