7 ms·

Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)

• dvt 4mo ago
  > And yet, somehow, the more years go by, the more rarely I watch snowboarding videos. I'd argue that snowboarding wasn't author's "dream" to begin with. I think it's reductive and unfair to compare your "oh it would be cool to do that" with someone else's actual dream: as in, a passion they pour their life and soul into. Being great at anything takes much more than a passing "it would be neat to be able to do X." And achieving a dream (say, competing at the Olympics) is a lot less glamorous than a casual tourist might imagine.
  • happytoexplain 4mo ago
    I somewhat agree, but I think a person's "passion" is more concrete than their "dream". A dream is not necessarily something being actively progressed.
    • dvt 4mo ago
      Athletes, artists, entrepreneurs say "this has been my dream" all the time when achieving something superlative. But you qualified with "necessarily" so I guess technically you're correct, but it would be kinda' weird if someone told me that "X is their dream" and never did anything about it, especially if it's relatively achievable (i.e. not "going to Mars" or something). Getting decent at snowboarding isn't some crazy goal (and you need to be decent before you're good, or great). I started skiing late in life and I try to go a few times a season to keep up with it. I'm by no means good, but slowly getting better.
      • strken 4mo ago
        Why would it be weird? My grandmother dreamed of being a school teacher, never did it, and talked about it until she died. The closest she ever got was teaching Sunday School for a few months. It's common to have a dream and do nothing concrete about it. That's part of why we call it a dream. Sometimes it's less about the thing itself and more about the unfulfilled and unrealistic expectation.
  • tjfnfbbff 4mo ago
    OK Did that get in the way of you actually understanding the meaning of this post? Do you think that nitpicking terminology when the meaning is clear is actually contributing anything?
    • vector_spaces 4mo ago
      About your second point, the site guidelines suggest assuming good faith and responding to the strongest possible version of what someone has written. I would interpret that to mean here that "they had no trouble understanding the post but had reservations about it, which felt important to them". I will also add that I feel characterizing what they have written as nitpicking feels rude and uncharitable. Personally I appreciated the parent comment because although I enjoyed the article, it didn't completely sit well with me, and the comment helped to clarify why. There are some activities in my life that I've poured years of blood, sweat, and tears into, and I'm realizing as I get older that my goals and dreams with regard to this category of work will probably never be realized. This feels a bit different to the snowboarding narrative, which for all I know may have been chosen not because the writer hasn't been in a situation like mine, but because it's easier to digest and doesn't require a level of vulnerability that would muddy the light-hearted tone of the post. In any event, I don't feel your hostility is fair or warranted here
      • BigGreenJorts 4mo ago
        My interpretation of the article was the the author really was really into sbowboarding. But 15 years ago. Where now they talk about it with an amount of distance that it really isn't their dream anymore. Because it can't be.
        • dvt 4mo ago
          From the article: "I’ll probably never be a snowboarder at all [...] I’d love to take snowboarding lessons." It doesn't seem like he even snowboarded a day in his life.
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
• lowbloodsugar 4mo ago
  Have you thought about absolutely monster knee braces? And then daily squats. They worked for me. Unfortunately now it’s my neck that’s trying to paralyze me, which would be such a not fun outcome.
  • SoftTalker 4mo ago
    You can very likely rehab your knees. Single-leg touchdown squats completely eliminated some serious knee pain I was having with my barbell squats. Also reverse sled drags are a good one. Definitely see a sports/rehab physician or DPT, your family doctor or GP is just going to tell you to "not do that."
  • laz 4mo ago
    Having strong muscles around the joint won't fix a structural problem, but they definitely won't hurt. When I tore my ACL doing bjj, I was surprised to see that some pro MMA fighters will continue to fight with a torn ACL. They double down on muscles to support the joint and postpone the loss of a year of competition to the reconstruction surgery.
• lanstin 4mo ago
  I would love to be a star ship captain in a universe with faster than light travel. Or a surgeon. But you know actual life is good and I do enjoy watching DS9 with my young adult son, Benjamin. And reading about all the other cool things. It is better to live an imperfect experience than just wish for an ideal imagined experience. And better to act wrongly than to be right but do nothing.
  • jaynetics 4mo ago
    Did you name your son after the captain of DS9?
    • cryo32 4mo ago
      Not OP but my daughter and ex wife haven’t worked out the name I picked for my daughter was from an ST:TNG character. They’d kill me.
      • jmccarthy 4mo ago
        not Kes though right?
        • netule 4mo ago
          Kes is not a TNG character. Maybe Deanna?
      • aaronbrethorst 4mo ago
        Lwaxana is very unusual. How haven't they guessed yet?
        • cryo32 4mo ago
          Definitely not that one!
          • wpm 4mo ago
• shermantanktop 4mo ago
  A life well-lived is really what we should all hope for. What that actually means varies by person. Sitting and thinking for 10 minutes about snowboarding when your knees are blown out is 10 minutes you could have used differently. Everyone has regrets but my attitude is: I can’t change the past, but I can change the future.
  • jaynetics 4mo ago
    > Sitting and thinking for 10 minutes about snowboarding when your knees are blown out is 10 minutes you could have used differently. 10 minutes doesnt sound like much of a loss, even if you do it every day. Maybe it helps you empathize with athletes, or if you get nostalgic/wistful, it helps you explore the range of emotions, which is fine as long as you don't get stuck with them.
    • shermantanktop 4mo ago
      Sure, I was being extreme. The danger is getting stuck, like in “Glory Days” by Springsteen, or Brando in “On the Waterfront.” People especially get stuck on their high school years.
