Ask HN: How do you accept your place in the world?

You can only be truly great at a single thing. All the little things that you enjoy spending time doing are taking away from time spent improving at any of the other things.

I love listening to great complicated music, but I don't know how to play an instrument, and I've come to find peace in that I will never achieve any kind of musical instrument mastery. Its within my realm of possibility if I so choose, but I refuse to give up the things that would have to make way for it. It's my choice, and I'm conscious of that, so I can live with it.

I've recently come to realise that I have had to cut more things than expected out of my life. And it's fine, because the things that are left are the top priorities - I get to spend more time at X, which I love, at the cost of Y, which I only like, or love slightly less. Distillation of self.

Can't do everything, that's why there are other people.

Stop thinking about others and start thinking about what you can do to be better then you were yesterday, then let your focus consume you, such that the accomplishment of others no longer occupies space in your brain because you are too focused on yourself.

>The more content I discover, the tinier and irrelevant I feel.

This is called knowledge. This is a good thing, keep going.

>I go down a rabbit hole of brilliant relevations of one person after the other, and I come out tired and discouraged.

Compare yourself only with the person you were yesterday

Comparing yourself to others is completely fruitless, will generate desires, and will cause suffering for yourself.

When you are say 30 you might see someone driving the new Chevy Corvette C8. Such a beautiful car being driven by an old dude who is barely touching the accelerator. You desire to have a corvette as well, maybe something better? But you dont have it and cant afford it and you suffer. But did that old dude have a corvette at 30? Nope, he was looking at corvette c3 back in the day with astronauts driving it and had the same desires and suffering.

Instead you should plan, 'how do I get to the point where i can buy that Corvette C9 in some time. I'll have it decades earlier than that guy and I wont be blind and can use the throttle to its max.'

What does that plan look like? Maybe it means you need to save more or go learn Rust. I'd bet Rust will survive, you could go do that.

You have to figure out what the end point looks like; then reverse engineer. Go look at job postings, what are they asking for? Go get those things in the next year. Then you apply for the job. In the interview you explain this very process that brought you to them. You get hired and you are now on the way to getting that corvette. When preorders of the C9 open, you show up and have the cash.

Here's the clincher. Before you even get there, you'll find the interest in the C9 wanes. You saw a dude driving the F150 lightning and now you want that. You realize that these desires are the real problem. You learn to break the desires.

A sense of awe and appreciation, a belief these things were made to be discovered by me and others like me, and realizing later in life that what people who really become excellent at something find they lack are other people with enough understanding at all to appreciate what they've done.

Being good enough to truly appreciate what greatness really means is usually sufficient. If you would like to understand how that all feels, look up the BWV 1006 prelude.

My favorite line from the movie Lost in Translation:

"The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you."

There's nothing wrong with admiring and respecting and feeling inspired by what others have accomplished, but I've found it has very little to do with my own personal feeling of self-worth.