If I could do it all over again, I would say screw the startup, the money, the IPO and all that crap. I'd run away to an island and spend maximum time with my first partner - who I lost far too soon in life. No money will ever bring them back. The time lost was not worth it. It's the biggest regret in my life that can still bring me to tears as a write this. I would give up everything to go back and tell my younger self to change that one fateful decision.
jmathai · 2d ago
Family and children eliminated thoughts of my “unlived” lives.
Life is hard. Focusing on gratitude helps me be thankful for what I have instead of thinking about what may have been.
anonzzzies · 2d ago
Never needed that: I like life because I know I will die soon and nothing I do matters. That is the thing I would've liked to know earlier.
vharuck · 2d ago
>I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.
- Kurt Vonnegut
hirvi74 · 1d ago
Reminds me of the quote:
"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves."
~ Alan Watts
xyzzy9563 · 2d ago
If you have children you can help continue a chain of humans millions or maybe even billions of years long.
jebarker · 2d ago
Sometimes when I'm struggling with the day to day mundane aspects of early years parenting I reframe it as the work of continuing the human race. Somehow makes it easier to keep pushing on as something so significant _should_ be challenging.
hshshshshsh · 1d ago
That's just your ego talking. The human race will be just fine with or without you raising kids. Our great great ancestor monkeys and fishes didn't raise their children to push their species to centuries further. They just existed and it's what they do as part of their nature. Trying to project meaning to it just ego at play.
gchamonlive · 1d ago
Trying desperately not to project meaning into it, running from your ego... is still just the ego talking, but now through the denial of it, such is the fundamental nature of the ego for the human.
True overcoming of the ego is where it doesn't even bother you if things have meaning or not, since there is no separation between your body and the rest of the world. True overcoming of ego is indistriguishable from true giving-in to ego. Is the ultimate act of letting go.
After this you can choose to raise kids, choose to pursue a career in tech and a hobby in arts. Just because it won't matter you will do it, because now you can choose meaning if you wish. Just because it doesn't matter it does matter. You become the creator.
jebarker · 1d ago
Well put! I would add that probably nobody achieves this consistently, it's a lifetime practice. So coping strategies like I proposed her can still be useful in the chaos of daily life.
gchamonlive · 1d ago
I agree but I'd add that there is nothing to fix. Life is just tough and sometimes you cry because it hurts, and sometimes it fills you with joy and you rejoice. Rinse and repeat until you time has passed and it's now our descendants turn in this world.
Maybe it's clearer in the form of a question: how are you completely sure you are NOT enlightened if you don't know what it is to be enlightened?
saulpw · 1d ago
Because you don't just hurt, you suffer. Across the spiritual spectrum people report that "enlightenment" brings a radical reduction or elimination of self-inflicted suffering, and a profound inner peace. This jives with my limited experience of it as well.
Someone kicks you in the shin, it causes pain. If it triggers a whole internal loop of fear and worry and anger and revenge and trauma and suffering, then you've hit upon your ego which you're unable to let go of. If your internal experience isn't sticky, then before you know it, the pain has dissipated and you're on to whatever the next present moment brings.
That internal loop is what there is to "fix".
gchamonlive · 1d ago
> That internal loop is what there is to "fix".
Brilliant!
And this is why there is nothing to fix, because it doesn't change anything external. If it doesn't change anything external, if it's only an internal loop, it's the same as the ascetic attitude that Nietzsche describes. You can beat yourself until you're in line with your expectations for your ego, or you change your whole relationship with yourself, more accepting of your flaws and more trusting that you are able to overcome this internal loop eventually, but not today.
hshshshshsh · 1d ago
Are you able to sustain that? Or was this one off experiences?
saulpw · 1d ago
It was self-sustaining for months, until I fell off the horse due to being unable to eat (broken jaw). If you find some equanimity in this life you can rest assured that peace will be tested frequently :)
hshshshshsh · 1d ago
How do I be free? I have tasted the freedom for a short time but I can't sustain it. A new ego has been formed after seeing through the old ego. And it also claims to be free of ego.
gchamonlive · 1d ago
I'm not a guide, just a messenger. I'm also just a person.
I can't tell you how you go about your pursuit of freedom, or the pursuit of what it means to live free.
I can tell you what it means to me. I'm free when I can choose everyday to pursue what it means to live free. I'm also free when I choose the limitations in this pursuit, because I don't want the anxiety of the hyperpositive when everything is possible. I'm also free when I consider the other, my kin and when I choose to serve them. I'm also free when I ask for strength to change the things in my life that I can, and for wisdom to accept those things I can't change.
Wish you luck in your journey.
No comments yet
jebarker · 1d ago
Actually, in a rare exception this isn't my ego for once. I'm well aware my specific kids don't have any special cosmic significance or even just special significance to the human race. However, continuing humanity does seem at least an interesting thing to do and it's a collective effort. It's also best entered into consciously as a human since you can have far more impact on other humans and animals than a fish can. It's also definitely challenging to raise kids, so it's real work I'm doing.
Thinking about continuing humanity is a coping strategy and I can assure you it's more effective than HN rationality when my kid is screaming about their cheerios etc
ty6853 · 1d ago
No they won't. The human race will literally put you in a tiny cage if you don't raise kids how they approve. It makes them seethe, rage, and their skin boil, they do not feel at all fine and they have invented entire apparatus to make sure people who do not raise children as they approve are punished harshly.
jajko · 2d ago
Children are great under normal circumstances, its spouses and living with them 24/7 who create friction which easily dissolve even best relationships, one atom at a time.
Many reasons for that, but most I've seen could be summed up as "women expect men to change in marriage, and men expect women to not change", and it fails all over that statement in relationship over time, when kids and responsibilities come knocking at the door of your free time and energy.
anonzzzies · 2d ago
Why would I want to? But let's say I want to, we have been here for a few 1000 years and our trackrecord is absolutely horrifying. We kill people not even to eat but for some religious madness... You really believe your offspring will live in a billion years?
xyzzy9563 · 2d ago
Sure, it's a pretty high chance they will go into space. If they use energy storage it could even be trillions of years. It really depends if humanity self-destructs or not.
Also different animals kill each other all the time. It's part of the cycle of life. I don't get why you have such a negative perspective.
anonzzzies · 2d ago
Animals are animals, you seem to think we are above that. If we agree we are not then we agree. But we won't make it very long.
xyzzy9563 · 2d ago
People are a more intelligent type of animal but still animals.
anonzzzies · 2d ago
It is not negative, its indifferent, it won't matter, to anyone or anything. As I said, I perceive that as nice.
anonzzzies · 2d ago
So, Musk then... The guy who, well, seems literally insane. Yeah, good one.
dustbunny · 2d ago
This is called Black and White thinking in therapy
hshshshshsh · 1d ago
That's a long chain of suffering you are creating. What do you do with that length?
