Trust no one, just because you work well with someone doesn’t mean they like you.
I'd like to suggest a more optimisic alternatve:-
Trust - but take care in who.
Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
51–60 of 312 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#52This is not my advice - I'm 26 - but was given to me at school by a now-retired teacher I greatly respect. It sounds quite wise, and I trust the source. I paraphrase: "Learn to classify people into three categories: givers, sharers, and takers. Surround yourself with givers. Sharers are also acceptable. Cut out the takers as quickly as you can." A verbatim follow-on quote: "Takers make a beeline for givers. The needy…
It's hard not to read "sharers are also acceptable" as either:
1) Be a sharer, but prefer givers as friends
OR
2) Be a taker.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#53Make friends. Keep friends. Making new friends get much harder when you are older.
Difficulty in making friends as one gets older isn’t actually a result of age, in my experience. I think as people get older they tend to be in fewer situations where friends are easily made. If you put an older person in, say, college, they’ll make friends just as easily as they would have when they were younger.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#54I'm not 'old', but I'm not young anymore either, though I still remember it. My biggest personal gripe is my brain slowly slipping. It's just not as fast as it used to be, and my memory not anywhere as good. I was always a person who could remember everything, even playback full conversations in my head. Now I barely remember what I had for dinner a couple days back.
This has affected my work as I used to just be able to sit and code for hours in Vim as I'd have all the function signatures memorized, but now I spend a lot more time in the docs and have to use a proper IDE. I now write more helpful comments, so I can remember why I did something. Also, I find myself having to take notes to come back to later. I wish it was a skill I'd picked up when I was younger, rather than having to learn now.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#55I'm not 'old', but I'm not young anymore either, though I still remember it. My biggest personal gripe is my brain slowly slipping. It's just not as fast as it used to be, and my memory not anywhere as good. I was always a person who could remember everything, even playback full conversations in my head. Now I barely remember what I had for dinner a couple days back. This has affected my work as I used to just be abl…
I’m experiencing the same thing with regard to memory. I’m not sure the cause. While I used to be able to recite full conversations, tell you the color of the trim of that car I was in one time nine months ago, and tell you the shape of the dust lying on the convenience store counter, etc. I can’t do that anymore. But I also think a lot more about a lot of other things that either didn’t concern me when I was younger or weren’t my responsibility.
Maybe now I can’t remember things because I’m not experiencing them as thoroughly because I’m always thinking about something else. Or maybe I just realize a lot of details don’t matter. Or maybe it’s just age and my brain doesn’t work as well. Or maybe it’s accumulated damage of twenty years of occasional consumption of alcohol.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#56When I was younger, I could skip most of the homework because I learned enough during class. The mandatory assignments were sometimes finished quickly just before I had to turn them in. I didn't get the necessary practice and discipline to do independent work unless I did it for fun. This had to be learned the hard way when I grew older.
Same. In my experience, the relatively smart people in school who worked hard had more successful lives than the even smarter kids who didn't.
How do you define success?
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#5761. Choose your life partner with care.
Three in the morning and a kid with 105 who has been throwing up for a day and you have to decide what to do. A crappy apartment but making a morgage would be a real stretch, no fun for years, and you need to work it out. A job you want but in a place far away from family and friends. These things and many more will be between you and them.
Finding somebody you like, and admire, and who you like to get sexy with, and who has something of the same idea about money as you do, and who wants many of the same things in life, is tough.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#58I am 47. This Buddhist quote captures the rapidity of life - "Days are long; Decades are short".
Be kind. Really try to be kind. As young person, I am sure you already can recollect a few instances you have been kind; increase the frequency and amplitude of it.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#59Don't listen to other people.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#60I actively avoid trying to let nostalgia creep in too often. I don’t spend much time reminiscing, listening to old music, rewatching things, looking at pictures, etc. This seems to not match what most of my cohort does, but I recognized a correlation between too much looking back and feeling somber.