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.
The thing is to enjoy the process, not focus on the desired outcome.
> 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
Most of the time, the dream changes as you chase it. Going on the journey changes you, and your perspective gets better and more detailed, and the original dream fades and new dreams arise. And often, those dreams are perfectly achievable, because you've got the knowledge and perspective to know what's a good dream to have.
I will agree with this ... to a point. An endless journey, often fraught with physical and/or emotional pain, without any kind of satisfying destination, would be completely miserable.
Might as well post the full version, which adds context:
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time.
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.
Taking, as he did, the sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it.
Trusting that he will make all things right
if I surrender to His will;
that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
and supremely happy with Him forever.
As much as the serenity prayer comes across as some tacky shit you'd find painted on a wall in that one handwriting font in a beach house in Florida... it's the greatest distillation of human wisdom I've ever found.
I've been in therapy many years, and you wouldn't believe how often it comes up and we discuss it in the context of some problem in my life. So much of life's difficulties hinge on the axis of trying to figure out where we can place our agency and where we should.
The two people I knew who really liked the serenity prayer (and wanted everybody to notice) were assholes. It can mean something like "See, I struggle every day with important issues concerning my power, and, I'm wise about it too! Also I consulted God, turns out you have to put up with some things," which makes it into an excuse for being really controlling.
My preferred version: do what you can, don't sweat it.
Exactly; powerlessness is a big source of stress / anxiety / etc, but when you truly accept that you can't for example change other people or things outside of yourself will never be exactly the way you want them to be, then you'll be a lot more at peace.
To phrase it negatively, it's a kind of selfishness / indifference. But it's not "I don't care", but more "it is what it is".
The difficult part is to also be careful as to not become one of those YouTube "stoics" who just stay in "I don't care" state for everything. We can't control other people, but we can try to influence them towards a better path if needed.
I see some people accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, but then have no courage to change the things which should be changed because they have no wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
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?
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.
Has a doctor restricted you from doing martial arts specifically?
I ask because there are certainly lighter martial arts programs out there that even folks with medical and/or mental issues can still do and gain benefit from them.
Yes. It’s the contact aspect that’s problematic, and all the widely-available training I’ve found in my life thus far has been contact-oriented: self-defense, belt/rank progression, sparring requirements, etc.
Honestly if I lived closer to the city I’d probably go looking for a Tai Chi group. That’s about as close as I can get.
Also considering fencing when I lose more weight/am not the world’s largest target. There’s options, but they deviate pretty heavily from the road I’ve been on in life thus far to the point I’ve only recently had them become plausible.
Does "athlete" in your original post have to be only martial art/contact sports? For example, are you medically unable to do absolutely any strength exercises, maybe upper body only, with appropriate support/isolation? A lot of times it's a matter or re framing rather than giving up goals, a lot can be done at home with a pair of adjustable dumbbells.
Just a gentle reminder: This point of view is sometimes applicable and valuable, but it is extremely easy to say, and statistically it is almost always an oversimplification.
I could barely get in or out of the original tesla roadster. I had to go out on my hands. Was fun to drive. My feet just didn't make it out the door sills sideways. Same thing for the back of a jeep cherokee in the late 90s.
I'm 6'2" and have size 13 feet. I'm not making my shoulder, hips, or feet smaller without a hammer.
I can connect with it as someone who has been trimming down his dreams, one dream at a time, one bit at a time, for so long that it hurts now and feels suffocating at times. The worst are the still lingering around, flickering once in a while.
Desire makes everything blossom and flourish. Possession makes everything wither and fade.
I’m a lucky son of a gun. Managed to slap the eject button on the treadmill early enough in life that I found myself in my early 30s with all the time in the world, and enough cash that it certainly felt like it.
I went and lived so many dreams. Did a whole bunch of things I had already, in my decade long hermitage of empire building, decided would likely never happen.
It’s a decade later. There isn’t an experience or a thing, short of holidaying on the moon, that I haven’t fulfilled.
It’s terrible. It turns out that wanting something, striving for it, was an awful lot more fun than having it. Great; I’ve caught the mailman - now what?
I’ve ended up retreating, wanting less and less - I now live in a cabin in the woods, not because it’s what I want, per se, but because it’s satisfying in ways that my “dreams” aren't.
It’s odd. I do find myself wondering if this is something internal to us, or if it’s acculturated - that is, are we taught to be tantalus, to dangle a reward just beyond our own grasp so that we might justify striving - or are we born with it, the hunter anticipating fresh meat tonight?
Me, I’ve learned to instead derive satisfaction from the absolutely mundane, because the extraordinary wasn’t really any better.
Anyway. These are hardly new problems. Epicurus mused on what dreams were worth having - which grew a person, which diminished them. Aristotle would say happiness is not a state of attainment or possession but one of activity, of working towards a goal. Diogenes would say “mate, all you need in life is a barrel”, and he’d be right.
I suppose my takeaway from all of it can be summed up as “Do not let imagined futures supersede contact with the present.”
Your story reminded me of a quote I found many years ago.
It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits -- like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits -- involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding -- inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake. Understanding is forever unattainable. Therein lies the inevitability of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is none the less the only one worthy of serious attention. --Malcom Muggeridge
I had a mild version of that, and it allowed to focus on the parts of my work that I love without constantly worrying about productivity or monetisation. I could get more involved in the community and do fun things just for the sake of it.