Conscat · 2d ago
I will be childfree, so will my sister. Both of us are queer. As far as I know, all my three cousins (two of whom are queer) feel the same. There's no reason to expect that your children will want to reproduce, and it is pretty selfish to project your own dissatisfaction with life onto another human that way.
xyzzy9563 · 2d ago
If someone cares more about themselves than continuing their family line or the human species, it’s arguably more selfish.
mikestew · 1d ago
…continuing their family line…
I’m not Henry VIII, just some rube from Indiana. Our family is nothing special.
…or the human species
Nor is this some post-apocalyptic future where children are scarce.
BadCookie · 1d ago
Children kind of are scarce, though? Most countries aren’t reproducing at replacement levels. Were that to continue forever, the human population would go to zero.
School districts around me are closing schools because there aren’t enough kids to fill them.
ty6853 · 1d ago
Murray Rothbard argued there should be a thriving market for children. There's certainly something to it, there are so many places where children or at least female ones are viewed as completely without value and yet others who view them as both scarce and valuable. We are currently struggling much in this world with the problem of ensuring children end up where they are most cherished and valued.
It sounds terrible, but I'm inclined to agree with him the children would be better off if there really were child auctions.
rfrey · 1d ago
Why should somebody consider their own "family line" special? That seems pretty arbitrary - perhaps hardwired in some way but not in any sense a moral imperative.
When there's an imminent danger of the human species ending because of a lack of babies, we can talk about the other point.
hshshshshsh · 1d ago
Family like any other material possessions is just another building block for the ego. Trying to believe you own something or is something when nothing is permanent and everything is part of everything else.
hshshshshsh · 1d ago
It's also selfish to bring humans that goes through immense suffering in their life so that you get meaning out of life or get joy from kids.
ty6853 · 1d ago
I find discussions of selfishness interesting in the context of a biological imperative.
Raising kids mostly feels to me like I have a horrible heroin addiction. Loads of cash and time, reduced access to jobs, increased risk of intrusion by authorities and I struggle to see any personal benefit but lots of personal losses. Nonetheless my brain has tricked me somehow into it, at some basic biological level, and it seems this trickery at least at the population level is a necessary condition of life to the point free will is a total joke to consider as part of the equation.
At an individual maybe there is some selfish choice but at a population level having a kid is about the biological equivalent of taking a shit -- people don't take a shit because they are selfish they do it because it is biologically required and humans simply evolved to match this requirement.
apsurd · 1d ago
This sounds like the free will argument. we're just complex receptors to stimuli, we don't choose anything, we receive inputs and react accordingly. "it's just biology"
in this sense there's no discussion on why humans chooses kids or heroin, or taking a shit. The answer is "they don't"
so this isn't about kids. you've made up your mind about all reality.
ty6853 · 1d ago
>in this sense there's no discussion on why humans chooses kids or heroin, or taking a shit. The answer is "they don't"
This is false equivalence, taking heroin isn't a biologicals imperative, reproduction is obligatory to life.
My thesis is humans have no real choice at a population level not to reproduce, your fallaciously equate that to a reductionist view on everything else including things not obligatory to life.
apsurd · 1d ago
The way I understand your position is "we're wired to do/choose X"
The big discussion is why have kids. And your position then is we're wired to, just like taking a dump.
It's not a good argument in my mind because the position voids every decision. There are no decisions. No free will. We can discuss that, i suppose.
edit: saw your update. I don't know I think it tracks. Asking why does someone do something implies a choice, to argue it's not a choice is a different argument. A good one even, but it's different.
ty6853 · 1d ago
My discussion was this:
>I find discussions of selfishness interesting in the context of a biological imperative.
Why is an interesting discussion, but not identical here. The charge I was responding to was specifically addressing selfishness.
I am totally open to the idea one can act selfishly both under the pretext that there is or isn't free will, which moots any attempt you're making here to shoehorn the argument into that.
apsurd · 1d ago
ok then "selfishness" is now the unanswerable topic. it's too complex. Classic "there is no altruism". All acts are selfish if one derives any benefit from them. are there acts that people do by choice that give them no benefit?
i don't think this is reductionist btw. Philosophy tends to make people eye-roll. These are unanswerable questions! Discussion is the fun part.
ty6853 · 1d ago
I would break this into a few categories
Selfish non-choice. Ex: The fetus takes nourishment from the mother, even in the case she would rather abort and doesn't consent to the continued hosting of the fetus.
Selfish choice: Ex: I must take a dump, but the place I choose to take a shit is on my bosse's chair because I don't like that his is better than mine.
Non-selfish choice: Fireman is driving home after his shift ended, saves baby from fire.
Non-selfish non-choice: Woman involuntarily starts screaming after witnessing an unrelated car drive into a lake. Passers-by hear the scream and alert emergency services.
khazhoux · 1d ago
Humans reproduce. It's just what we do. We've been doing it basically as long as we've existed!
It's some kind of weird hubris when people think they've awakened to some grand truth that life is suffering and therefore reproduction is cruel.
hshshshshsh · 1d ago
Do humans reproduce. Yes.
Is life full of suffering. Yes.
Is life full of joy. Yes
All are true.
Arubis · 1d ago
You’re projecting your values. There’s very strong arguments to be made in both directions without being responsible for a family line (however you might choose to define that) or an entire species.
Boogie_Man · 1d ago
Legitimate and honest question which is not an attempt to insult or devalue you: Do you personally consider 4/5 cousins in a generation of a family being queer (to my understanding this means not heterosexual) to be a statistical anomaly, or have you pinpointed a cause or causes for this outlier?
Feel free to not answer if it's a painful thing.
more_corn · 1d ago
The counterpoint to this is quite important. Sure, maybe nothing matters without someone there to make it matter.
We are the only creatures in the known universe who believe in abstract universals (love, hope, truth, beauty, meaning as well as the negative abstract universals). Which means things only matter insofar as they matter to us. But obviously things matter to us.
If/when we disappear, meaning itself might get erased from the universe. In that sense nothing means anything.
In another sense, if we are the only source of meaning that’s potentially the most rare and precious thing imaginable.
Giving a shit is literally our superpower. So give a shit about something because meaning only exists when we bring it into being. And it only exists as long as we make it exist.
Far from being depressing this might be the most uplifting thought possible. Because it makes you fucking matter. As much as you want to matter. (And as little)
y-curious · 2d ago
So, why continue living? The nihilist pit is something I recommend you claw your way out of, ASAP.
patching-trowel · 2d ago
For me it’s not a nihilist pit. The fact that I’m gonna die and nothing I do matters that much alleviates some dread. It’s not a deep and endless ocean I’m swimming in, just a comfy little pool.
jmathai · 2d ago
Lots of studies show that people who give to others (time, money, etc.) live better lives when measured by happiness, low stress, physical health. This requires you to believe what you do can matter.