      • trick-or-treat 4mo ago
        Thinking of happy memories sounds like a perfectly healthy activity to me, TBH
        • shermantanktop 4mo ago
          Sure. I won’t be 16 again and I look back fondly on that too. IMO it’s a problem if doing that stops you from making new happy memories. Life is for living.
          • trick-or-treat 4mo ago
            At some point, for all of us, our happiest memories will be behind us. It sounds like you're not there yet, but when you are, I hope you will be less judgmental of us old folks who simply care to reminisce.
• helloplanets 4mo ago
  > You know what else I’d like to do besides becoming a great snowboarder? I want to learn kung fu. I’d also love to be a lot better at video games, get my Yu-Gi-Oh! hobby back on, and become at least fluent enough for everyday conversation in oh, I don’t know, eight more languages. I think this sort of underplays the feeling of "lives unlived, paths not taken" that everyone gets hit with. Just flattens the whole thing that had been building up to that point, instead of allowing it to open up further.
• gmuslera 4mo ago
  We have to distinguish "our" dreams from, let's say, cultural ones. A lot of what we want, what we perceive as living a full life, having fun and so on comes from culture (and increasingly in the last decades/centuries, with mass media). Besides that, we can't achieve everything, we could not be everywhere when something interesting happens there, at the very least because a lot of those things happened in the past, or do everything because physical condition, economics, or extra conditions (i.e. being an astronaut). So you draw lines. This is what I can do, I can go, I can be. You may push boundaries, but in the end it will always be more things outside than inside. And try to be the best on what matters on those boundaries.
  • jopsen 4mo ago
    And don't forget, that sometimes day dreaming about going to space, might be more fun, than actually going. It's not like you can touch it anyways. My point is: Remember to enjoy your dreams. And 99% of the time let them be just that: "dreams".
    • Cthulhu_ 4mo ago
      Case in point, dreams of being rich and famous. Famous people hate being famous. Get rich first, see if you still want to be famous then.
  • mapontosevenths 4mo ago
    > A lot of what we want, what we perceive as living a full life, having fun and so on comes from culture (and increasingly in the last decades/centuries, with mass media). This is very important. I didn't figure it out until late in life, and wasted a lot of effort and money that could have been better spent. When you want something ask yourself "why", then ask yourself "why" about your answer as well. Keep doing that until you hit bottom and its usually something like "so other people will think more highly of me." Whenever you find yourself with "impressing others" as a motivation, ignore it. You'll learn to care less about what others think about you when you realize how seldom they do.
    • 4mo ago
• simpaticoder 4mo ago
  There is an analogy to be made between the space of human possibility and the space of possible Turing machines: in an unconstrained machine everything is possible and nothing is probable. If you accept constraints (e.g. the shape of a language) then most things become impossible but some things become probable. That is you gain access to some space and lose access to other space. It's a very fundamental trade-off and it's foolish to worry about it too much, especially considering that there is always some level of zoom where every hero, every winner of every game, is irrelevant. Indeed the underlying insight that our lives are arbitrarily small and irrelevant, (yes, even the greatest titans of politics, tech, science and art), that drives the tech-elite long-now accelerationist ideal. Every life is characterized by [trade-offs + luck] and none of them have any meaning unless we get through the Great Filter. (Sure, this belief is mostly a post hoc rationalization to just do what you wanted in the first place, but I appreciate the attempt to paper over the naked self-interest.)
• ceroxylon 4mo ago
  One of the best lessons I've learned was that the happiest I've been (so far) was a time when I was dirt poor, while chasing my dream that everyone assured me ends in poverty. Things have changed, but it takes some of the financial anxiety away when I remember that I would still give up everything to go back to that time.
  • becomevocal 4mo ago
    I find I there is anxiety either direction but have more engaging days when I am chasing something deeply.
• renegade-otter 4mo ago
  As I always say - do what you will regret NOT doing once you are old.
  • smallnix 4mo ago
    I think my old self will want my younger self to have had done lots of things I don't want to do now. Future me can suck it. I'll be selfish in the moment. This is like watching videos of old folks saying: "I wish I took better care of my teeth". Right, cause thats what matters a lot to you now. The lesson to be learned is that what you want from life changes. You shouldn't prioritize the needs of a future version of you.
    • cindyllm 4mo ago
      [dead]
    • lukan 4mo ago
      If you don't take care of your teeth, it might matter a lot to you very quickly and pain is a good instructor.
    • SoftTalker 4mo ago
      When you get old you realize that none of it matters. You can't take those experiences with you, just as you cannot take money with you.
    • Geste 4mo ago
      >Future me can suck it. So...You will suck it ?
    • asimovDev 4mo ago
      i understand it's missing the point of your comment, but teeth affect quality of life so much that it's really ill-advised to neglect them
  • georgemcbay 4mo ago
    > As I always say - do what you will regret NOT doing once you are old. IMO whether or not this is good for self or society depends a lot on what you value and thus think you will regret. On its own it is neither positive or negative and has to be combined with a lot of self-reflection and an innate sense of goodness to be useful. Regret minimization is an oft-cited mantra among a lot of the current crop of centibillionaires who, if decency still matters in the future, will be viewed by society as even worse versions of gilded age villains. And there is no evidence that this strategy helps those people on the personal development side when we remove society's view of them from the picture. You don't have to look at them too deeply to see that getting more than everything they wanted as a younger person never filled the void they have that keeps them wanting ever more regardless of how much damage they have to do in the process. If you're a normal human being and what you will regret is not spending more time with loved ones and such, then yeah that's a great thing to focus on, I wish I had focused on it more when I was younger. If you're a human Hungry Ghost whose primary regret will be dying without the biggest number next to your name, well, maybe regret minimization isn't quite as helpful.
• chaps 4mo ago
  Never let your memes be dreams nor your dreams be memes.
