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I was recently recommended the book The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. And while people who recommended this book said they had an epiphany moment reading it, a

I was recently recommended the book The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. And while people who recommended this book said they had an epiphany moment reading it, all I saw there was a story of someone who's been served everything in their life on a silver platter. Someone who came to meet the literal end of their life, and yet grown no humility nor a bit of introspection... Until the last page I was waiting for the punchline. I wanted the author to admit that he was exceptionally lucky, that when things stopped being easy, he finally saw the light. The missing punchline turned out to be much harder to swallow than anything author could probably come up with. The whole thing turned out to be the typical in academic circles foreword to "selected works", where the author desperately tries to mention every even marginally useful person in a vain hope that by stroking their ego, they'd increase their "impact factor". One of the points in that book that came out as bizarre was when the author sought love advice from his parents... at the young age of thirty-something years old. The reliance on the parents, while doesn't play the key role, is still prominently featured throughout this self-styled epitaph. * * * I've only ever gotten to know one of my grandparents. My grandmother passed away when I was twelve. I have zero photographs of her. Nothing's left in the family to remind me of her. I don't know if my mother is alive. The last time we spoke I was sixteen. I have no idea if she still lives where she used to live when I left. And I have no interest in discovering what if anything's left of her. My parents split up when I was seven. Despite being a spiteful and abusive evil piece of shit who couldn't hold a job and had no means to sustain herself, let alone two children, my mom got full custody by the time it came to the family court. So, I grew without a father. I got briefly to know him by the time I was in high-school, but then I left to a different country. Today we don't speak the same language, live worlds apart, and there are front-lines of a very hot and bloody war between us. I don't come to visit, and don't expect to be able to come to my dad's funeral. People waxing emotional over having living parents who took part in their lives, who had something to contribute... kind of turn my stomach upside-down. They have no idea how good they have it, and yet they present their quite happy and fulfilling life as some kind of world-ending tragedy.

