Tao Te Ching
Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
321–330 of 360 posts
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#322You aren't wrong. Most of us are stuck in conformist, drab and conservative societies, where we're forced to participate in the market economy. This is soul-crushing, and bad for nearly everyone, but especially those in poor countries. I recommend: 1. Don't work hard. Try to reduce your productivity. 2. Don't work long hours. Reduce your working week to the minimum necessary. Most university graduates earn enough to…
This is one of those puzzling comments that I can't tell if tongue-in-cheek or actually serious. I like it! Life's too serious and people need some chaotic ambiguity to spice it up. > Don't work hard. Try to reduce your productivity. Sounds good. Most people aren't as productive as they think they are, imho. I'd rather not buy into their facade and just be as productive as I need to be when I need to be! > Don't work…
I abolished the world order- thermo-dynamics is gone- you are free, no need to eat the sun anymore and to fight your way up in the layer of sun-eating-refinement order.
If you want to abolish something, at least make a suggestion with what you want to replace it.
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Having a job is the cost of living in society. In other words, we are born into debt and must work all our lives to pay off that debt. This is true in so many ways, and makes what we're talking about amount to at best a kind of bonded child labor. You don't have to think of it as slavery, but it's very very far from COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. There is no deserted island to live on!! There are no guarantees of universal h…
One could potentially find an uninhabited island with soil and water among the islands in the world, like 1 out of the 5000 uninhabited ones in the Philippine archipelago. One could even hide out in a remote location on land in a random large country, like Russia. It might take some work, but it seems possible to me.
Such a trip costs money. To secure the legal right to inhabit the island, to make the trip, and to bring enough supplies to survive.
A person either needs to use his parent's cash or to work for a number of years and save before leaving. The "choice" isn't available to him until that happens, so either his parents must work to purchase their child's freedom, or he must work to purchase it himself. In either case this is one of the very definitions of slavery.
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Acid is a good bit different from drinking though. You won't get addicted.
Experiences differ on this point.
Could you elaborate? I've been surrounded by regular drug users for at least a decade at this point, and I've see dependency/addiction to all sorts of drugs, including those that are often considered non-addictive. And that's not even counting addiction to gaming, food, sex, and so on.
I have not encountered a single case where someone appeared to be dependent on or addicted to acid. Sure, some people used it a little more than I'd consider healthy, but calling that an addiction or even a dependency would be stretching it.
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#325Usually on this site and Quora, when people have a post like yours, the posters usually offer a piece of advice, that in my humble opinion, advices are useless because usually they say more about the advice-giver, what they wish they could've done when they were younger (doctors/lawyers who studied hard to make bank, advising all students to have fun when they're young but how did they get there?), or tout their own…
Let me provide a different perspective: In my early years I did not miss a single fight. I argued hard, enjoyed it a lot, and usually won. At 40, I started to hate what that habit had turned me into.
Fast forward: these days I try to resolve any conflict immediately and I value harmony indefinitely higher than being right. There is so much more to life than fighting!
Of course, knowing that you are able to fight hard might be necessary in order to avoid conflict. So I'm not saying, don't fight -- just keep an eye on the greater picture while you do!
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
This can't be upvoted enough. Drugs and alcohol are great, but they should be used to celebrate good times, not to overcome bad ones.
To an extent, you are correct. But my experience has been slightly different. Having a major-ish depression once or twice a year is customary for me now. This happens no matter how good or bad things in life are going on: whether I'm working on something I really like near an infinity pool in Kuala Lumpur, or whether I'm out of client work and desperate. Alcohol helps me get through that ("you should go to a shrink",…
Depression is unfortunately an active ingredient in my life. And I do agree with you that 'leaning into' the depression can be effective; I've often found that locking myself up at home, neglecting myself, and feeling openly and dramatically sorry for myself somehow made my situation improve much quicker than if I'd fought my depression.
But I've really changed my mind about using alcohol or any other mood-altering, addictive substance (which includes food for some!) to cope, especially when it is to cope with depression.
See, many people share exactly your experience until suddenly they don't.
After years of using alcohol within whatever boundaries they set for themselves, they lose their job and as a result of that they lose their partner. Or they lose their partner in a terrible way (death, cheating, etc.) and get stuck in the 'getting through it' drinking phase because there are no friends to drag them out. Or a close friend/relative dies + losing a job. Basically, too much 'crumbles' at once. This can happen to anyone.
As a result, both slowly and somehow suddenly, the boundaries move, things get worse, and it becomes all the harder to get unstuck. The coping mechanism is too effective and the way out too difficult.
If they're lucky, something happens to snap them out of it. But even if this does happen, it could take years and cost them a lot.
This is a very common story. Shockingly common, in my experience.
I've worked with homeless people, had a fair share of 'junkie friends' and a few close family members who were alcoholics. In the vast majority of cases I'd summarize their story as "I became comfortable with alcohol/pills/weed/etc. in my teens and twenties, then too many things went wrong at the same time, and now here I am years later either addicted or avoiding whatever I was hooked on entirely."
Of course there are probably plenty of people where this doesn't happen. I hope you're one of them. I don't think things are black and white, and perhaps for some people drugs are a good coping mechanism. But I've seen too much go wrong after years of things going right to not feel a desire to warn (not judge) people at least! Addiction's a bitch.
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#327This is the phase where it really start.
Though I am younger but this is not age dependent.
This is an indication that something is missing. Some kind of 'emptyness'.
You will take a while to reach that conclusion. On reaching that conclusion of 'emptyness', I started something. I didnt know whether I was fixing it, breaking it or something entirely tangential. But when I was well into what I had started, I knew what do to. Perhaps something in disguise from this (http://zenpencils.com/comic/157-amy-poehler-great-people-do-...).
Best of luck, friend.
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#328I ran into this last when I was 26 and considered it my "quarter-life crisis". Unhappy with work, no relationships seemed to be budding, didn't feel I was making an impact of any sort -- I considered becoming a Tibetan Monk (I was mapping plane flights). I found my solution by doing the following: 1) Figure out what I wanted to look back at in the end of my life. What should I have accomplished? 2) Paid very close at…
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Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Spirituality I rediscovered being a member of a dojo. Combines some elements of spirituality / higher purpose together with some pretty awesome exercise endorphins. It's like church, but without the god thing.
> It's like church, but without the god thing. That's like saying it's like an omelette without eggs or soup without water.
You might not be aware of the fact that there ARE godless religions - for example buddism.
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Signing a voluntary contract is the antithesis of slavery. It may be boring and soul-sucking labour that you do not enjoy, but it is no more slavery than signing a contract with a customer is. Your time and effort are your own, and the reward is rightfully yours.
It's not a voluntary contract if you have to sign that contract to survive. At least not "voluntary" in a sense that is meaningful to most people living today.
As opposed to my "voluntary" contributions and obligations to the state? In that case, it's all about a magical "social contract" that I never signed, and inherited from birth. From birth, let that sink in for a little bit. That is an order of magnitude more slave-like than a voluntary contract that I enter into as an adult.
But when it comes to an actual contract, willingly signed, then "oh but you have to sign to survive". Well yes, except I don't. I can go live in the middle of nowhere and live off the land. You try doing that with the anything state-related, and then tell me how voluntary it is.