• stared 4mo ago
  > Sometimes, dreams can just be dreams. If (for any reason) we know that dreams cannot be achieved, there is a clear cut. And while it might take time to accept the situation, this realization is Stoic/Zen. It is way harder if there is a chance, we try, yet fail. When do we keep trying, and how do we do so without losing hope piece by piece? It might be even harder when the dream is not something like "win a gold medal in snowboarding", "build a unicorn startup" or "publish a bestseller". But it is in the line of having kids, or being healthy, or other things that a lot of people take for granted.
• phillipcarter 4mo ago
  Appropos of nothing, snowboarding is so unbelievably fun once you’re past the immediate beginner phase of painfully flip-flopping down a slope, that it’s very reasonable to be a tad angry at not being able to live that dream.
• dismalaf 4mo ago
  As someone with less than stellar knees who skis a lot, ski/ride powder. It's way easier on the body and more fun too. And maybe skip the big jumps. You can definitely still ride big/steep enough mountains for a big adrenaline rush.
• hsuduebc2 4mo ago
  I struggled quite a lot with this. I want to do everything, learn everything thus I ended up mastering nothing. I've learned to play few instruments in last four years so I can jam with people but I still feel it's not enough. As I got older I started to value relationships much more and overall became a happier person. But still the knowledge that I never be a skilled doctor, physicist, exceptional chef, biologist, blacksmith, economist, successful entrepreneur and many more will still somehow hunt me.
  • weakfish 4mo ago
    I highly recommend the book Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman to help cope with this anxiety
• CobaltFire 4mo ago
  I read the article and fight with this from a different angle. My son was diagnosed with cancer at 3, then during chemo it became abundantly clear that he had far more severe autism than we originally thought. Could have been made worse by the chemo and trauma; no real way to know. Now my wife and I have had to give up all the dreams we had for when I retired from the military. A few good moves means that I actually retired at 40, though more modestly than I planned. But we will forever be taking care of him. So we struggle with the unlived dreams often.
  • firefoxd 4mo ago
    I'm in a similar boat. I had a startup, connections, was featured in the right places. I got married, and my wife had complications. 6 weeks in the NICU, wife's health has only gone down hill since. Now I'm running between programs for special need for my twins. From time to time, I struggle with my dreams, but I'm also pretty good at lying to myself. I still manage to get things done to advance my dreams.
    • CobaltFire 4mo ago
      If you want to chat I'd be happy to reach out (I see the email in your profile). I'm trying my hand at a startup right now, just to see if I can make a go of it.
    • jdswain 4mo ago
      Make sure you look after your own health too, if you lose that it’ll be a lot harder to help those around you.
  • Geste 4mo ago
    You will never know what could have been, only know that you were a wonderful parent for stepping up to such a challenge.
  • Scroll_Swe 4mo ago
    These kind of stories do help. In that sick reality TV way. "At least I'm not this guy lol"
• torlok 4mo ago
  I had the same mindset about wanting to be good at a lot of things, working on myself, not "wasting time", but now in my mid thirties I figured that if I really wanted to do something, I'd be actually doing it, and a lot of these goals boil down to "it would be cool if I was good at X", and aren't actually things I care about.
• cladopa 4mo ago
  As someone that has done snowboarding and skying in Central Europe, the paradise of snowboarders and have been friend of profesionals, you probably don't want to be one of them. It is one thing to go carving whenever you want, where you want because you have a good job outside it. Another totally different thing is spending all your time training. Most people will hate that. Everybody wants to be a tennis player when they see one player raising the cup and earning millions. But a professional player spends most of her life doing extremely boring things. And only a very minority get enough money to live from the sport.
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
• genxy 4mo ago
  The trick is to widen the scope of what you means. If it means, us and we, then we are pulling 1080s. The dreams become what we can achieve. When anyone broke the 2hr marathon, we were happy for us. We did it, we landed on the moon. We ran a 4 minute mile or summited Everest w/o oxygen. Dreams are a dance and we have to figure out how to include ourselves and others dynamically.
  • xg15 4mo ago
    I don't know, I'd rather not identify with my country too much if it does things I deeply disapprove of but can't change. By that logic, all Americans would be Trump.
    • SauntSolaire 4mo ago
      I believe they meant humanity.
      • deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
      • xg15 4mo ago
        That term is honestly used way too often on HN for my tastes. But then as well, I wouldn't like to identify with everything humanity has ever done. Especially if I know that I have only a tenuous connection (or no connection at all) to the people who did it.
  • edot 4mo ago
    Is this mindset why people like watching sports so much? I’ve never understood it, really. You’re not playing, exercising, practicing, getting injured, losing, or winning, nor are you getting paid, so … why care? I could just be an asshole but if we go to Mars tomorrow, I’ll go “ok that was cool” and then go to the grocery store, cook dinner, go to bed, and go to work tomorrow. It just doesn’t matter. I am not we and neither are you (unless you go to Mars or play in the NFL, then you’re definitely allowed to feel “our” accomplishments). Edit: I almost feel that this mindset is a bad thing for the world. Think of the average Joe (like me) who isn’t capable of building a smartphone. Yet I can buy one for a few hundred bucks. I shouldn’t feel proud of “our” invention, should I? No, some really smart, hardworking people have worked for decades to bring this to my pocket. I should be inspired to work harder and learn a such craft or skill, not go “man, we’re so smart”, because I didn’t help build it. I just bought it … it’s the Joe Rogan pyramids standup bit.
• smackeyacky 4mo ago
  Making peace with the lived ones might be harder. Chasing the startup dream ended in bitterness, disappointment and debt. It forever damaged my marriage and my mental health. Be careful what you wish for.