Travel got old quickly. Consumable experiences in general did too. Making art, coding, and working with others did not.
Let him go so you can chase again. Give all the money away; or burn it if you’d rather. If you don’t want to do that because having unlimited cash does satisfy you, then make that a deliberate choice each day so you can remember why you like the life you’ve chosen.
Hmm, interesting perspective. So there is actually something deeper (on top of other already deep stuff) in having, and more importantly raising kids.
Since they take away so much freedom (if they don't one ain't doing parenting right, thats for sure... or simply doesn't have to work at all), its the little bits of passion that are hard won that I appreciate so much. They very effectively throttle any non-kid activity, 24/7. That weekly climbing evening with a buddy is a highlight of any week it happens. That rare hike or skitour that I manage to pull off during weekend becomes a very fond memory. Those 2 weeks spent solo backpacking in Indonesia or recently Dominican republic is something etched deep in my soul.
Before kids, I did all this every weekend, remote trips 4x a year. I was in heaven, but it became the new, even if ultra cool, norm. Now with kids, and after pretty bad paragliding accident that left me on wheelchair for a bit, anything I can still do, I want to dance with joy. I know intimately how it feels losing all that, maybe forever.
One thing that can break this circle IMHO - passions. Climbing is one for me, nature/mountains are generally another. I can keep doing climbing all the time, novelty doesn't wear off. Maybe it can again become a new norm, but what a norm it would be. But maybe that's just idea of a dad with 2 small kids and way more dreams than life can still deliver. Maybe that slow dripping makes it actually better, I'll never know.
> I know I’ll never be able to take martial arts; I have made peace with that
What do you mean? From the rest of your comment it seems you're saying this because you're fat? There are lots of fat fighters in professional MMA. So imagine if they had said that?
Once upon a time, I thought I could leverage my weight into attempting wrestling. My Doctor reiterated the same warning I’d gotten for karate, for boxing, for judo, for every martial art I’d ever wanted to try and take prior: one errant hit, and your damaged organ would need a transplant.
It’s just way too risky. That being said, I do think I’d like to find an instructor to help me focus on solo practice without having to go through the usual progression ladders/belts/rankings. For the meditation and body improvement, at the very least.
If you really want to, you can probably find a BJJ instructor to do privates and only 'flow' spar with them. When I spar with women for example, I match their strength and intensity. Depending on the organ/medical condition it may still not be worth it though. Good luck!
Lean into medicine, tech and science? Zepbound + strength training is a life transforming miracle and they are coming up with even more effective drugs and modern AI deep research (think coding agent pouring over mountains of data) is amazing at coming up with an investment plan to eventually own a home, for example putting up a downpayment and running a rental in a really cheap area and then eventually using income to finance something more convenient if you are not willing to move.
My point is not that all problems can be solved, but I think what OP is saying is that life is a matter of focus. I am putting plans of a soaring corporate career on ice not because I am 100% sure I couldn't swing it but because trying to would take focus away from things I want more like lifting heavy weights and tinkering with tech at home. But for absolute top priorities, I don't think it's ever worth giving up on the concept. Hard limits can be handled by reframing what success looks like and path to get there, not giving up on the essence.
The article is a bit off base IMHO. That guy could go snowboarding, he just thinks the warning he got creates a risk that isn't worth it. It sounds to me he hasn't even thought much about risk mitigation, or alternatives, etc. So really he's talking about letting go of a non serious fantasy that he has. 'Dream' is a bit of a wishy washy term... you could call that fantasy a dream, but you could also call things you are really determined to achieve a dream also. As long as something is possible, then its potentially achievable. Sometimes you have to go down paths where things only "might" be possible before really knowing if it is actually achievable. If things are important to you, go down "might be possible" paths unless the pursuit of that is detrimental in other significant ways.
With respect, the author said his doctor told him not to. I am certain that the author and their medical professional know a hell of a lot more about what's a good idea for his body than you or I do.
When you are young and healthy, it feels like your body has no real hard limits, and doesn't define the boundary of what is and what isn't possible. But at some point, through age or misfortune, you will learn that, no, sometimes your body tells you "no" and you must listen.
There are amputees that do snowboarding with specially designed prosthesis and boards, so there is certainly a way to take load off weak knees with appropriate gear. OP is just, quite reasonably, not prioritizing this minor dream enough to invest so much time and money in it at the expense of other priorities.
I don't think the "is he physically capable or not" question is really relevant to the point the author is trying to make.
The point is that you only have so much time, and you will never do all the things you want to do, and learning to deal with that fact is an important thing you have to do.
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.
From 18-28 life was sharing apartments with various friends just wiling our time away working easy jobs, rock climbing, video games, girls, etc. Then the looming pressure of "you are wasting your life!" drove us all into serious careers and relationships one by one.
Is it societal pressure that pushes us out of that life? It would be considered an "empty" existence, but being a part time bartender who just meanders around and spends time with friends/family until their time is up would be a weirdly buddhist lifestyle.
I have a much more relaxed feeling than I had 2~3 years ago. I am content, even happy, with the life choices I made. My family and I moved from Europe to South Africa, and while that has made the work side harder, the life side is so much better. Kids love it. They go to a much better school. We live outdoors most of the year. We hike. We sport. I took on surfing.