Parenting is the ultimate exercise in giving.
There may be more than a comfy little pool to swim in :)
You can act without belief in meaning. Trees and Earth for example works just fine.
interroboink · 1d ago
This is one of those interesting galvanizing points where different people's POVs are fascinating to me.
To abuse your metaphor a bit...
I get the sense that some people see the "nihilist pit" (or somesuch) as a dark scary thing (it is). Maybe they have gotten lost in it a little bit, did not like the experience, got out, and so advise everyone else to avoid it, too.
Other people have spent more time in the pit, whether by choice or the lack of it, gone deep down, and found the bottom. And that can be a wonderful, freeing feeling, to get to the end of that hard journey.
I guess for my own part, at the bottom of my pit, I found that there is something to stand on down there. It was an absolute relief to find, life-affirming, and has helped me ever since.
YMMV of course (: Different people are different.
anonzzzies · 2d ago
I like life, I said. I just know its useless which frees me of many things others are bothered with.
dagw · 2d ago
So, why continue living?
Because there are lots of fun things you can only do when you are alive.
jampekka · 2d ago
Just ask why not instead?
khazhoux · 1d ago
How so? Not everyone needs a cosmic scale Greater Meaning in order to go about their lives.
badc0ffee · 1d ago
This is basically the lesson in About Time (2013).
(I liked that movie)
HenryBemis · 1d ago
I remember the "Beatle that got away" saying that "the best thing that happened in my life was to leave the Beatles, and I would never change that" (I don't remember the precise quote, but it was something along those lines). He then went on explaining how "if I was still with the Beatles he wouldn't have the kids he now has, and there is no price for that.
No comments yet
futureshock · 2d ago
I think the fantasy of going back hides the reality that new possibilities are always stretched out ahead. I have lived many lives. New careers, new cities, new countries, new friends, new families. By my count I’ve lived 14 iterations of life and counting. New lives are always beckoning. After awhile you get good a recognizing the ones worth stepping into.
FinnLobsien · 1d ago
It's true that life can always evolve and change, new opportunities open, responsibilities appear, etc.
But in other ways it's not true. For example, there's no way to be 19 again and be in college, date the person who, looking back was clearly into you. Study the thing you really wanted to study (not what you thought would be best for your career), etc.
I think the fantasy of going back isn't about being unable to change, it's about "getting it right this time"
card_zero · 1d ago
Central to the plot of Back to the Future Part II (for some reason not referenced in the New Yorker) is the sports almanac with information about future results. Any fantasy of going back and getting it right hinges on this kind of transfer of knowledge back into the earlier situation. The problem is then whether the information is subtle enough to be interesting, that is, to prevent the fantasy from devolving into a mere cheat to get rich by knowing things in advance. In practice the time traveller would at least attempt to invest early in bitcoin, learn the skills that will be in demand, befriend the awkward person who is going to be cool and successful later, and other cheaty stuff.
I suppose a better fantasy would involve going back into a similar but rearranged situation, with all the variables and trends changed to prevent predictions.
FinnLobsien · 1d ago
Plus the question is also whether things would actually be interesting, even if you could port over all of your knowledge and wisdom.
Of course with sports betting, investing etc. most people would decide to get rich to make sure they don't struggle materialistically. But after that?
I think a lot of things would be extremely boring because you already know it's going to work.
It's adjacent to the idea that if you could live forever, nothing would have meaning because you can live in any city for a thousand years, marry anyone for a thousand years and do any hobby, job etc. for a thousand years. And if you can choose any option and have zero opportunity cost for it, then does any option really matter?
A long quote, but one I love:
> “Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.”
card_zero · 1d ago
This is about problem situations being one's motivation, but could be (incorrectly) used to argue that it's necessary to keep one's problem situation static, since solving anything removes the challenge. Any bad thing at all could be advocated for using a similar line of argument: in a life without endless meetings, for instance, does your leisure time really matter?
In a limited way those arguments are all true: solve something and something else changes in its significance. The question of what to do next, "but after that?" can be bewildering. However, there are all kinds of obstacles that we are ready and interested to have removed. Personally I have no interest in the challenge of being routinely bored to tears, or the challenge of being doomed to die. I'm totally ready for my next thousand years of non-urgency.
SkyBelow · 1d ago
It is an interesting thought experience, what would you do differently if you have your current wisdom, but not your current knowledge. This isn't a clean distinction, because people see different boundaries on what is wisdom and what is knowledge, but I think it is an interesting thought experience all the same.
If I had my current wisdom but not my current knowledge, there are still some big differences in what I would do. Not on the level of bitcoin as that seems fully on the knowledge side, but things like getting healthy habits started earlier, waste less time on certain entertainment pursuits, and take certain opportunities much more serious even when they didn't align with my expectations.
Sometimes I wonder what I would do different today if I had the wisdom of me from 20 years in the future.
card_zero · 1d ago
Filing this away for when I write an isekai script.
nonameiguess · 1d ago
Similar to the other top-level reply, without perfect foreknowledge, there is no way to know you're "getting it right this time." I dated the person into me and studied what I loved. We got divorced and I ultimately ended up with a person I didn't meet until I was 30. I had to go back to school and change careers later in life because the job prospects sucked for what I loved.
Given I ultimately ended up in a good place anyway, I don't even regret anything. The only thing you can't come back from is death. As long as none of your bad decisions kill you, I don't see much to fret about.
owebmaster · 2d ago
> I think the fantasy of going back hides the reality that new possibilities are always stretched out ahead.
It also hides the incapability of many to do what they should to succeed. Most people already know what they should do different to succeed without going back in time but still they do not have the will power to do it and they probably would still not have if they had a time machine.
MangoToupe · 2d ago
Ironically, I think characterizing life as a question of success-or-not was THE major barrier in my life to finding the contentment I was actually looking for.
owebmaster · 2d ago
Did you succeed in finding contentment after realizing that?
MangoToupe · 1d ago
I think contentment finds you.
jampekka · 2d ago
What do you mean by succeed? I find learning to not care so much about succeeding - at least in the usual criteria imposed by the society - is maybe the best thing I've learned since touch typing.
owebmaster · 2d ago
> What do you mean by succeed?
Having an objective and achieving it. Not an overall expectation of winning in life but saying "I want to go to the gym 5x a week for 1 year" or "I want to be able to run 10km" and achieve it.
glimshe · 2d ago
My life turned out alright. Full of problems, pains and questions like everyone's else's but, in the grand scheme of things, I'm incredibly fortunate given the amount of poverty and misery in this world.