ndileas 2y ago
I am going to say something straightforward and possibly hurtful. I mean it seriously and respectfully. Just because you have been damaged emotionally, does not invalidate other people's emotions. They are quite possibly feeling the lowest lows of their lives -- even if that low is a mountain pass versus your death valley. They still deserve respect in grief, even if overall they have had a wonderful life.
- crabbone 2y ago
  People are made of the same things. They aren't somehow incomparable. Someone with living and attentive parents, who lived in good health to their nineties, lived in their own home, in a well-to-do country, where their child came to visit them, in their own car, in good weather, etc... what more did they expect to happen? This is the best outcome by far they could expect from life. They've won the lottery, what more do they want? No. You completely misunderstood my point. I'm not "emotionally damaged". Overwhelming majority of people on planet Earth don't have it anywhere near as good as the people in OP or a bunch of people commenting here about their quite alive and quite well-to-do families. With all that happened to me, I'm still among the few percents who has it relatively well. Vastly more people in this world will have it worse than I have. The entitlement of people crying about how bad they have it, when they are among the fraction of a percent of those who have it the best it can possibly be is what's so disgusting.
  - batch12 2y ago
    By your logic, nobody really has a right to be sad. There is always someone who had it worse. One is not 'entitled' [believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment] because they had a good family and grieve its loss. Nor should they feel guilty about that feeling.
gooeyblob 2y ago
It is very weird to write all this about a nice series of photographs
- crabbone 2y ago
  This is less about the series of photograph and more of a response to a bunch of other disjoint top-level responses in this thread.
  - sdlkj- 2y ago
    to me this makes it all the more odd - at a glace the top level responses are about how the piece made them emotional/sad or are reminisces about their own parents. What's wrong with that? Because these folks experienced the "best outcome" (presumably to see their parents live to old age) they shouldn't get emotional about it?
    - crabbone 2y ago
      "Emotional" is the kind of half-truth word. There are many different emotions. The emotion in question is what's responsible for the response. Saying "emotional" is omitting the important part. It's like saying "involved in road accident" w/o saying whether one caused the said accident or was the victim of. The top-level response in question is disgusting. It's like listening to someone who won a million dollars in a lottery complain that they didn't win ten millions. Should I really feel compassionate towards a "victim" of such a bad luck of only winning a single million? Even if the "victim" genuinely feels bad about themselves?
      - sdlkj- 2y ago
        No one is asking for your compassion or complaining, they're largely just expressing how the piece made them feel - and again, reminiscing about their own parents. you're characterizing them as ungrateful, which isn't really coming across for me at all.
        2y ago
DiggyJohnson 2y ago
Respectfully, this is kind of a shocking thing to read. > People waxing emotional over having living parents who took part in their lives, who had something to contribute... kind of turn my stomach upside-down. They have no idea how good they have it, and yet they present their quite happy and fulfilling life as some kind of world-ending tragedy. Good fortune can open oneself up to greater heartbreak, and misfortune can do the worse. Likewise, the opposite can happen: fortune can blind the fortunate, and enable happiness when the unfortunate overcome. It goes all ways and directions. But for whatever hardship you have, you missed out on other sorts of hardship. And whatever hardships you dealt with, the author of any memoir may have missed those obstacles. Be at peace! And don't expect anyone to walk the same path as you. I'm sorry you missed out on these experiences, but that doesn't mean that the normal experience of being a human - that is your parents living into your own adulthood - ought to be taboo.
- crabbone 2y ago
  I don't "have hardship". I don't struggle. With all that happened in my life, I'm still among the vanishingly small group of people who have it too good to complain. Whatever your fortune or misfortune opens you to is only relevant if you are under... maybe twelve years old. As a grownup, you are expected to be able to put things into perspective and realize that complaining about a pea under twenty mattresses doesn't really make you into a princess. > the normal experience of being a human - that is your parents living into your own adulthood However common this is, it's not the point. The point is that people in this thread complain about the best outcome that is possible in this situation. These people complain about winning the lottery for crying out loud. How much more entitled can you get?
kbutler 2y ago
I'm sorry that having never had these relationships, you cannot comprehend the loss. In seeing this series and the comments, I see both the sweetness of the relationships and the hint of the grief at their passing. Yes, we recognize that having loving parents is an immeasurable blessing. While their passing is not a world-ending tragedy, it is precisely because we know how precious that interaction is, that we mourn their passing - and encourage others who have it to treasure it. But there are other precious relationships and interactions that we can establish, build, and treasure.
- crabbone 2y ago
  Oh but I do. There's no shortage of phony self-centered people in the world around me. Through a little effort and a ton of luck I ended up living and interacting with a lot of entitled people, obsessed with their petty tragedies which they hurry to encase in heavy golden frames and put on public display in the most prestigious art gallery in town. I live in the world where about half the inhabitants don't eat meat out of "moral concerns" absolutely ignoring the grim reality of most of the world that will eat whatever food they have, and a lot of the time would have none. People who protest about political causes in lands and cultures they don't understand because a propaganda ad featuring a bruised child in a pile of rubble made them feel sad. People throwing themselves at the police at another pointless protest rally, only to be greeted at the police station by a mug of hot chocolate and be dispatched home to sleep in their soft and cozy beds. There's nothing deep or special in this "loss". It make sense to mourn the loss of a life of a young man committing suicide because he was abandoned by the world around him. And I've seen that. It makes sense to mourn the loss of life of a young woman who got hooked up on heroin and died of overdose after an attempted recovery--and I've seen that too. It makes sense to regret the loss of young child's life, whose entire family was killed by poorly planned and poorly executed missile attack. Because such loss of life was avoidable, it took something that had a potential and squandered it. Old people dying of old age is nothing like any of the above. It's what's supposed to happen. It's how I want to go. It's how I want for everyone I care about to go. I've spent enough time with ER to develop strong feeling of disgust for people who start crying "oh but my mom, she was only ninety-three!" and then latching onto the doctor's sleeves preventing them from tending to other patients. These also tend to show in large family groups and block the entire department for hours by driving attention to themselves with loud wining, arguing with the medical staff and other people in the ER. Demanding unlimited attention due to their "devastating loss". Demanding that the medical staff instantly produce all sorts of forms, perform all kinds of unnecessary procedures, basically, only to drive attention to themselves.
keithnz 2y ago
It seems to me you aren't going to relate much as you haven't experienced losing parents who you have strong bonds with.
keybored 2y ago
Sour grapes. There’s no fairness to the audience you’ll have. Or they will have. Some people will experience a pebble in their shoe, tell the harrowing story, and people will hail them for the courage that they are showing. The openess. The hard-earned wisdom. And there’s nothing anything can do about that.

ndileas 2y ago

I am going to say something straightforward and possibly hurtful. I mean it seriously and respectfully. Just because you have been damaged emotionally, does not invalidate other people's emotions. They are quite possibly feeling the lowest lows of their lives -- even if that low is a mountain pass versus your death valley. They still deserve respect in grief, even if overall they have had a wonderful life.

crabbone 2y ago
People are made of the same things. They aren't somehow incomparable. Someone with living and attentive parents, who lived in good health to their nineties, lived in their own home, in a well-to-do country, where their child came to visit them, in their own car, in good weather, etc... what more did they expect to happen? This is the best outcome by far they could expect from life. They've won the lottery, what more do they want? No. You completely misunderstood my point. I'm not "emotionally damaged". Overwhelming majority of people on planet Earth don't have it anywhere near as good as the people in OP or a bunch of people commenting here about their quite alive and quite well-to-do families. With all that happened to me, I'm still among the few percents who has it relatively well. Vastly more people in this world will have it worse than I have. The entitlement of people crying about how bad they have it, when they are among the fraction of a percent of those who have it the best it can possibly be is what's so disgusting.
- batch12 2y ago
  By your logic, nobody really has a right to be sad. There is always someone who had it worse. One is not 'entitled' [believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment] because they had a good family and grieve its loss. Nor should they feel guilty about that feeling.