Like others have mentioned: reach out to those friends. Just a "Hi, how are you? I was just thinking about you and wanted to hear how you've been" can be the simple ice-breaker.
You're about at the half-way point for your life: what gives you joy? (playtime with the kids? learning a new hobby? ...?) do more of that! What gives you anxiety? (work? new boss?) figure out if you really need to spend time on that.
There are a thousand books about these things, but it's not really rocket science. Accept who you are. Accept who other people are. Make changes if you want.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The "deep meaning" of taking care of a young child for me is only this: putting yourself at the service of another and being needed.
One specific challenge of raising adolescents is I think precisely running into that place where they start to hit the life confusions you're speaking of, and it's in many cases like holding up a mirror to your own pains from adolescence. But this time without any agency, you're a spectator.
When they're little and they're reaching for a hot surface you can raise alarm and grab their hand and pull it away.
But you lose the ability to substantially "make" a young adult do anything. You can't stop them from skipping school. From spending all their time on their phone. From smoking weed or wasting their time on video games. Or much worse, harming themselves in any number of scary permanent ways.
You can't pull their hand away from the fire. They have the autonomy to make mistakes and something about that age... some just seem to revel in it?
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!)
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> A life well-lived is really what we should all hope for.
That doesn't make sense. A life however-lived implies you're dead. You cannot admire your well-lived life.
> I can’t change the past, but I can change the future.
You cannot change the future ...
Maybe you're not a native speaker. The reason why I reply is because I notice that many people fall into language traps when reasoning about something philosophical. The result of that reasoning looks good but doesn't check out and hence doesn't get you anywhere in terms of actually realizing something important.
I am a native speaker. I think the language problem is on your end.
You changed the future in this thread, by responding to me with an incredibly literal reading of my comment. So I responded and now you get to read it.
So here we are in the future, having a conversation about philosophy and time’s arrow. It didn’t have to be that way, you could have made some other comment, or I could have not responded.
I don't really understand why you're being so pedantic about language here. What they said make perfect sense. One can hope to achieve a life well-lived. They didn't say anything about admiring it in retrospect.
I don't know if you're trying to make a point about predeterminism or something with your second comment. Perhaps you could clarify.
A 'life well lived' doesn't matter only at the very end of the journey, it defines quality, quantity, depth and so on of every single step along it, its just an ultimate metric to use.
I can certainly identify with similar approach, I call it 'looking at actions from my death bed', and how would I rate them and overall process of living my life'. That moment itself is largely irrelevant, the path to it means everything to me.
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.
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.
This is in the context of dreams and celebrating the accomplishment as an achievement in and of itself. I was not advocating that you should celebrate every win as your own. My comment was directed toward the voice in the article.
>I was not advocating that you should celebrate every win as your own.
No, you're saying "we" should celebrate every win as "our" own. But, like, that only makes sense sometimes. If a guy runs a two-hour marathon, that's his accomplishment, not ours. If China lands a man on Mars next year, is that something "we" did too? Maybe if we're Chinese, but otherwise I'm not sure we're even cogs in the machine that accomplished it.
Do you feel that way about all forms of entertainment? You also are not, "playing, exercising, practicing, getting injured, losing, or winning, nor are you getting paid" nor doing comedy when you watch Joe Rogan standup, so who cares?
I think I’d separate “entertainment to be entertained” from “entertainment to feel good about myself”. Watching football for the fun or awe of it is completely fine. It’s impressive for sure. Watching football and feeling a true self-confidence or otherwise emotional boost when some other dude scores or “your team wins” is … stupid.
And to be clear, Joe Rogan is an idiot, I don’t watch his stuff anymore. Idiocracy is also the same trope as that little clip you can find on YouTube (which doesn’t even give him money because it’s a recording from like 20 years ago).
Joe Rogan? Heck no, he is POS and I can't understand why the popularity. There are tons of proper adult male role models with much more smart and respectable character than him.
I get your point I think, I do enjoy stand up comedy, live or just watching a netflix special. I wouldn't compare it to watching sports, the level of excitement is on another level.
Also sport events take way more time, they developed into this pathetic commercial charade where true spirit of actual sportmanship is long gone, its all about sponsors, cash flows, chasing instagram followers, and overall... money. Can't say I can respect that, so why reward it with the most important item I have in my life - my free time.
Same time could be spend on a proper hike in nature, and discover and achieve something meaningful, and way more rewarding. Or anything else, rather than sitting on one's ass, watching others doing sports. Often done by people with weight issues, then it becomes hilariously ridiculous. If people poured as much attention and energy to crap happening society left and right we would be living in global second renaissance. Or self-improvement, whatever than just passive watching of life going by.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hard to say - it was never discussed at the time but we did end up on Katherine and Benjamin. From my perspective sort of a happy coincidence - the unconscious is a strong power tho and I wouldn’t argue against someone saying that was the source. Also, of course we wanted flexible names with a lot of different possible nick names, as giving a person you haven’t met a name is kind of a big responsibility without much info.
BTW, a very common name in Poland, a diminutive form of Jadwiga. If you ever read any Polish history, it almost seems like most of noblewomen were named Jadwiga.
Also, a lot of people have dreams about a perfect idealized version of something instead of the reality. If they actually got to experience the reality they might find that they no longer hold that dream as they originally knew it.