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• tayo42 4mo ago
  Ime with sports and injuries. Doctors say alot of things, unless they are sports doctors that work with you to get back to sports or athletic them selves, they just give useless generic advice. I lost a year becasue of doctors just telling me to rest for a constant pain I had. Author should just go learn to snowboard. There's athletes out there competing with torn acls.
  • laz 4mo ago
    IME sports doctors and physios have incentives aligned with returning to high functionality. I think this causes them to clinically converge on effective treatments. It’s also possible that they have clientele who are willing to put in the work to recover. Regardless, if you’re optimizing for outcomes this is the way.
• stego-tech 4mo ago
  It’s the not-knowing that is the most haunting. I know I’ll never be able to take martial arts; I have made peace with that. I know I will never be an amazing athlete; I have made peace with that as well. Same with my body composition: I will never be rail-thin, I will never “fit” into most “fun” cars even when I finish my weight loss journey, I will never be the kind of guy who can fit into a Medium of anything clothing-wise. I have made peace with all of this. But what of my dreams of homeownership? If this apartment is the best I will have, then knowing that at least lets me cherish it properly and redirect those savings toward a more immediate improvement in life. What of my dreams to find a partner? If I’m going to spend my life single and unwed, then I’d at least like to know so I can make peace with that reality and focus my energy on friendships rather than dating. Yet if I knew whether something was guaranteed, I would not take the risks to achieve it. I wouldn’t meet new people and learn more about my own flaws or strengths in pursuit of a relationship. I wouldn’t have evolved my tastes in food or drink, diversifying away from sugar-laden American foods in huge portions towards curries, and cocktails, and rice, and stir fry, and gyros, and even - dare I confess - salads. Perhaps I need to make peace with the fact that some dreams are worth fighting for until the bitter end, never knowing if they’re achievable or not.
  • stouset 4mo ago
    I’m curious why you say you know some of those things will never happen. It’s certainly possible that if you’re extremely tall you probably won’t fit comfortably in some sports cars. And there are some medical conditions that preclude any kind of participation in martial arts. But barring those, is it possible you don’t know those things but are instead conceding them?
    • stego-tech 4mo ago
      Nope, it’s a definite never for those ones I listed for a combination of the very reasons you specified. Medical reasons and/or basic physics of height.
      • dentemple 4mo ago
• m463 4mo ago
  Actually I think poorly imagined dreams is a big problem. People who have poorly imagined dreams are likely to screw up their working life and their retirement too. There is more that you can pull off during your working years. As a matter of fact, you SHOULD. instead of sitting in front of the tv this weekend, go somewhere. And in retirement, there is probably less you can pull off unless you focus and make it your job. You should do vigorous cardio, do strength training, connect with people more, not less. and make a good healthy retirement your job.
• senorqa 4mo ago
  These kind of articles remind me of an article in Polish I read few years ago: "Millennials are a generation that has fallen into the trap of constant self-development" It helped me to deal with my own unrealistic and unrealized dreams/aspirations/etc. Here's a version in English done by Google Translate https://archive.org/details/millennials-are-a-generation-that-has-fallen-into-the-trap-of-constant-self-development https://archive.org/details/millennials-are-a-generation-tha... The original article in Polish: https://weekend.gazeta.pl/weekend/7,177344,30226401,milenialsi-to-pokolenie-ktore-wpadlo-w-pulapke-nieustannego.html https://weekend.gazeta.pl/weekend/7,177344,30226401,milenial...
  • mettamage 4mo ago
    > Millennials are a generation that has fallen into the trap of constant self-development Self-development brought me so much though. I am happily married because of it, and probably wouldn’t have been romantically seen without it. I know this because I have a friend who is a lot like me and he didn’t develop himself enough and he stays single. Because of his strides in self-development from back in the day. He does get a lot of dates, but every time they say after one or two dates that they should just be friends. It’s harsh to say he didn’t develop himself enough. I also find it true. He didn’t find it worth it to overcome his fears and wants to stay in his comfort zone. He has fun playing sports, board games with friends and video games. But I also know that he yearns for a romantic connection. And that’s the issue. I do agree that for people like me and my friend the self-development route is really demanding. I simply hate being single more. So I dedicated my life to it, and at some point I figured it out and realized it was more like a 5 year journey of which 4 years were back to back and then 1 year spread out over like 12 years (so a good month per year, I didn’t need to do more). Now I’m on a similar journey for financial independence but I’m noticing that I don’t have a similar drive. Constantly forcing myself to do self-development is now perhaps too much to ask. So I guess it also depends on once drive.
  • ClarityGuy 4mo ago
    Isn't a career in tech a trap of constant self-development?
• keychera 4mo ago
  This article reminded me of this game called "Before your eyes" that is sort of tackling this same theme of unlived dreams. That game helped me realized that I will definitely not achieve all of my dreams but it also gave me the power to pursue them anyway. I love that game. It's a 1-2h hour long game that I recommend everyone to play (and it's kinda a unique game that use your blinking as a game mechanic)
  • trumpdong 4mo ago
    > It's kinda a unique game that use your blinking as a game mechanic SCP: Containment Breach?
• mym1990 4mo ago
  “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” One of my favorite quotes by Sylvia Plath from the Bell Jar.
  • globalnode 4mo ago
    this is so true, its hard to make a decision when that actually means you're losing a bunch of other possibilities. so no-decision becomes a decision and then you're left with nothing.
  • PyWoody 4mo ago
    Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
  • mrfumier 4mo ago
    Everything, everywhere, all at once.
• chasd00 4mo ago
  my son recently got into skateboarding which warmed my heart because i use to dream of being a pro-skater at his age. I dug out my old board and have gone to a few skateparks with him. Seeing a vert ramp was like seeing an old friend, i'm doing a lot of core and lower body workouts to see if I can get in a few more runs. There's one trick i've never been able to do and this is my last shot (I'm 50). After this summer, the cards will be on the table and, hopefully, I'll stop thinking about it hah.