gooeyblob 2y ago

It is very weird to write all this about a nice series of photographs

crabbone 2y ago
This is less about the series of photograph and more of a response to a bunch of other disjoint top-level responses in this thread.
- sdlkj- 2y ago
  to me this makes it all the more odd - at a glace the top level responses are about how the piece made them emotional/sad or are reminisces about their own parents. What's wrong with that? Because these folks experienced the "best outcome" (presumably to see their parents live to old age) they shouldn't get emotional about it?
  - crabbone 2y ago
    "Emotional" is the kind of half-truth word. There are many different emotions. The emotion in question is what's responsible for the response. Saying "emotional" is omitting the important part. It's like saying "involved in road accident" w/o saying whether one caused the said accident or was the victim of. The top-level response in question is disgusting. It's like listening to someone who won a million dollars in a lottery complain that they didn't win ten millions. Should I really feel compassionate towards a "victim" of such a bad luck of only winning a single million? Even if the "victim" genuinely feels bad about themselves?
    - sdlkj- 2y ago
      No one is asking for your compassion or complaining, they're largely just expressing how the piece made them feel - and again, reminiscing about their own parents. you're characterizing them as ungrateful, which isn't really coming across for me at all.
      - 2y ago

DiggyJohnson 2y ago

Respectfully, this is kind of a shocking thing to read. > People waxing emotional over having living parents who took part in their lives, who had something to contribute... kind of turn my stomach upside-down. They have no idea how good they have it, and yet they present their quite happy and fulfilling life as some kind of world-ending tragedy. Good fortune can open oneself up to greater heartbreak, and misfortune can do the worse. Likewise, the opposite can happen: fortune can blind the fortunate, and enable happiness when the unfortunate overcome. It goes all ways and directions. But for whatever hardship you have, you missed out on other sorts of hardship. And whatever hardships you dealt with, the author of any memoir may have missed those obstacles. Be at peace! And don't expect anyone to walk the same path as you. I'm sorry you missed out on these experiences, but that doesn't mean that the normal experience of being a human - that is your parents living into your own adulthood - ought to be taboo.

crabbone 2y ago
I don't "have hardship". I don't struggle. With all that happened in my life, I'm still among the vanishingly small group of people who have it too good to complain. Whatever your fortune or misfortune opens you to is only relevant if you are under... maybe twelve years old. As a grownup, you are expected to be able to put things into perspective and realize that complaining about a pea under twenty mattresses doesn't really make you into a princess. > the normal experience of being a human - that is your parents living into your own adulthood However common this is, it's not the point. The point is that people in this thread complain about the best outcome that is possible in this situation. These people complain about winning the lottery for crying out loud. How much more entitled can you get?

kbutler 2y ago

I'm sorry that having never had these relationships, you cannot comprehend the loss. In seeing this series and the comments, I see both the sweetness of the relationships and the hint of the grief at their passing. Yes, we recognize that having loving parents is an immeasurable blessing. While their passing is not a world-ending tragedy, it is precisely because we know how precious that interaction is, that we mourn their passing - and encourage others who have it to treasure it. But there are other precious relationships and interactions that we can establish, build, and treasure.

crabbone 2y ago
Oh but I do. There's no shortage of phony self-centered people in the world around me. Through a little effort and a ton of luck I ended up living and interacting with a lot of entitled people, obsessed with their petty tragedies which they hurry to encase in heavy golden frames and put on public display in the most prestigious art gallery in town. I live in the world where about half the inhabitants don't eat meat out of "moral concerns" absolutely ignoring the grim reality of most of the world that will eat whatever food they have, and a lot of the time would have none. People who protest about political causes in lands and cultures they don't understand because a propaganda ad featuring a bruised child in a pile of rubble made them feel sad. People throwing themselves at the police at another pointless protest rally, only to be greeted at the police station by a mug of hot chocolate and be dispatched home to sleep in their soft and cozy beds. There's nothing deep or special in this "loss". It make sense to mourn the loss of a life of a young man committing suicide because he was abandoned by the world around him. And I've seen that. It makes sense to mourn the loss of life of a young woman who got hooked up on heroin and died of overdose after an attempted recovery--and I've seen that too. It makes sense to regret the loss of young child's life, whose entire family was killed by poorly planned and poorly executed missile attack. Because such loss of life was avoidable, it took something that had a potential and squandered it. Old people dying of old age is nothing like any of the above. It's what's supposed to happen. It's how I want to go. It's how I want for everyone I care about to go. I've spent enough time with ER to develop strong feeling of disgust for people who start crying "oh but my mom, she was only ninety-three!" and then latching onto the doctor's sleeves preventing them from tending to other patients. These also tend to show in large family groups and block the entire department for hours by driving attention to themselves with loud wining, arguing with the medical staff and other people in the ER. Demanding unlimited attention due to their "devastating loss". Demanding that the medical staff instantly produce all sorts of forms, perform all kinds of unnecessary procedures, basically, only to drive attention to themselves.

keithnz 2y ago

It seems to me you aren't going to relate much as you haven't experienced losing parents who you have strong bonds with.

keybored 2y ago

Sour grapes. There’s no fairness to the audience you’ll have. Or they will have. Some people will experience a pebble in their shoe, tell the harrowing story, and people will hail them for the courage that they are showing. The openess. The hard-earned wisdom. And there’s nothing anything can do about that.