Reading this somewhere in the Atlantic on a sailboat by myself. Nodding yes. A few days from now I will be at home after an almost 2 year journey of learning what sailboat ownership. I still can’t tell if I like the sailboat life. I’m going decide in the fall of 27 If I really want a sailboat. I had to try it or give up the dream. Maybe I’ll go back to my dream of running a small run manufacturer if facility.
This is so true. A few years ago I was volunteering at a running race that’s very hard to get into and many people have as a life dream. I found it kind of amusing how many people were having pity parties in the latter stages of the race despite having dreamed of getting into it for years, maybe decades.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I can see how my advice could be read the wrong way in this post-shame world.
No, I do NOT mean "be an asshole if you feel like it".
I mean it more in the latter sense - take a vacation, go to Pompey. Say hello to the girl you like and see what happens. It's something you can do now, so later you don't replay it endlessly, wondering what would have been.
Also, no billionaire right in the head will be bemoaning not having more billions while on their deathbed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
“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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
I have arthritis in my right ankle now and walking more than a mile leads to swelling, pain, and random sharp pinching during some strides. Running sets it off sooner than that. The ankle always is visibly swollen, it's obvious there's something wrong, and after more acute symptoms developed about eight months ago after my first soccer action in about a year I finally got it checked out and diagnosed two weeks ago. I'm lucky in that I can still cycle for an hour or two on fairly hilly roads in my North Carolina town, and I've been enjoying riding in the Phoenix desert a few times while visiting family this past week. I can still do some weight-bearing exercises too.
My biggest regret though is that I may never manage to play more than a few minutes of soccer at a time again. I got back to Latin America in early adolescence having missed some crucial soccer years. I was soon a couple of years younger than everyone else in my grade, and P.E. classes were not very fun, it was hard to compete and I rarely got to participate in real action on the soccer or rugby field. In my late teens I started to actually develop some soccer sense and got a bit better. But student/teacher political strikes during the dying years of a dictatorship and upcoming return of my family to the USA brought me to the USA for studies, and I didn't play much in college.
After a few years in SF Bay Area I started playing pickup soccer and eventually got to play quite well , especially during a particular two year stretch. Then marriage, busy jobs, having a kid meant I laid off the regular soccer for a while.
And now, with a bit more extra time I could maybe spend playing I no longer can. I've never been on a team, never been a specialist at a position, never trained regularly. The doctor said maybe with physical therapy and pain killers I could do it. I'll work toward that.
One of my complications was severe osteoarthritis.
The injury basically tried to twist my foot off, a "tri-malleolar fracture with dislocation". Even after doctors reduced the dislocation and used plates to put the broken bones back together, the cartilage suffered too much damage and just withered away to nothing.
Arthritis is a miserable, debilitating disease. My understanding is that usually once the cartilage reaches a certain level of loss, there is a positive feedback loop where the remaining cartilage is under too much pressure to regenerate and it continues to degrade. I hope yours gets better or at least maintains.
In my case, replacement or fusion were the only options and I went with replacement (since fusion tends to lead to more arthritis elsewhere in the foot). Replacement looks like it will give me back almost all of the activities I used to be able to do, including most sports, except running.
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.)
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Journey over destination.
The thing is to enjoy the process, not focus on the desired outcome.
> 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
Most of the time, the dream changes as you chase it. Going on the journey changes you, and your perspective gets better and more detailed, and the original dream fades and new dreams arise. And often, those dreams are perfectly achievable, because you've got the knowledge and perspective to know what's a good dream to have.
I will agree with this ... to a point. An endless journey, often fraught with physical and/or emotional pain, without any kind of satisfying destination, would be completely miserable.
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
- Reinhold Niebuhr's Serenity prayer
Might as well post the full version, which adds context:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time.
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.
Taking, as he did, the sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.
Trusting that he will make all things right if I surrender to His will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever.
—Reinhold Niebuhr, 1892-1971
As much as the serenity prayer comes across as some tacky shit you'd find painted on a wall in that one handwriting font in a beach house in Florida... it's the greatest distillation of human wisdom I've ever found.
I've been in therapy many years, and you wouldn't believe how often it comes up and we discuss it in the context of some problem in my life. So much of life's difficulties hinge on the axis of trying to figure out where we can place our agency and where we should.
The two people I knew who really liked the serenity prayer (and wanted everybody to notice) were assholes. It can mean something like "See, I struggle every day with important issues concerning my power, and, I'm wise about it too! Also I consulted God, turns out you have to put up with some things," which makes it into an excuse for being really controlling.
My preferred version: do what you can, don't sweat it.
Exactly; powerlessness is a big source of stress / anxiety / etc, but when you truly accept that you can't for example change other people or things outside of yourself will never be exactly the way you want them to be, then you'll be a lot more at peace.
To phrase it negatively, it's a kind of selfishness / indifference. But it's not "I don't care", but more "it is what it is".
The difficult part is to also be careful as to not become one of those YouTube "stoics" who just stay in "I don't care" state for everything. We can't control other people, but we can try to influence them towards a better path if needed.
I see some people accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, but then have no courage to change the things which should be changed because they have no wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Spinoza has a much deeper and more effective approach to this, I found.
If you like this I highly recommend you read Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations if you haven’t
An easy read that dives into stoicism, a similar mindset, within the context of running the Roman Empire.
Great read.
I think this gets at an important distinction: some dreams are painful because they are impossible and some are painful because they are unresolved
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?
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.
Has a doctor restricted you from doing martial arts specifically?