I always liked the thought experiment of living my life again. However, I'm much more interested in the thought of living in the future. If I could do it again, I'd take the risk of living 1000 years from now. I know this could be a mistake, but I'm an optimist.
jajko · 2d ago
Maybe you are tech nerd so all the probable tech progress would amaze you. But unless you yourself would literally do time travel (and be treated like a primitive Neanderthal), your level of satisfaction would most probably be the same since all amazing and cool becomes a new baseline rather quickly, and curiosity and longing for next future would be there again.
We could also end up in millenia-spanning dictatorship of immortal piece of scheize egomaniacs like stalin, hitler, puttin', trump and so on and on. All of them would kill millions to achieve that, in a heartbeat with no remorse.
We could also destroy our ecosystem beyond easy repair and live in postapocalyptic mad-maxesque world (sure it will bounce back in a million years or two, but we would most probably be wiped out along the path). I look out of window on a dense beautiful wild forest in full bloom, doesn't get much better than that.
Nah, these are pretty good times we, most of us at least, have right now. If you are not happy now, chances of being happy some other time are slim.
glimshe · 1d ago
I'm happy now, but I have a more optimistic take. I believe that humanity could make progress in conquering unhappiness, disease or even death. While happiness levels possibly didn't improve as much as we expected in the last 1000 years, we did eliminate much misery in the world. Losing loved ones to diseases is bad, among many improvements we made. So, I think that in 1000 years, our descendants may be living in an objectively better world - possibly even without the gadgets we rely on so much for our happiness today.
kgwxd · 2d ago
It'd just be the same game in a different environment, with an inventory of items from a different tech tree.
i_love_retros · 2d ago
people would still be trying to understand how to upgrade node dependencies
glimshe · 2d ago
Do you think someone from 1025 would feel this way if they came here? Serious question.
owebmaster · 2d ago
Do you think people in 1025 weren't living happy and fulfilling lives?
People are happy in Africa, Latin America and the poor parts of Asia now, many places people are happier than in the US actually.
FinnLobsien · 1d ago
I don't think they're saying that people weren't happy then. I think it's more about "how recognizable is the human experience?".
Which I think there's a good claim that it's totally and entirely transformed, save for a few things.
deadbabe · 1d ago
I don’t think they are truly happy. They have moments of joy and things that feel good, but they live in a mileu of misery that they’ve just grown to normalize and doesn’t affect them much.
Happiness isn’t just being able to avoid sadness, that’s just contentment. It is difficult to explain happiness to someone that hasn’t been truly happy. When I used to do cocaine, those feelings were pure happiness, and I’ve never really felt something to that degree again. I think happiness as we know it is really just a modern concept, one that is enabled by our increasingly leisurely and stimulating life, that has vastly expanded the length and enjoyment of our childhoods. Maybe being happy is a lot like being a child, forever.
owebmaster · 1d ago
I think you might not have the best definition of what's happiness. If you go to some Amazon/brazilian indigenous tribe today, you will see happier people than the modern human. That is how many people lived in 1025. Even the people living from the land, they could not work the whole day all day, there was not enough things to do.
Nothing knowing that they could have an easier life also probably played a big role on their happiness. Unhappiness (and depression), I would argue, is probably a modern disease.
999900000999 · 2d ago
Once upon a time a certain someone wanted to come over,in reality I had to decline, but in an alternate timeline she does. We have fun, she decides to keep it, but signs over custody to me. Our daughter is a musical prodigy. With her sights on Juilliard.
I can play out a similar scenario with quite a few slight variations. But this what if stuff is almost always positive.
It's never what if I never downloaded Unity and taught myself to program.
It's never, what if that eviction was a bit faster.
For most of us reading this our lives are modern miracles. I came from nothing and I've made a comfortable 6 figure salary for a decade.
Be content with where you're at, you will never have everything you want.
FinnLobsien · 1d ago
That's true. We always imagine if we could go back we could correct our mistakes (and usually it's about regrets of what we didn't do).
Yet if we could, we'd also make new mistakes that we'd then want to rectify by going back.
rwmj · 2d ago
If you had perfect future knowledge (which is what this article is really about) you wouldn't want to invent Slack (or Google), which lets face it would have been a ton of work with a very uncertain outcome. You'd want to invest in Slack / Google at some early stage, do no work whatsoever, and enjoy the proceeds.
jeremyjh · 2d ago
I'd probably join Slack early, successfully rail against Electron and kill the whole company.
charliebwrites · 2d ago
And leave us with Microsoft Teams?
You monster
badc0ffee · 1d ago
HipChat would have lived
racl101 · 2d ago
Pretty much.
I always find it funny when people say: "I'd invent Google" when they could barely pass their first year Calculus class. As if stating the idea is all it took but not the engineering and well ... the actual difficult work.
But everyone can invest. That much is totally doable.
badc0ffee · 1d ago
Do those people know what PageRank is? Even if they did, could they implement it? (And would they be able to come up with their own name for it, given they are not Larry Page?)
rwmj · 2d ago
Yup, by far the hardest bit is working out which 7 star ski resort to go to next. In this alternate reality you'd be cosplaying as a VC, because that would give you the creds to raise money and meet the right founders. But the only work you'd be doing is passing on pets.com, and choosing to invest in thefacebook.
tayo42 · 1d ago
The difficult work is easier to grind through when you know there's a pay off.
I think alot of people aren't passing calculus and doing hard work, not because they're dumb but there's no clear pay off, it's hard to stay motivated
anonzzzies · 2d ago
Yeah, I would say most past life choices for me would be investing in the right things. If you know, then risk is not needed.
verzali · 1d ago
It would be a lot faster to buy a lot of lottery tickets, or become a professional gambler. Once you've done that you'd have enough to make meaningful investments for long term returns. Or to short the stock market before certain big events...
ryandrake · 1d ago
I believe that our "success trajectory" is something like 10-20% our own choices and 80-90% pedigree / where we start from. And probably some percentage of "other luck." So I don't really think too hard about doing it over because I don't feel like I've made many really bad decisions. I've gotten about as far as I could have reasonably expected, given being born to a family of school teachers living in a rural middle of nowhere, where success meant getting a decent job at the local mill. No do-over would make my father a rich, well-connected businessman. No do-over would get me into Phillips Exeter Academy as a high schooler and then Harvard or Yale. No do-over would land me in Goldman Sachs post-graduation. So I really don't dwell on what might have been.
If I could go way farther back in time and bend my entire family tree's trajectory such that I started out on 3rd base, that would be a different story.
matwood · 2d ago
There's a great book called Replay that tackles the ground hog day problem but at a life scale. I read it every few years and it always gives me some perspective about what is truly important in life.