  • cogogo 4mo ago
    I admire the commitment. I hope you stomp it. I am 44 and have lost the resolve to try new tricks in the sports I enjoy (skiing and kitesurfing). I wish I would but at the same time the downside risk is so high as a parent of 3 kids. Then I relax and take comfort in just straight up sending what I do know. And that is a privilege I hope to enjoy for as long as possible.
• markus_zhang 4mo ago
  Having kids really helps with making peace with unlived dreams. You simply are too tired to even think about those dreams. You are lucky if you can get one night of good sleep —- and trust me a good sleep when you have kids is different from a good sleep before that.
  • cmrdporcupine 4mo ago
    Maybe you're there already, but there's a transition that happens when your kids become (quite suddenly and strangely unexpectedly) adolescents. And then many of us have found ourselves staring at the past 15 years wondering where it all went. There's a deep meaning to be found in comforting a crying child in the night, changing their diaper, preparing their meals, etc. Can be a total grind, fatiguing, but you're living an immanent moment and caring for the being that depends on you fully. Being a parent to a teenager or young adult becomes something else entirely, and then all the self-needs you put pause on can come bubbling back in ways that can be difficult to deal with.
    • markus_zhang 4mo ago
      When do you think the transition happens? For me (I never had very good relationship with my parents) it started from maybe Junior high school but really picked up around sophomore Senior high school when I got completely confused about life (TBF at 40+ still a bit confused). Does that "deep meaning" come to you when you look back, or you felt it when it happened? I have to say I didn't find much meaning in all that grinding, guess that's because I'm never good with human-beings, so I'm frustrated by little tornadoes. My son is almost 6 now so there is some meaning to be found when we do things altogether, but frankly we share very few hobbies and such so it's mostly like throwing darts and see which one sticks. But all in all, I guess I'm just the kind of person who are not good with persons and who are totally fine to be left alone. I don't even know why I get married -- guess it's just something that everyone does so I did it anyway. Hell, I've been confused by myself since high school and have never truly gotten out of that confusion.
      • cmrdporcupine 4mo ago
• audiodude 4mo ago
  I think I will always get more fulfillment from the rush of leaving work a bit early on a Friday afternoon, knowing I have a couple of plans for the weekend but not being too busy, picking up a treat for my wife and I on the way home, when the weather is good (cool and crisp or partly sunny and dry), and the city is alive; I will get more satisfaction from that feeling than any "dream" I could imagine.
• munificent 4mo ago
  I took running fairly seriously for six or seven years. I never really enjoyed it, but I ran religiously every week. I went from barely being able to run 1/6 of a mile without walking, to being able to finish a 5k. I ran a couple of local fun runs. I was never particularly good at it, but it was a real part of my life. Two years ago, I slipped in a puddle on my bike and wrecked my ankle. There were many complications. Four surgeries later and I now have two pieces of titantium and a little slip of ultra-high molecular weight polyethelene (very strong plastic) where my ankle joint used to be. I can never run again. Technically, at some point when I'm recovered enough from my last surgery, it should be possible. My surgeon said, "if you need to catch a flight or dodge traffic, sure". But I can't ever go out and run miles. It will just wear out the implant too quickly. The plastic can literally crack. When I was recovering from surgery #3, my physical therapist told me to start walking regularly and keep track of distance. The first time I did, I opened Strava. All of my old runs popped up. I realized with a shock that I could scroll down and see not just the longest run I ever did, but the longest I ever will do. I have dreams sometimes where I'm running, gliding across the ground effortlessly and painlessly. Usually, at some point I remember, "wait, you're not able to run anymore, you must be dreaming", and that tends to wake me up. When I drive around the city, sometimes I pass places that used to be on my regular running routes. I remember what it felt like in my body to pound my way down that sidewalk, over that bridge. At first, these moments felt like a stab in my heart. Like a little part of my soul was being ripped out. Over time, that sharp stab faded to an ache, and then something more bittersweet. I lament that running is no longer part of my future, but I am at least grateful that I did run for a while. That chapter of my life is in the past, but at least I wrote the chapter. For a long while, I was afraid I had lost much more than just running. But it seems like maybe the chronic pain is better and I will at least be able to walk and hike and dance without debilitating pain. But the running is over. Losing a capability like this feels sort of like a fraction of death. Like a slice of my personhood has been amputated. It's made me realize that for most of us, the final chapters of our story aren't going full bore until the last page. Instead, aging means incrementally giving up more and more ability to do things, and accepting that more and more of our story is written and less and less is left to write. It's still a struggle to accept that with any level of grace. I get where the author is coming from.
  • 4mo ago
• t0duf0du 4mo ago
  I wanted to join the army as a kid, was infatuated by the forces. I had memorised spec-sheets, obsessed over the operations and used to be awestruck everytime I saw someone in olive green. Tried out a couple of times in college and was deemed medically unfit. I tried again last year but didn't make the cut either. Now I have crossed the age limit and will remain a code monkey for the rest of my life. Nothing too bad. The life I live now is so much contrasting than the life I promised myself as a kid. I still have other hobbies and I still read a lot about the forces.
  • pillefitz 4mo ago
    What's so great about the army? To me, it appears to be one of the most unethical occupations one could have.
    • lintfordpickle 4mo ago
      [dead]
    • JR1427 4mo ago
      Travel, adventure, camaraderie, to name a few. At university I started down the path of joining the infantry as an officer. At first it was great fun - getting paid to go camping on weekends away from university. But when the political side began being pressed home more and more, it didn't sit well with my beliefs. Oh, and I met my now wife at that time, and didn't want to go disappearing off. I ended up getting a PhD, doing academia for a couple of years, then moving in to industry. Some of it was fun, but the itch for proper adventure has never really left. Now with a young daughter, we have mild family adventures, which are fun in their own right, but I do hope to have bigger adventures one day. Hopefully with my wife and daughter.