I ask because there are certainly lighter martial arts programs out there that even folks with medical and/or mental issues can still do and gain benefit from them.
Yes. It’s the contact aspect that’s problematic, and all the widely-available training I’ve found in my life thus far has been contact-oriented: self-defense, belt/rank progression, sparring requirements, etc.
Honestly if I lived closer to the city I’d probably go looking for a Tai Chi group. That’s about as close as I can get.
Also considering fencing when I lose more weight/am not the world’s largest target. There’s options, but they deviate pretty heavily from the road I’ve been on in life thus far to the point I’ve only recently had them become plausible.
Does "athlete" in your original post have to be only martial art/contact sports? For example, are you medically unable to do absolutely any strength exercises, maybe upper body only, with appropriate support/isolation? A lot of times it's a matter or re framing rather than giving up goals, a lot can be done at home with a pair of adjustable dumbbells.
Just a gentle reminder: This point of view is sometimes applicable and valuable, but it is extremely easy to say, and statistically it is almost always an oversimplification.
Jeremy Clarkson is a really tall guy.
Jeremy Clarkson in a F1 car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOh77dwAr54. There's a reason they had hammond try that.
I could barely get in or out of the original tesla roadster. I had to go out on my hands. Was fun to drive. My feet just didn't make it out the door sills sideways. Same thing for the back of a jeep cherokee in the late 90s.
I'm 6'2" and have size 13 feet. I'm not making my shoulder, hips, or feet smaller without a hammer.
> I'm 6'2" and have size 13 feet. I'm not making my shoulder, hips, or feet smaller without a hammer.
Eyy, same! My wake-up moment was trying to fold myself into an Impreza WRX and realizing most fun sports cars are not made for tall people.
I'm 6'4" and to fit in a Fiat X19 I needed a can opener and Mazola.
Don’t give up on all of them. My friend here is 6’5 and a pro strongman at the time https://70sbig.com/blog/2013/10/mike-interviews-pro-strongma...
I can connect with it as someone who has been trimming down his dreams, one dream at a time, one bit at a time, for so long that it hurts now and feels suffocating at times. The worst are the still lingering around, flickering once in a while.
Hm. I think Proust put it well:
Desire makes everything blossom and flourish. Possession makes everything wither and fade.
I’m a lucky son of a gun. Managed to slap the eject button on the treadmill early enough in life that I found myself in my early 30s with all the time in the world, and enough cash that it certainly felt like it.
I went and lived so many dreams. Did a whole bunch of things I had already, in my decade long hermitage of empire building, decided would likely never happen.
It’s a decade later. There isn’t an experience or a thing, short of holidaying on the moon, that I haven’t fulfilled.
It’s terrible. It turns out that wanting something, striving for it, was an awful lot more fun than having it. Great; I’ve caught the mailman - now what?
I’ve ended up retreating, wanting less and less - I now live in a cabin in the woods, not because it’s what I want, per se, but because it’s satisfying in ways that my “dreams” aren't.
It’s odd. I do find myself wondering if this is something internal to us, or if it’s acculturated - that is, are we taught to be tantalus, to dangle a reward just beyond our own grasp so that we might justify striving - or are we born with it, the hunter anticipating fresh meat tonight?
Me, I’ve learned to instead derive satisfaction from the absolutely mundane, because the extraordinary wasn’t really any better.
Anyway. These are hardly new problems. Epicurus mused on what dreams were worth having - which grew a person, which diminished them. Aristotle would say happiness is not a state of attainment or possession but one of activity, of working towards a goal. Diogenes would say “mate, all you need in life is a barrel”, and he’d be right.
I suppose my takeaway from all of it can be summed up as “Do not let imagined futures supersede contact with the present.”
Your story reminded me of a quote I found many years ago.
It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits -- like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits -- involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding -- inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake. Understanding is forever unattainable. Therein lies the inevitability of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is none the less the only one worthy of serious attention. --Malcom Muggeridge
I had a mild version of that, and it allowed to focus on the parts of my work that I love without constantly worrying about productivity or monetisation. I could get more involved in the community and do fun things just for the sake of it.
Travel got old quickly. Consumable experiences in general did too. Making art, coding, and working with others did not.
> Great; I’ve caught the mailman - now what?
Let him go so you can chase again. Give all the money away; or burn it if you’d rather. If you don’t want to do that because having unlimited cash does satisfy you, then make that a deliberate choice each day so you can remember why you like the life you’ve chosen.
Sound like it’s time for yoga :) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=txNkzlJ0tc4
Hmm, interesting perspective. So there is actually something deeper (on top of other already deep stuff) in having, and more importantly raising kids.
Since they take away so much freedom (if they don't one ain't doing parenting right, thats for sure... or simply doesn't have to work at all), its the little bits of passion that are hard won that I appreciate so much. They very effectively throttle any non-kid activity, 24/7. That weekly climbing evening with a buddy is a highlight of any week it happens. That rare hike or skitour that I manage to pull off during weekend becomes a very fond memory. Those 2 weeks spent solo backpacking in Indonesia or recently Dominican republic is something etched deep in my soul.
Before kids, I did all this every weekend, remote trips 4x a year. I was in heaven, but it became the new, even if ultra cool, norm. Now with kids, and after pretty bad paragliding accident that left me on wheelchair for a bit, anything I can still do, I want to dance with joy. I know intimately how it feels losing all that, maybe forever.