One of the most impactful books of my life. I think it's so important to realize that even if you could go back and rectify your mistakes, buy Bitcoin, invest in Google, whatever, you'd eventually run into the exact problem that nothing means anything and what you actually want is some permanence.
There's a quote I love from The Remains of The Day:
> I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?”
os2warpman · 2d ago
>For some people, imagining unlived lives is torture, even a gateway to crisis.
I was either born without the gene or raised to not do this for myself but I do, quite often, dwell on the unlived lives of people I knew who were never given the chance to live their lives.
My best friend was murdered at school when he was 16. In the Army there are several guys I considered to be "old men" at the time who I am now decades older than.
Now I'm the old man.
Others have taken their own lives or had it stolen from them by drunk drivers or disease.
But me? I just happily (for the most part) stumble through my own life, knowing the past is immutable.
The utility of "what ifs?" seems very low when looking at the past.
The present is a different story, but the convoluted fantasies people seem to build in their minds about going back and marrying that person or taking that risk seem futile because anything you create in your mind is as real and likely to happen as a myriad other options and knowing how that path would have unfolded is impossible.
"I would have been happier/better off/more X if only I.." No. That is unknowable.
Yeah. Go back in time and invest in a sure bet. You got fabulously wealthy and Very Important but ended up dying in your comfy first class seat sitting next to the cofounder of Akamai on 9/11.
"No with my time machine only good things happen"
richev · 2d ago
Very sorry for the loss of your friend.
runamuck · 2d ago
I "died" in 2018 and it felt like waking up from a dream. This world just melted away like an amusing afterthought. That helped informed my attitude to life: enjoy it, make life enjoyable for others, spread love.
stormfather · 1d ago
Please say more
ivape · 1d ago
Can you explain that. Was it a near fatal experience? I've heard from someone similar that once they processed nearly dying, they pretty much got all the perspective they ever needed.
runamuck · 1d ago
Yes - near fatal. I floated away from my body, and saw myself in 3rd person view about 100 feet up. The vision became grainy, like a VHS tape. I had the same sensation that I have when I wake up in the morning after vivid dreams, and the memories (and world/ physics) of those dreams fade away - this world faded away. I remember thinking "oh, why did I worry so much down there?" and found it funny.
mgh95 · 2d ago
I have always found this question haunting. I would imagine if I had the ability to forever banish a single though from my head, this would be it.
rxtexit · 2d ago
I think it is that the alternate paths are just so easy to romanticize.
I have been doing this lately with how maybe I should have went into the military after high school.
Of course, the romanticized version doesn't include losing a limb in Afghanistan.
It just easy to take the good fortune that did happen for granted.
Etheryte · 2d ago
Maybe an alternative perspective helps. If you could always do it over, an infinite redo so to say, nothing would matter. Every choice and outcome would become insignificant, because you could just redo it until it was just right. On the flip side, there's always going to be something that you miss out on, no matter how many times you could do it, some choices simply exclude other outcomes and you can't have both. The fact that you can't simply redo things is in a way what gives them value and meaning — what you choose matters.
CMCDragonkai · 1d ago
Another way to think about this is playing a video game with cheats on. You get to infinitely restart until you "win". Life isn't really like that though. The win conditions in one life doesn't match the win conditions in other lives.
westcoast49 · 2d ago
> If you could always do it over, an infinite redo so to say, nothing would matter. Every choice and outcome would become insignificant, because you could just redo it until it was just right.
The movie Groundhog Day comes to mind.
meany · 1d ago
One thing I wonder is that - assuming no extreme personal calamity - I would be just as happy/sad/depressed no matter what life I had led. How much of our inner sense of well being is determined by outward life circumstances. Living in the first world and working in the tech industry, I live better than 99% of the people that ever lived, including all my ancestors. What’s really crazy is that I’m not insanely happy all the time with my incredible good fortune. It seems that no matter what I got from life - I’d calibrate back to where I am now.
lnsru · 2d ago
I stand for every decision I made even if they were not perfect from current perspective. I can compare starting conditions of other kids from same school and I must admit, I am doing amazingly well. I am pretty sure I don’t want it to do all over. The future is more exciting. It became clear, I can’t pull all alone patient monitoring startup and I need to do something simpler during the time I have. I rolled the dice and let’s see decade later if it worked out. It’s so exciting!
jajko · 2d ago
If one is happy where he currently is, there is nothing to change. All steps, positive or negative, along the path to present were mandatory building blocks of who we are now and why we are as we are.
I myself can clearly see that at least some some negative experiences helped me in long run. The key is that they needed to be bad enough to force introspection and change, but not devastating enough to just destroy everything beyond repair.
kunzhi · 1d ago
Reading the article and the comments I free-associated to Treebeard from Lord of the Rings:
"Still, I should have liked to see the songs come true about the Entwives. I should have dearly liked to see Fimbrethil again. But there, my friends, songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely."
mikewarot · 1d ago
The real question is how much of my current knowledge would I take with me? If I don't get anything, all I'd do is repeat everything again.
The next is what the restart age would be... Too young and I might get myself killed by a vengeful father.
If I could go back to somewhere around my 20th birthday, with all I know now. Technology wise, I'd do everything I could to make sure Email was autheticated, zero terminated strings were abolished and get a BitGrid chip made.
Oh... And HTML would definitely be a language for the separate addition layering of hypertext markup, instead of the crap we have now.
jebarker · 2d ago
I question whether the author's story about their mother's farm stand is really about unled lives in the past sense. They seem to be telling a cautionary tale about it but his mother was trying to change her future life in the present. I don't think that warning about dwelling on possible past lives and suggesting you shouldn't make changes in your current life are the same thing.
Probably relatedly though, I never really think about how things could have been and yet I am haunted by disatissfaction (despite having a great life) and always looking for how I'll change myself or my situation (work mostly) going forward. Maybe these are two views on the same neurosis.
ednite · 1d ago
Hope I’m not too off-base here, but reading this really hit home as i recently decided to make some drastic changes.
I get it, life throws different stuff at all of us. I’ve had more lemons than I ever asked for. But for me, it’s not about living in the what-ifs. It’s more about asking how can I?
Sure, we all think about starting over or going back in time. But for me, those thoughts usually fade when I ask myself: Why not now? Is it really too late?
What helped was letting go of regret.