      • kakacik 4mo ago
        You can find that in many sports communities. Not everywhere by default, but folks are pretty open everywhere once its clear you have something in common. You can get as much travel and adventure as your mind and wallet can handle, without strict orders that prevent you from actually having fun, without risk of being killed by some drone from above. Or killing another human being just because you were told so, maybe a father defending their village and family from invading forces. Nah, you can do much better than those guys, and not lose your humanity and happiness in the process.
• zoogeny 4mo ago
  I have an understanding/interpretation of the philosopher Kierkegaard's metaphor of the Knight of Infinite Resignation from his work Fear and Trembling [1] that relates to this. He tells the story of a Knight that falls in love with a princess. In the olden days princesses were married off by their parents for political reasons. There is no way his love, even if it is returned, can ever be fulfilled. So the Knight resigns himself and marries the butchers widow. After all, she is pretty enough, she has inherited a profitable business from her late husband. And she will be elevated socially by a marriage to a Knight, so she is very keen. But the Knight has to resign himself constantly, like in the dead of night while lying in bed and dreaming about what might have been. He must avoid falling into resentment and maintain the strength of his will. This is a central concept to Kierkegaard, started in Either/Or and continued in Fear and Trembling. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Trembling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Trembling
  • all2 4mo ago
    I handle this by not dwelling too much on the past. Things undone do haunt me, but they are not and what is, is. The ephemeral is as useless as the emotions I have about them, and I treat it as such. Anything else is inviting agony and regret. I have enough of those and I don't need more of them. A lot of this emotional anguish can be quashed with what might be considered "rude" pragmatism. Remove what is useless, ignore what intrudes and cannot be changed, get on with what you have and don't dwell too much on what you do not have. Another way to frame this is from a Biblical perspective: be thankful for what good things you have and do not yearn for what you have not been given. Everything in this life is a gift. Every penny you earn, every breath you draw is more than you deserve. In that light, the life I have is wonderful, and full of joy and satisfaction. I have so much that I do not deserve, so many good things and many beyond the limit of my awareness. So I choose thankfulness before the pain of seeking that which is not, that which is unattainable, or that which is long past.
    • zoogeny 4mo ago
      That sounds like a good attitude. I think that Kierkegaard was considering that this attitude has to be permanent. You can't praise yourself for having resigned yourself last year, last month or last week. You have to resign yourself each and every time the urge to "dwell on the past" arises. And that urge finds a person when they are at their weakest. There is some subtlety in how one chooses to look at the past. For example, you say "I choose thankfulness" and you recognize "the life I have is wonderful, and full of joy and satisfaction" which sound healthy. However, this describes your attitude to the present while leaving out your attitude toward the past. He specifically calls out when a person trying to move on from the past degrades the lost alternative. In the metaphor of the princess, perhaps the Knight forms a negative opinion about her, or about aristocracy in general. He may choose to lie to himself like the fox from Aesop's fables, who when it cannot reach the grapes decides they must be sour. He may get angry with the girl, angry with himself, or angry with the world. For Kierkegaard the ethical life requires staying true to your desires, even in the face of depravation. One ought not deny that they still want the thing they can't have. They will not rely on self-deception or ignore their true desire. They will realize that these desires will resurface and they cannot spend their life running from them. All of this is easy to say but hard to live. It ends up forming the basis of what Kierkegaard suggests is a true faith. Fear and Trembling goes on to describe a Knight of Faith that lives beyond the Knight of Infinite Resignation but that is another thing entirely.
• mawadev 4mo ago
  There is irony in "wanting" something: achieving it depends on different qualities than what starts to ramp up once you are strategically trying to get what you "want". Suddenly your perception does not come from exploration, genuine interest or the human part. It starts to come from paying attention, sensitivity to setback, monitoring yourself in what you believe will make you achieve what you want, strategic behavior that isn't "natural" and attachment to a very specific outcome. It was very hard to see this, sometimes you have to feel and be less analytic about stuff, then your perception will open doors as you walk through life, because deep down you were never attached to a specific outcome and therefore don't limit or sabotage yourself with what your beliefs about the world are at that time. "Becoming a great snowboarder" is operating on a very different layer compared to "I really like snowboarding and then I somehow showed up over here and everyone here tells me I am a great snowboarder". Even being in this situation introduces perception that you may not be "a great snowboarder" at some point, which makes you become analytical about it.
• 21asdffdsa12 4mo ago
  Dreams are a attack vector on the young, used by exploitive industries. Life-experiences hardens you against all things. Adds, Rockstars and Models..
• 0xfeeddeadbeef 4mo ago
  You guys have dreams?
• Ngraph 4mo ago
  Japanese here. Took me years to stop looking up and wishing for what I'll never have, and just accept this is the body I've got and live with it fully. I don't even follow baseball anymore, but every now and then Ohtani (the Dodgers guy) is in the news and the kid who dreamed of it is right back there for a minute. Not painful, just bittersweet.
• limaoscarjuliet 4mo ago
  To me, putting up a fight against the obstacles is the key to satisfying life. Yes, I'm not always winning (duh!), but it is the act of defiance that does it for me. So yes, make peace, but do continue to say "I can do it" before you do.