One thing that can break this circle IMHO - passions. Climbing is one for me, nature/mountains are generally another. I can keep doing climbing all the time, novelty doesn't wear off. Maybe it can again become a new norm, but what a norm it would be. But maybe that's just idea of a dad with 2 small kids and way more dreams than life can still deliver. Maybe that slow dripping makes it actually better, I'll never know.
> I know I’ll never be able to take martial arts; I have made peace with that
What do you mean? From the rest of your comment it seems you're saying this because you're fat? There are lots of fat fighters in professional MMA. So imagine if they had said that?
Once upon a time, I thought I could leverage my weight into attempting wrestling. My Doctor reiterated the same warning I’d gotten for karate, for boxing, for judo, for every martial art I’d ever wanted to try and take prior: one errant hit, and your damaged organ would need a transplant.
It’s just way too risky. That being said, I do think I’d like to find an instructor to help me focus on solo practice without having to go through the usual progression ladders/belts/rankings. For the meditation and body improvement, at the very least.
If you really want to, you can probably find a BJJ instructor to do privates and only 'flow' spar with them. When I spar with women for example, I match their strength and intensity. Depending on the organ/medical condition it may still not be worth it though. Good luck!
Lean into medicine, tech and science? Zepbound + strength training is a life transforming miracle and they are coming up with even more effective drugs and modern AI deep research (think coding agent pouring over mountains of data) is amazing at coming up with an investment plan to eventually own a home, for example putting up a downpayment and running a rental in a really cheap area and then eventually using income to finance something more convenient if you are not willing to move.
My point is not that all problems can be solved, but I think what OP is saying is that life is a matter of focus. I am putting plans of a soaring corporate career on ice not because I am 100% sure I couldn't swing it but because trying to would take focus away from things I want more like lifting heavy weights and tinkering with tech at home. But for absolute top priorities, I don't think it's ever worth giving up on the concept. Hard limits can be handled by reframing what success looks like and path to get there, not giving up on the essence.
Feels good growing up a skinny gamer.
I fit into M. And "fun cars"
(I dont drive)
(Im a virgin)
Both of those can be fixed with a minimal amount of daily work.
instead of making peace what about reexamine where the orignal desire for being an amazing athlete came from
The article is a bit off base IMHO. That guy could go snowboarding, he just thinks the warning he got creates a risk that isn't worth it. It sounds to me he hasn't even thought much about risk mitigation, or alternatives, etc. So really he's talking about letting go of a non serious fantasy that he has. 'Dream' is a bit of a wishy washy term... you could call that fantasy a dream, but you could also call things you are really determined to achieve a dream also. As long as something is possible, then its potentially achievable. Sometimes you have to go down paths where things only "might" be possible before really knowing if it is actually achievable. If things are important to you, go down "might be possible" paths unless the pursuit of that is detrimental in other significant ways.
With respect, the author said his doctor told him not to. I am certain that the author and their medical professional know a hell of a lot more about what's a good idea for his body than you or I do.
When you are young and healthy, it feels like your body has no real hard limits, and doesn't define the boundary of what is and what isn't possible. But at some point, through age or misfortune, you will learn that, no, sometimes your body tells you "no" and you must listen.
A doctor knows about enough dangers and germs to never let you out the door!
There are amputees that do snowboarding with specially designed prosthesis and boards, so there is certainly a way to take load off weak knees with appropriate gear. OP is just, quite reasonably, not prioritizing this minor dream enough to invest so much time and money in it at the expense of other priorities.
I don't think the "is he physically capable or not" question is really relevant to the point the author is trying to make.
The point is that you only have so much time, and you will never do all the things you want to do, and learning to deal with that fact is an important thing you have to do.
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.
Only 39 but definitely relate.
From 18-28 life was sharing apartments with various friends just wiling our time away working easy jobs, rock climbing, video games, girls, etc. Then the looming pressure of "you are wasting your life!" drove us all into serious careers and relationships one by one.
Is it societal pressure that pushes us out of that life? It would be considered an "empty" existence, but being a part time bartender who just meanders around and spends time with friends/family until their time is up would be a weirdly buddhist lifestyle.
Turned 40 too recently.
I have a much more relaxed feeling than I had 2~3 years ago. I am content, even happy, with the life choices I made. My family and I moved from Europe to South Africa, and while that has made the work side harder, the life side is so much better. Kids love it. They go to a much better school. We live outdoors most of the year. We hike. We sport. I took on surfing.
Like others have mentioned: reach out to those friends. Just a "Hi, how are you? I was just thinking about you and wanted to hear how you've been" can be the simple ice-breaker.
You're about at the half-way point for your life: what gives you joy? (playtime with the kids? learning a new hobby? ...?) do more of that! What gives you anxiety? (work? new boss?) figure out if you really need to spend time on that.
There are a thousand books about these things, but it's not really rocket science. Accept who you are. Accept who other people are. Make changes if you want.
> 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.
In the blink of an eye you'll be 60, looking back thinking where the last 20 years went. Make them count :)
> I think I have just too strong of a mask for anyone else to truly pierce.
And a flair for the dramatic!
If I can't be dramatic in my midlife crisis, then when?
A mask and a Carrera will lend plenty of drama. The question is "what kind of mask will you wear while driving the Carrera?"
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.
