241–250 of 277 posts
Your generation is taught to be unreasonable in their expectations, this website is basically made up of prodigal children who all missed some substantial developmental milestones but who ended up being rewarded for years of interest in very specific topics. Bertrand Russell correctly stated that time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. If you have now decided you want change, then great. However, you have played s…
One's life isn't supposed to look a particular way, and international recognition and fame isn't a prerequisite for living a fulfilled and meaningful life. Fulfilment and meaning come not from making all the right choices every second of the day, but rather from just spending more of one's time following one's joy (and expanding the set of things that one finds joy in).
If gaming used to bring you joy but now programming does, then great, do programming. It will take you places and you don't have to worry about where, exactly. Just a high level directive like "this seems like it will be more productive than that, in general" is sufficient direction.
A side effect of what you have learned is that it indicates to you what it is that you need to learn. I'd say that you are at that stage right now. Learning is a life-long experience.
Life is not static. Once upon a time, a person would find a career and remain in that one career till he/she retired in their sixties. Today, many people will have two, three or more careers in their lifetimes. My four incipient careers were: pharmacist, computer programmer, commercial pilot, commercial landlord - completely different careers that depended on minor decisions to lead me down one path or another. I ended up doing two of the four long-term. The timing wasn't quite right to become employed as a computer programmer as my first wife didn't want to move several hundred miles, or as a commercial pilot due to a downturn in the early 90s General Aviation industry. I started off as a pharmacist, and later became a commercial landlord when my brother died and I was forced to take over the reins of the family business.
At twenty-three you have so much ahead of you. Don't sweat the outcomes. Oh, and I will probably be downvoted greatly for this:
Do not let "Duty" (also known as "Society's Expectations") control your life. You do not have to marry the good-looking girl. You do not have to have children. You do not have to have the big house. You do not have to have the prestigious job. You do not have to have the expensive house, or the expensive car. You do not have to be 'successful' by the age of 30/40/50/whatever.
If those things happen in your life, that's well and good. But never feel you are obliged to do those things. We sometimes do those things because Society brain-washes us that we have to do all those by a certain age.That is wrong.
Live your life according to what you want. Yes you will make mistakes. So what? Every life experience is what makes you, you.
You shouldn't. It should make you angry and determined.
You have one life. In that life you have very, very few opportunities - combinations of ability, support, interest, and need. Most opportunities fail. We first-worlders in a tipping-point era are responsible for what happens next; it won't only be your life you're wasting, but generations and the planet.
And even if you're on some "right path", it's very, very easy to live life on automatic, which, as Socrates suggests, is a life not worth living.
My advice would be to stop searching to satisfy yourself, whether through games or socially-rewarded skills.
Do some good.
Do that, and everything else falls into place.
I am in the opposite boat I spent most of my childhood coding (learning to code, working on projects and just messing around with computers), playing video games (mostly Half-Life and Portal mods and maps, and trying to develop my own source and goldsource engine mods) and studying (I was the teacher‘s pet and was always obsessed with my grades). I am successful in my career but I often feel like I wasted my childhoo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Everything you do is ultimately pointless > the most meaningful thing we can do is through social interactions Clearly you can see the contrast here. I agree that people are far more important than anything else. I am also among the majority of worldviews on earth who do not consider 'everything is pointless'.
I don't mean to be depressing, but what is the point of life? Like an ultimate goal or something that you must achieve? It doesn't seem to be a one, except for the ones that we set for ourselves, which is usually trying to live as better as possible for as long as you can. And this seems fine to me, thinking too much about this can get depressing unless you can be comfortable with the fact that whatever we do in life…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Everything you do is ultimately pointless > the most meaningful thing we can do is through social interactions Clearly you can see the contrast here. I agree that people are far more important than anything else. I am also among the majority of worldviews on earth who do not consider 'everything is pointless'.
I don’t think the point is “everything is pointless”, insomuch as “everything is more pointless seeming than social interactions”. Social interactions seem to be at least part of the “human motive” for most people I’d guess.