• SwtCyber 4mo ago
  There is a strange grief in realizing that even a good life necessarily excludes almost all other possible lives
  • jdthedisciple 4mo ago
    priorities are the answer
• imaginationra 4mo ago
  Having dreams tethered to physicality if you are not physically gifted(Snowboard champion) and/or dependent on gate kept power structures allowing you in ("famous" film director) are dreams built for disappointment if you don't meet the required pre-requisites- This is why the realms of art and creativity are great substrates in which to plant the seeds of your dreams in- IF your dreams are to make/create things nothing can stop you these days except yourself with all the tools and knowledge available now- you can't control the outcome after you've made the thing- but the happiness and joy comes from the excitement of the happy accidents on the journey and the pride of completion of course- I'm an artist/filmmaker/animator/dev/musician and the best moments of my life are still from creating things that almost no one sees- they get no acclaim- they win no awards- almost no one cares- but that doesn't matter as the joy comes from the creation- I'm happy with the works I create- If your dream is to write a book, write a song, make a film, make a game, create a piece of software/useful tool, make a painting etc- the skill and budget required for these things is lower than ever- That is not to say it has been cheapened- especially with "AI" tools- Idea is always king- always use your original ideas- never "AI" suggestions and the things you make are yours, forever. Absolutely ZERO of my dreams will be unlived, except the project I won't finish because I will die while it is progress- so I'll die happy anyway doing the work I love (shrug) TLDR: make realistic dreams that depend on your willpower and creativity not your physical attributes and you will live all your dreams except one.
• TrackerFF 4mo ago
  One thing I’ve learned over the years is that dreams are often just that, dreams. Once they are realized, many will not live up to the expectations. Managing your expectations plays a big part. So at least for me, that knowledge has helped. Another discovery I made, was that some of my best experiences and decisions have been by pure chance. Things I never planned to do, or had any desire to do, but turned out to be more than I could ever imagine. It’s ironic how some things you plan for your whole life, but never get to do, while some things you never planned for, ended up overshadowing those initial dreams. And lastly, many things in life is like a bus stop - there’ll come another bus if you just wait. In my professional life I chases “prestige” for the sake of prestige, and ended up hating those things. Of course, there are things I really wanted to do, but never got the chance to, and I’m too old to do now, but that’s just something I’ll live with. My FOMO and regrets plummeted as I started approaching 40.
  • raffael_de 4mo ago
    It's also worth reflecting on what's underlying the dream. Your "dream" was prestige. You obtained it and it disappointed you. My hypothesis would be that underlying your desire for prestige was a fundamental desire to be loved. Then you realized that prestige only looks superficially like being loved but it's actually something very different and materialistic. If you had reflected that earlier you could have avoided wasting effort for obtaining prestige. The same mechanism is true for all dreams.
  • wwqrd 4mo ago
    The inverse was true for me, at 40 I realised a lot of doors are now closed or closing.
• Rp8yXmdmr 4mo ago
  No way, dreams don't have to be realistic, that is what makes them dreams not goal or checklist. And I miss the time I still had any.
• sph 4mo ago
  I just finished reading Four Thousand Weeks and this post resonates with me a lot. I recommend it. Despite its subtitle, it's decidedly not a conventional "time management" book, just a reminder that life is too short to do all the things you are wishing for today, that the day where you'll finally find the time to tackle that project will never arrive, and freedom is found when you just drop all that hope and need to control your life.
  • fcatalan 4mo ago
    Thank you for this recommendation. This last week I have read this, and then also Meditations for Mortals, and they felt illuminating and like written specifically for me. And without really changing anything about what I am actually doing, I now feel much better about it, because these are the right things to be doing now and anguishing about the ones that I can't get to is just sabotaging myself for no gain. It looks so simple now... I still have a lot to digest, but having read thousands of books in my life, including dozens of self-help and productivity manuals, these have felt instantly life-changing. Again thank you.
• andrewstuart 4mo ago
  Just wait till you forget to have (more) kids then you’ll really know regret.
• andrewstuart 4mo ago
  For the record, snowboarding is not hard on your knees, not like skiing.
• keybored 4mo ago
  Desires are severely overrated. The more you get the more you desire. The more you know the more you desire. You can only get some of it. But you also only need some of it. The key isn’t to get more. The key is to practice quietism about all the “unrealized” and eventually equanimity. And there is still room for discontent and rebellion. But with more quietism there is more space to focus on those few things you can indeed change.
• fcatalan 4mo ago
  I don't dream or care about things I definitely can't do. But there are still so many I can actually do that the opportunity cost of choosing any single one of them is infinite, and that leads to paralysis at worst and diluting your self while half-assing dozens of things at best. Maybe one of them pays the bills, and even a nice house and a decent car. But it's just that, it is not what you really wanted to do, so you keep searching. The "gift" of being a fast learner becomes a curse. In a few weeks you are an advanced beginner at almost anything. People marvel at how well you are doing, but you know you have just started and can now see how far you are from being any good. But to become good, you'd have to leave behind all the other things, and you can't pick. So you just start a new one for the quick dopamine hits and easy praise... And then you are 50 and still don't know what you will do when you grow up.
  • c22 4mo ago
    I think it's possible to be a fast learner and not have ADHD.
• donatj 4mo ago
  I turned 40 the other day. There has been unrelenting reflection on where I am and how I got here. A lot of lament for a small handful of decisions and a life marked by avoiding uncomfortable decisions. I don't know where the last 20 years have gone. Last I remember, I was playing Wii in my friend's basement. I remember the seemingly endless opportunities nights laid out before us. DVDs and pizza and furious laughter. I remember waking up in strange places. I don't know when that all ended. It ended. I had a friend describe middle age as suddenly being able to see the outline of the cage. It's apt. I'd have liked to have gone to a real college, had the college experience. I'd have liked to have mended friendships. 40 has such a strange loneliness to it, I take solace in my children. My friends had children years before me and it made friendships tiring. The age gap in our children now that I have my own has not helped. I spent much of the last decade collecting retro video games. I have a room full of them. It came to me recently, I don't think I actually enjoy games. I enjoyed playing them with friends, but by myself they're hollow. I don't play games with friends anymore. When my kids get a little older we'll have fun. I've had Damien Rice's "Older Chests" playing in my head on repeat despite my best efforts to drown it out. I am in therapy, but I think I have just too strong of a mask for anyone else to truly pierce. I'll get out of this funk eventually, I should take this as a wake up call.