Just my two cents: drop the what-ifs mindset. If something needs to change, don’t dwell on what could’ve been. Ask yourself: How can I make it happen now?
keepamovin · 2d ago
Once, in another life, I was a tech founder. It was the late nineties, when the Web was young, and everyone was trying to cash in on the dot-com boom. In college, two of my dorm mates and I discovered that we’d each started an Internet company in high school, and we merged them to form a single, teen-age megacorp. For around six hundred dollars a month, we rented office space in the basement of a building in town. We made Web sites and software for an early dating service, an insurance-claims-processing firm, and an online store where customers could “bargain” with a cartoon avatar for overstock goods. I lived large, spending the money I made on tuition, food, and a stereo.
In 1999—our sophomore year—we hit it big. A company that wired mid-tier office buildings with high-speed Internet hired us to build a collaborative work environment for its customers: Slack, avant la lettre. It was a huge project, entrusted to a few college students through some combination of recklessness and charity. We were terrified that we’d taken on work we couldn’t handle but also felt that we were on track to create something innovative. We blew through deadlines and budgets until the C-suite demanded a demo, which we built. Newly confident, we hired our friends, and used our corporate AmEx to expense a “business dinner” at Nobu. Unlike other kids, who were what—socializing?—I had a business card that said “Creative Director.” After midnight, in our darkened office, I nestled my Aeron chair into my IKEA desk, queued up Nine Inch Nails in Winamp, scrolled code, peeped pixels, and entered the matrix. After my client work was done, I’d write short stories for my creative-writing workshops. Often, I slept on the office futon, waking to plunder the vending machine next to the loading dock, where a homeless man lived with his cart.
I liked this entrepreneurial existence—its ambition, its scrappy, near-future velocity. I thought I might move to San Francisco and work in tech. I saw a path, an opening into life. But, as the dot-com bubble burst, our client’s business was acquired by a firm that was acquired by another firm that didn’t want what we’d made. Our invoices went unpaid. It was senior year—a fork in the road. We closed our business and moved out of the office. A few days before graduation, when I went to pay my tuition bill, a girl on the elevator struck up a conversation, then got off at her floor; on my ride down, she stepped on for a second time, and our conversation continued. We started dating, then went to graduate school in English together. We got married, I became a journalist, and we had a son. I now have a life, a world, a story. I’m me, not him—whoever he might have turned out to be.
Damn, that was a good opener.
theletterf · 2d ago
I would live life exactly as I've lived it so far. The thought of my kids not existing in an alternate universe is too painful to endure.
anonzzzies · 2d ago
I wouldn't want to but if I could I would move away from the city much younger. At birth if I could arrange.
javier_e06 · 1d ago
No, thank you. One ride on this carnival crazy-house-of-mirrors and illusions is good enough for me.
xtiansimon · 2d ago
What’s that rule about question titles?
No. unless you also change my starting conditions.
verzali · 1d ago
One day I'm going to write an article headlined "Is Betteridge's Law Correct?" and watch the heads of people like you explode.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 1d ago
I'd not invite partner #1 to move in. I'd quit job #1 sooner. I'd try to keep job #2 going longer. I'd not take job #4 at all.
I wouldn't date partner #5. That probably says something huge.
smrtinsert · 1d ago
My mid life has been by design and its going great. My father had a lucrative career at the significant cost of family time. I'm around and engaged in being a dad and husband. I got into software because it offered great work life balance and its relatively easy and fun. That said, I'm the type of person who has a hard time not working into the early hours if I get caught in a problem. Sometimes I wonder if that's truly nature or nurture from watching my father. I take issue with companies that force that lifestyle on me though.
The other day we went for ice cream after dinner out and movie. I can't tell you fine people enough how much of an accomplishment that felt to me. It's something so simple it must seem ridiculous. I never wanted big money. The cost is simply too high.
tristor · 1d ago
Honestly I wouldn't change much. I think I'd have kept some relationships going that I let fizzle away. I would have done more academically earlier in my life. But otherwise, I think I've made good decisions, served my family and community, and done work that I'm proud of that I feel is morally and ethically defensible. Had I done things differently, I would hope I could have done more to give back than I have done in this current life, but at the end of the day I'm pretty happy with where I'm at.
sircasss · 2d ago
I felt a strong resonance with the line: “If I had made a different choice back then, how would things be now?” It’s a question everyone has asked themselves in some quiet moment.
I remember when I was going through a tough time in my entrepreneurial journey — I felt like I couldn’t go on, crushed by the weight of it all. In those moments, I always thought: if only I had chosen differently, maybe I wouldn’t be suffering so much now.
But when I got through the crisis and found some success later on, I would look back and think: I’m actually glad I made those choices. No matter how our other parallel selves might be living, there will always be some regrets. Regret is simply a part of life.
askafriend · 1d ago
AI?
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bigbacaloa · 2d ago
I would be less of an a*** and a bit braver, but otherwise mostly the same.
Life is hard. Focusing on gratitude helps me be thankful for what I have instead of thinking about what may have been.
- Kurt Vonnegut
"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves."
~ Alan Watts
True overcoming of the ego is where it doesn't even bother you if things have meaning or not, since there is no separation between your body and the rest of the world. True overcoming of ego is indistriguishable from true giving-in to ego. Is the ultimate act of letting go.
After this you can choose to raise kids, choose to pursue a career in tech and a hobby in arts. Just because it won't matter you will do it, because now you can choose meaning if you wish. Just because it doesn't matter it does matter. You become the creator.
Maybe it's clearer in the form of a question: how are you completely sure you are NOT enlightened if you don't know what it is to be enlightened?
Someone kicks you in the shin, it causes pain. If it triggers a whole internal loop of fear and worry and anger and revenge and trauma and suffering, then you've hit upon your ego which you're unable to let go of. If your internal experience isn't sticky, then before you know it, the pain has dissipated and you're on to whatever the next present moment brings.
That internal loop is what there is to "fix".
Brilliant!
And this is why there is nothing to fix, because it doesn't change anything external. If it doesn't change anything external, if it's only an internal loop, it's the same as the ascetic attitude that Nietzsche describes. You can beat yourself until you're in line with your expectations for your ego, or you change your whole relationship with yourself, more accepting of your flaws and more trusting that you are able to overcome this internal loop eventually, but not today.
I can't tell you how you go about your pursuit of freedom, or the pursuit of what it means to live free.
I can tell you what it means to me. I'm free when I can choose everyday to pursue what it means to live free. I'm also free when I choose the limitations in this pursuit, because I don't want the anxiety of the hyperpositive when everything is possible. I'm also free when I consider the other, my kin and when I choose to serve them. I'm also free when I ask for strength to change the things in my life that I can, and for wisdom to accept those things I can't change.
Wish you luck in your journey.
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Thinking about continuing humanity is a coping strategy and I can assure you it's more effective than HN rationality when my kid is screaming about their cheerios etc
Many reasons for that, but most I've seen could be summed up as "women expect men to change in marriage, and men expect women to not change", and it fails all over that statement in relationship over time, when kids and responsibilities come knocking at the door of your free time and energy.