You will never know what could have been, only know that you were a wonderful parent for stepping up to such a challenge.
Unlived dreams are not always abandoned because we choose something else. Sometimes they are taken by circumstance
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.
Make sure you look after your own health too, if you lose that it’ll be a lot harder to help those around you.
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.
These kind of stories do help. In that sick reality TV way. "At least I'm not this guy lol"
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
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.
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.
> 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.
The 5 why’s and all that
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".
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.
Yeah, this is why it's important to block ads from your life wherever possible. Other people profit from telling you what your dreams are.
And what your problems are, so they can sell you the solution to it.
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.
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.
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?
I majored in superconductivity
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-tha... The original article in Polish: https://weekend.gazeta.pl/weekend/7,177344,30226401,milenial...
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The "deep meaning" of taking care of a young child for me is only this: putting yourself at the service of another and being needed.
One specific challenge of raising adolescents is I think precisely running into that place where they start to hit the life confusions you're speaking of, and it's in many cases like holding up a mirror to your own pains from adolescence. But this time without any agency, you're a spectator.
When they're little and they're reaching for a hot surface you can raise alarm and grab their hand and pull it away.
But you lose the ability to substantially "make" a young adult do anything. You can't stop them from skipping school. From spending all their time on their phone. From smoking weed or wasting their time on video games. Or much worse, harming themselves in any number of scary permanent ways.
You can't pull their hand away from the fire. They have the autonomy to make mistakes and something about that age... some just seem to revel in it?
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!)
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.
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.
The inverse was true for me, at 40 I realised a lot of doors are now closed or closing.
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.
> 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.
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.
Thinking of happy memories sounds like a perfectly healthy activity to me, TBH
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.
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.
> A life well-lived is really what we should all hope for.
That doesn't make sense. A life however-lived implies you're dead. You cannot admire your well-lived life.
> I can’t change the past, but I can change the future.
You cannot change the future ...
Maybe you're not a native speaker. The reason why I reply is because I notice that many people fall into language traps when reasoning about something philosophical. The result of that reasoning looks good but doesn't check out and hence doesn't get you anywhere in terms of actually realizing something important.
I am a native speaker. I think the language problem is on your end.
You changed the future in this thread, by responding to me with an incredibly literal reading of my comment. So I responded and now you get to read it.
So here we are in the future, having a conversation about philosophy and time’s arrow. It didn’t have to be that way, you could have made some other comment, or I could have not responded.
I don't really understand why you're being so pedantic about language here. What they said make perfect sense. One can hope to achieve a life well-lived. They didn't say anything about admiring it in retrospect.
I don't know if you're trying to make a point about predeterminism or something with your second comment. Perhaps you could clarify.
A 'life well lived' doesn't matter only at the very end of the journey, it defines quality, quantity, depth and so on of every single step along it, its just an ultimate metric to use.
I can certainly identify with similar approach, I call it 'looking at actions from my death bed', and how would I rate them and overall process of living my life'. That moment itself is largely irrelevant, the path to it means everything to me.
It lead me to many happy choices and no regrets.
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.
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.
This is in the context of dreams and celebrating the accomplishment as an achievement in and of itself. I was not advocating that you should celebrate every win as your own. My comment was directed toward the voice in the article.
>I was not advocating that you should celebrate every win as your own.
No, you're saying "we" should celebrate every win as "our" own. But, like, that only makes sense sometimes. If a guy runs a two-hour marathon, that's his accomplishment, not ours. If China lands a man on Mars next year, is that something "we" did too? Maybe if we're Chinese, but otherwise I'm not sure we're even cogs in the machine that accomplished it.
Do you feel that way about all forms of entertainment? You also are not, "playing, exercising, practicing, getting injured, losing, or winning, nor are you getting paid" nor doing comedy when you watch Joe Rogan standup, so who cares?
I think I’d separate “entertainment to be entertained” from “entertainment to feel good about myself”. Watching football for the fun or awe of it is completely fine. It’s impressive for sure. Watching football and feeling a true self-confidence or otherwise emotional boost when some other dude scores or “your team wins” is … stupid.
And to be clear, Joe Rogan is an idiot, I don’t watch his stuff anymore. Idiocracy is also the same trope as that little clip you can find on YouTube (which doesn’t even give him money because it’s a recording from like 20 years ago).
Joe Rogan? Heck no, he is POS and I can't understand why the popularity. There are tons of proper adult male role models with much more smart and respectable character than him.
I get your point I think, I do enjoy stand up comedy, live or just watching a netflix special. I wouldn't compare it to watching sports, the level of excitement is on another level.
Also sport events take way more time, they developed into this pathetic commercial charade where true spirit of actual sportmanship is long gone, its all about sponsors, cash flows, chasing instagram followers, and overall... money. Can't say I can respect that, so why reward it with the most important item I have in my life - my free time.
Same time could be spend on a proper hike in nature, and discover and achieve something meaningful, and way more rewarding. Or anything else, rather than sitting on one's ass, watching others doing sports. Often done by people with weight issues, then it becomes hilariously ridiculous. If people poured as much attention and energy to crap happening society left and right we would be living in global second renaissance. Or self-improvement, whatever than just passive watching of life going by.
You would enjoy reading Philip K. Dick novels for sure.
What is the experience of a dream but another memory?
Any specific recommendations?
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.
I believe they meant humanity.
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.
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.