  • matwood 4mo ago
    > I'd have liked to have mended friendships. It's never too late to call someone and tell them you appreciate them. It may not make you best friends again, but as long as you're both still breathing, it's never too late to reach out.
    • donatj 4mo ago
      The friendships I'd like mended need more than reaching out I'm afraid.
  • justonceokay 4mo ago
    > I think I have just too strong of a mask for anyone else to truly pierce. And a flair for the dramatic!
• jdw64 4mo ago
  When I was young, I wanted to become a physicist. The physicists I admired were people like Faraday and George Green. I was moved by the lives of people who, despite difficult circumstances, reached toward nature through their own curiosity and discipline. But when I actually entered graduate school, I realized that I had not learned English well enough. I could understand books written in Korean, but reading papers in English was too difficult for me. During my two years in graduate school, I could not keep up. I eventually dropped out, carrying a large amount of debt, and began living in Seoul. After that, I was scammed and began my career as a programmer under bad conditions. I was cheated over rent, and then my first development job started at a Korean dispatch-development company where my experience was inflated and I was registered not as an employee, but as a subcontracted development business owner. Because of that, I could not receive severance pay. I have paid off all my debts now. Still, what I became was not what I wanted to become: a single man in his mid-thirties, with no house of my own, no rented room of my own, and freelance work that has been cut off since May after the Iran war disrupted the market. I did not want my life to turn out this way. Even so, in my own way, I live with a certain contentment. In that sense, I am always grateful to programming. Whether the code was written with AI or by my own hands, the computer has never betrayed my expectations.
  • all2 4mo ago
    I think you should try to go back to school for physics. Or teach yourself physics. If this idea still draws you, you should do it. What sub-field were you going for?
    • jdw64 4mo ago
      I majored in superconductivity
      • all2 4mo ago
        That's awesome! I've always been fascinated by superconductors, especially the so-called 'high temp' ones. There are some you can even make in a garage with a minimal setup. When I'm retired, maybe. :D
• ItsBob 4mo ago
  I took this article to be more along the lines of the author perhaps loving the idea of being a snowboarder, rather than actually becoming one. I know it sounds a bit cynical but I think that's the case for me in a lot of ways: I love the idea of being able to play the piano. However, I've given it up many times (I'm 51 now). I think I just prefer the idea of being a piano player but when it comes down to it, I don't have the willpower/dedication/motivation (delete as appropriate) to follow it through. My 15 yo son, on the other hand, is hell-bent on becoming a pro hockey player (not necessarily the NHL but that's the goal, of course!) and he's working his ass off 6 days a week at various aspects, and missing out on stuff like playing football down the park with his pals after school on a Friday coz he has training). So, I think for some of us there is a disconnect between the desire to work hard anc become something, and liking purely the idea of being something... I think they're quite different (for me they are!)
• mirmor23 4mo ago
  Dreams can come to a sudden halt, and as Walt Lawrence, John Callhan and Mark Zupan have demonstrated, it strengthens the reinvention and creative problem solving muscles. It's common to hear folks in these situation saying that the "tragedy was the best thing that happened to me"; when I was young, I didn't really believe it, (watching the documentary of Walt Lawrence or reading John Callahan's book 'don't worry, he won't get far on foot'), but now that i am older, i can confirm it is definitely believable :)
• jurgenaut23 4mo ago
  Fascinating comments on this post. I recommend everyone here to read a lesser known philosopher: Baruch Spinoza. It is one of the greatest thinker of our time, but it is unfortunately not the easiest read you will find in the library. Reminds me in some ways of Penrose’s Road to Reality, which is a life project in and of itself.
• saltyoldman 4mo ago
  > given my orthopedist told me to stay away from anything that’s heavy on the knees, “like tennis, skiing, or, say, snowboarding,” Obviously not knowing the background of this person, maybe they really have bad knees, but without more info, they could simply have an orthopedist that says this to all his clients, to help all of them not have problems in the future - no matter the current state. I have decided long ago to not let anyone, especially experts, dictate what I can and can't do.
• oddgoo 4mo ago
  Reading many comments here, I feel like there is a dimension to dreams that hasn't been emphasised enough: community/social dreams. Post-COVID, I made an conscious effort to be more social, and take on more community activities, like doing Improv, making games for friends, and attending conferences just for fun. By doing that, my dreams have become more of a broad North star: "I wish to keep investing in my community (family and friends, old and new), understand those around me, and thus myself". Like others said, it's a qualitative difference when dreams are more of a path, rather than a destination.
• treebuscartruck 4mo ago
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• deleted 4mo ago
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• tinyplanets 4mo ago
  I really appreciate the article and responses here. This is a topic that resonates with me, and is something I often struggle with. My early dreams were to be an ecologist, wildlife biologist, or conservation scientist, along the lines of Jane Goodall, George Schaller, or E.O. Wilson. Life circumstances and choices I made early on diverted me from that (along with the fact that these are extremely difficult careers to break into), and I ended up in a relatively comfortable, tech-focused career. I have a loving family, live in a beautiful area, have great friends and my income is good... And yet I still wrestle with "could-of" or "should-of" thoughts about my life. It's tiring, and often detracts from my well-being and happiness.