Also different animals kill each other all the time. It's part of the cycle of life. I don't get why you have such a negative perspective.
I’m not Henry VIII, just some rube from Indiana. Our family is nothing special.
…or the human species
Nor is this some post-apocalyptic future where children are scarce.
School districts around me are closing schools because there aren’t enough kids to fill them.
It sounds terrible, but I'm inclined to agree with him the children would be better off if there really were child auctions.
When there's an imminent danger of the human species ending because of a lack of babies, we can talk about the other point.
Raising kids mostly feels to me like I have a horrible heroin addiction. Loads of cash and time, reduced access to jobs, increased risk of intrusion by authorities and I struggle to see any personal benefit but lots of personal losses. Nonetheless my brain has tricked me somehow into it, at some basic biological level, and it seems this trickery at least at the population level is a necessary condition of life to the point free will is a total joke to consider as part of the equation.
At an individual maybe there is some selfish choice but at a population level having a kid is about the biological equivalent of taking a shit -- people don't take a shit because they are selfish they do it because it is biologically required and humans simply evolved to match this requirement.
in this sense there's no discussion on why humans chooses kids or heroin, or taking a shit. The answer is "they don't"
so this isn't about kids. you've made up your mind about all reality.
This is false equivalence, taking heroin isn't a biologicals imperative, reproduction is obligatory to life.
My thesis is humans have no real choice at a population level not to reproduce, your fallaciously equate that to a reductionist view on everything else including things not obligatory to life.
The big discussion is why have kids. And your position then is we're wired to, just like taking a dump.
It's not a good argument in my mind because the position voids every decision. There are no decisions. No free will. We can discuss that, i suppose.
edit: saw your update. I don't know I think it tracks. Asking why does someone do something implies a choice, to argue it's not a choice is a different argument. A good one even, but it's different.
>I find discussions of selfishness interesting in the context of a biological imperative.
Why is an interesting discussion, but not identical here. The charge I was responding to was specifically addressing selfishness.
I am totally open to the idea one can act selfishly both under the pretext that there is or isn't free will, which moots any attempt you're making here to shoehorn the argument into that.
i don't think this is reductionist btw. Philosophy tends to make people eye-roll. These are unanswerable questions! Discussion is the fun part.
Selfish non-choice. Ex: The fetus takes nourishment from the mother, even in the case she would rather abort and doesn't consent to the continued hosting of the fetus.
Selfish choice: Ex: I must take a dump, but the place I choose to take a shit is on my bosse's chair because I don't like that his is better than mine.
Non-selfish choice: Fireman is driving home after his shift ended, saves baby from fire.
Non-selfish non-choice: Woman involuntarily starts screaming after witnessing an unrelated car drive into a lake. Passers-by hear the scream and alert emergency services.
It's some kind of weird hubris when people think they've awakened to some grand truth that life is suffering and therefore reproduction is cruel.
Is life full of suffering. Yes.
Is life full of joy. Yes
All are true.
Feel free to not answer if it's a painful thing.
If/when we disappear, meaning itself might get erased from the universe. In that sense nothing means anything.
In another sense, if we are the only source of meaning that’s potentially the most rare and precious thing imaginable.
Giving a shit is literally our superpower. So give a shit about something because meaning only exists when we bring it into being. And it only exists as long as we make it exist. Far from being depressing this might be the most uplifting thought possible. Because it makes you fucking matter. As much as you want to matter. (And as little)
Parenting is the ultimate exercise in giving.
There may be more than a comfy little pool to swim in :)
https://www.andrews.edu/services/development/annual/the-joy-...
To abuse your metaphor a bit...
I get the sense that some people see the "nihilist pit" (or somesuch) as a dark scary thing (it is). Maybe they have gotten lost in it a little bit, did not like the experience, got out, and so advise everyone else to avoid it, too.
Other people have spent more time in the pit, whether by choice or the lack of it, gone deep down, and found the bottom. And that can be a wonderful, freeing feeling, to get to the end of that hard journey.
I guess for my own part, at the bottom of my pit, I found that there is something to stand on down there. It was an absolute relief to find, life-affirming, and has helped me ever since.
YMMV of course (: Different people are different.
Because there are lots of fun things you can only do when you are alive.
(I liked that movie)
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But in other ways it's not true. For example, there's no way to be 19 again and be in college, date the person who, looking back was clearly into you. Study the thing you really wanted to study (not what you thought would be best for your career), etc.
I think the fantasy of going back isn't about being unable to change, it's about "getting it right this time"
I suppose a better fantasy would involve going back into a similar but rearranged situation, with all the variables and trends changed to prevent predictions.
Of course with sports betting, investing etc. most people would decide to get rich to make sure they don't struggle materialistically. But after that?
I think a lot of things would be extremely boring because you already know it's going to work.
It's adjacent to the idea that if you could live forever, nothing would have meaning because you can live in any city for a thousand years, marry anyone for a thousand years and do any hobby, job etc. for a thousand years. And if you can choose any option and have zero opportunity cost for it, then does any option really matter?
A long quote, but one I love:
> “Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.”
In a limited way those arguments are all true: solve something and something else changes in its significance. The question of what to do next, "but after that?" can be bewildering. However, there are all kinds of obstacles that we are ready and interested to have removed. Personally I have no interest in the challenge of being routinely bored to tears, or the challenge of being doomed to die. I'm totally ready for my next thousand years of non-urgency.
If I had my current wisdom but not my current knowledge, there are still some big differences in what I would do. Not on the level of bitcoin as that seems fully on the knowledge side, but things like getting healthy habits started earlier, waste less time on certain entertainment pursuits, and take certain opportunities much more serious even when they didn't align with my expectations.
Sometimes I wonder what I would do different today if I had the wisdom of me from 20 years in the future.
Given I ultimately ended up in a good place anyway, I don't even regret anything. The only thing you can't come back from is death. As long as none of your bad decisions kill you, I don't see much to fret about.
It also hides the incapability of many to do what they should to succeed. Most people already know what they should do different to succeed without going back in time but still they do not have the will power to do it and they probably would still not have if they had a time machine.
Having an objective and achieving it. Not an overall expectation of winning in life but saying "I want to go to the gym 5x a week for 1 year" or "I want to be able to run 10km" and achieve it.
I always liked the thought experiment of living my life again. However, I'm much more interested in the thought of living in the future. If I could do it again, I'd take the risk of living 1000 years from now. I know this could be a mistake, but I'm an optimist.
We could also end up in millenia-spanning dictatorship of immortal piece of scheize egomaniacs like stalin, hitler, puttin', trump and so on and on. All of them would kill millions to achieve that, in a heartbeat with no remorse.