I find I there is anxiety either direction but have more engaging days when I am chasing something deeply.
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 :)
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Did you name your son after the captain of DS9?
Hard to say - it was never discussed at the time but we did end up on Katherine and Benjamin. From my perspective sort of a happy coincidence - the unconscious is a strong power tho and I wouldn’t argue against someone saying that was the source. Also, of course we wanted flexible names with a lot of different possible nick names, as giving a person you haven’t met a name is kind of a big responsibility without much info.
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.
Lwaxana is very unusual. How haven't they guessed yet?
Definitely not that one!
Crystalline Entity? Q? Guinan?
Lal is a beautiful name
Is it Tasha?
Bingo
not Kes though right?
Kes is not a TNG character. Maybe Deanna?
I'm sure little Jadzia will never figure it out.
Edit: crap, that's DS9...
BTW, a very common name in Poland, a diminutive form of Jadwiga. If you ever read any Polish history, it almost seems like most of noblewomen were named Jadwiga.
Also, a lot of people have dreams about a perfect idealized version of something instead of the reality. If they actually got to experience the reality they might find that they no longer hold that dream as they originally knew it.
Reading this somewhere in the Atlantic on a sailboat by myself. Nodding yes. A few days from now I will be at home after an almost 2 year journey of learning what sailboat ownership. I still can’t tell if I like the sailboat life. I’m going decide in the fall of 27 If I really want a sailboat. I had to try it or give up the dream. Maybe I’ll go back to my dream of running a small run manufacturer if facility.
This is so true. A few years ago I was volunteering at a running race that’s very hard to get into and many people have as a life dream. I found it kind of amusing how many people were having pity parties in the latter stages of the race despite having dreamed of getting into it for years, maybe decades.
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.
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.
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.
As I always say - do what you will regret NOT doing once you are old.
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.
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.
If you don't take care of your teeth, it might matter a lot to you very quickly and pain is a good instructor.
>Future me can suck it.
So...You will suck it ?
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
> 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.
I can see how my advice could be read the wrong way in this post-shame world.
No, I do NOT mean "be an asshole if you feel like it".
I mean it more in the latter sense - take a vacation, go to Pompey. Say hello to the girl you like and see what happens. It's something you can do now, so later you don't replay it endlessly, wondering what would have been.
Also, no billionaire right in the head will be bemoaning not having more billions while on their deathbed.
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.
What's so great about the army? To me, it appears to be one of the most unethical occupations one could have.
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.
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.
There is a strange grief in realizing that even a good life necessarily excludes almost all other possible lives
priorities are the answer
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.
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)
> It's kinda a unique game that use your blinking as a game mechanic
SCP: Containment Breach?
“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.
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
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.
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.
> 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.
Dreams are a attack vector on the young, used by exploitive industries. Life-experiences hardens you against all things. Adds, Rockstars and Models..
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.
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.
I have arthritis in my right ankle now and walking more than a mile leads to swelling, pain, and random sharp pinching during some strides. Running sets it off sooner than that. The ankle always is visibly swollen, it's obvious there's something wrong, and after more acute symptoms developed about eight months ago after my first soccer action in about a year I finally got it checked out and diagnosed two weeks ago. I'm lucky in that I can still cycle for an hour or two on fairly hilly roads in my North Carolina town, and I've been enjoying riding in the Phoenix desert a few times while visiting family this past week. I can still do some weight-bearing exercises too.
My biggest regret though is that I may never manage to play more than a few minutes of soccer at a time again. I got back to Latin America in early adolescence having missed some crucial soccer years. I was soon a couple of years younger than everyone else in my grade, and P.E. classes were not very fun, it was hard to compete and I rarely got to participate in real action on the soccer or rugby field. In my late teens I started to actually develop some soccer sense and got a bit better. But student/teacher political strikes during the dying years of a dictatorship and upcoming return of my family to the USA brought me to the USA for studies, and I didn't play much in college.
After a few years in SF Bay Area I started playing pickup soccer and eventually got to play quite well , especially during a particular two year stretch. Then marriage, busy jobs, having a kid meant I laid off the regular soccer for a while.
And now, with a bit more extra time I could maybe spend playing I no longer can. I've never been on a team, never been a specialist at a position, never trained regularly. The doctor said maybe with physical therapy and pain killers I could do it. I'll work toward that.
One of my complications was severe osteoarthritis.
The injury basically tried to twist my foot off, a "tri-malleolar fracture with dislocation". Even after doctors reduced the dislocation and used plates to put the broken bones back together, the cartilage suffered too much damage and just withered away to nothing.
Arthritis is a miserable, debilitating disease. My understanding is that usually once the cartilage reaches a certain level of loss, there is a positive feedback loop where the remaining cartilage is under too much pressure to regenerate and it continues to degrade. I hope yours gets better or at least maintains.
In my case, replacement or fusion were the only options and I went with replacement (since fusion tends to lead to more arthritis elsewhere in the foot). Replacement looks like it will give me back almost all of the activities I used to be able to do, including most sports, except running.
Good luck. Taking care of a body is hard.
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.)
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
Never let your memes be dreams nor your dreams be memes.
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.
For the record, snowboarding is not hard on your knees, not like skiing.
You guys have dreams?
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.
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.
I highly recommend the book Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman to help cope with this anxiety
Just wait till you forget to have (more) kids then you’ll really know regret.