We could also destroy our ecosystem beyond easy repair and live in postapocalyptic mad-maxesque world (sure it will bounce back in a million years or two, but we would most probably be wiped out along the path). I look out of window on a dense beautiful wild forest in full bloom, doesn't get much better than that.
Nah, these are pretty good times we, most of us at least, have right now. If you are not happy now, chances of being happy some other time are slim.
People are happy in Africa, Latin America and the poor parts of Asia now, many places people are happier than in the US actually.
Which I think there's a good claim that it's totally and entirely transformed, save for a few things.
Happiness isn’t just being able to avoid sadness, that’s just contentment. It is difficult to explain happiness to someone that hasn’t been truly happy. When I used to do cocaine, those feelings were pure happiness, and I’ve never really felt something to that degree again. I think happiness as we know it is really just a modern concept, one that is enabled by our increasingly leisurely and stimulating life, that has vastly expanded the length and enjoyment of our childhoods. Maybe being happy is a lot like being a child, forever.
Nothing knowing that they could have an easier life also probably played a big role on their happiness. Unhappiness (and depression), I would argue, is probably a modern disease.
I can play out a similar scenario with quite a few slight variations. But this what if stuff is almost always positive.
It's never what if I never downloaded Unity and taught myself to program.
It's never, what if that eviction was a bit faster.
For most of us reading this our lives are modern miracles. I came from nothing and I've made a comfortable 6 figure salary for a decade.
Be content with where you're at, you will never have everything you want.
Yet if we could, we'd also make new mistakes that we'd then want to rectify by going back.
You monster
I always find it funny when people say: "I'd invent Google" when they could barely pass their first year Calculus class. As if stating the idea is all it took but not the engineering and well ... the actual difficult work.
But everyone can invest. That much is totally doable.
I think alot of people aren't passing calculus and doing hard work, not because they're dumb but there's no clear pay off, it's hard to stay motivated
If I could go way farther back in time and bend my entire family tree's trajectory such that I started out on 3rd base, that would be a different story.
https://www.amazon.com/Replay-Ken-Grimwood-ebook/dp/B0F9MY5M...
There's a quote I love from The Remains of The Day:
> I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?”
I was either born without the gene or raised to not do this for myself but I do, quite often, dwell on the unlived lives of people I knew who were never given the chance to live their lives.
My best friend was murdered at school when he was 16. In the Army there are several guys I considered to be "old men" at the time who I am now decades older than.
Now I'm the old man.
Others have taken their own lives or had it stolen from them by drunk drivers or disease.
But me? I just happily (for the most part) stumble through my own life, knowing the past is immutable.
The utility of "what ifs?" seems very low when looking at the past.
The present is a different story, but the convoluted fantasies people seem to build in their minds about going back and marrying that person or taking that risk seem futile because anything you create in your mind is as real and likely to happen as a myriad other options and knowing how that path would have unfolded is impossible.
"I would have been happier/better off/more X if only I.." No. That is unknowable.
Yeah. Go back in time and invest in a sure bet. You got fabulously wealthy and Very Important but ended up dying in your comfy first class seat sitting next to the cofounder of Akamai on 9/11.
"No with my time machine only good things happen"
I have been doing this lately with how maybe I should have went into the military after high school.
Of course, the romanticized version doesn't include losing a limb in Afghanistan.
It just easy to take the good fortune that did happen for granted.
The movie Groundhog Day comes to mind.
I myself can clearly see that at least some some negative experiences helped me in long run. The key is that they needed to be bad enough to force introspection and change, but not devastating enough to just destroy everything beyond repair.
"Still, I should have liked to see the songs come true about the Entwives. I should have dearly liked to see Fimbrethil again. But there, my friends, songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely."
The next is what the restart age would be... Too young and I might get myself killed by a vengeful father.
If I could go back to somewhere around my 20th birthday, with all I know now. Technology wise, I'd do everything I could to make sure Email was autheticated, zero terminated strings were abolished and get a BitGrid chip made.
Oh... And HTML would definitely be a language for the separate addition layering of hypertext markup, instead of the crap we have now.
Probably relatedly though, I never really think about how things could have been and yet I am haunted by disatissfaction (despite having a great life) and always looking for how I'll change myself or my situation (work mostly) going forward. Maybe these are two views on the same neurosis.
I get it, life throws different stuff at all of us. I’ve had more lemons than I ever asked for. But for me, it’s not about living in the what-ifs. It’s more about asking how can I?
Sure, we all think about starting over or going back in time. But for me, those thoughts usually fade when I ask myself: Why not now? Is it really too late?
What helped was letting go of regret.
Just my two cents: drop the what-ifs mindset. If something needs to change, don’t dwell on what could’ve been. Ask yourself: How can I make it happen now?
In 1999—our sophomore year—we hit it big. A company that wired mid-tier office buildings with high-speed Internet hired us to build a collaborative work environment for its customers: Slack, avant la lettre. It was a huge project, entrusted to a few college students through some combination of recklessness and charity. We were terrified that we’d taken on work we couldn’t handle but also felt that we were on track to create something innovative. We blew through deadlines and budgets until the C-suite demanded a demo, which we built. Newly confident, we hired our friends, and used our corporate AmEx to expense a “business dinner” at Nobu. Unlike other kids, who were what—socializing?—I had a business card that said “Creative Director.” After midnight, in our darkened office, I nestled my Aeron chair into my IKEA desk, queued up Nine Inch Nails in Winamp, scrolled code, peeped pixels, and entered the matrix. After my client work was done, I’d write short stories for my creative-writing workshops. Often, I slept on the office futon, waking to plunder the vending machine next to the loading dock, where a homeless man lived with his cart.
I liked this entrepreneurial existence—its ambition, its scrappy, near-future velocity. I thought I might move to San Francisco and work in tech. I saw a path, an opening into life. But, as the dot-com bubble burst, our client’s business was acquired by a firm that was acquired by another firm that didn’t want what we’d made. Our invoices went unpaid. It was senior year—a fork in the road. We closed our business and moved out of the office. A few days before graduation, when I went to pay my tuition bill, a girl on the elevator struck up a conversation, then got off at her floor; on my ride down, she stepped on for a second time, and our conversation continued. We started dating, then went to graduate school in English together. We got married, I became a journalist, and we had a son. I now have a life, a world, a story. I’m me, not him—whoever he might have turned out to be.
Damn, that was a good opener.
No. unless you also change my starting conditions.
I wouldn't date partner #5. That probably says something huge.
The other day we went for ice cream after dinner out and movie. I can't tell you fine people enough how much of an accomplishment that felt to me. It's something so simple it must seem ridiculous. I never wanted big money. The cost is simply too high.
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