Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

791–800 of 890 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#791

Post by david38 »

You didn’t prioritize relationships. You chased money and now realize that money after a point is just a huge safety net. All you’ve done is check boxes. Go to Europe, check. Buy a toy, check.

When you die, nobody will give a shit about the toys.

Stop looking at what people brag about (money, travel, toys) and concentrate on relationships.

Look at it this way - unless you have some physical impairment, how is it that you’re so successful, yet not ONE person wants to be your partner? The answer of course is you haven’t made yourself interesting and attractive to ANYONE.

Either you don’t go out enough to find her, don’t engage enough, don’t take care of yourself enough, etc.

Make it your priority, work on it like a real problem, and see where it gets you.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#792

Post by bosie »

rowanajmarshall wrote: post #695
bosie wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I have been looking at Tern too (as well as Riese & Müller). Do you use it in the city as well? Which one do you have? How often do you really fold it up?

Alternatively, I've got a Brompton and I love the thing to bits. It folds in 30 seconds or less, small enough to put under a table at a coffee shop. They're incredibly well-built, and parts are easy to find. You can even get electric conversion kits.

I had a Brompton for about two years but did not like how it felt riding it to be honest. The rather weird six gear box thing and lack of disc brakes (especially in rain and winter) was also not that amazing

But yes, the folding mechanism is superb.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#793

Post by imartin2k »

Does this quote from Alan Watts help? “There’s nothing in your life that is supposed to happen. if you have no fixed view, you remain elastic.” My advice is to explore spiritual philosophies that focus on waking up from our constant thought world, and to realize that all this idea of where one is supposed to be in life at certain stages or ages, is just made-up mental load.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#794

Post by feoren »

david38 wrote: post #791

You didn’t prioritize relationships. You chased money and now realize that money after a point is just a huge safety net. All you’ve done is check boxes. Go to Europe, check. Buy a toy, check. When you die, nobody will give a shit about the toys. Stop looking at what people brag about (money, travel, toys) and concentrate on relationships. Look at it this way - unless you have some physical impairment, how is it that…

Does this "tough love" bullshit work on anyone? This whole comment is just neg after neg. "Yeah dude, you're right, you suck ass! Maybe you should try sucking less, bro!"

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#795

Post by gbjw »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #50

Man, this is the WORST place to ask for advice. A quick scan of the suggestions: * Have you tried medicating these feelings away? * Have you tried drugs? * Get on a plane! Travel and "find yourself!" * You have money, why aren't you happy? * How about you do everything again that brought you to this place... But in a different career field? About the only real suggestion here is to exercise, find a hobby, or start a…

Completely agree. I'd like to also recommend another book in the spirit of Ecclesiastes: Tolstoy's Confession. A Confession was published shortly after Anna Karenina and at a time when Tolstoy (in his fifties) was widely considered to be one of the world's preeminent writers. He had vast wealth, fame, and a large family. Nevertheless, he was so overwhelmed by the vanity of existence that he was convinced suicide was the bravest, most reasonable course of action.

Apart from pure cowardice, he writes that what stopped him from taking his life was a vague intuition that his own logical reasoning about life's purpose was sound but somehow incomplete. His eventual insight is as follows: life is not meaningless because logically it must be so. Logic cannot 'negate' life because it is itself a byproduct of life. If one reduces life to a form conducive to logic, one reduces it to a cold, dead simulacra that may indeed not be worth living. Instead, Tolstoy argues, the life that is worth living, and the one that so many of the peasants around him lived, was one guided by (potentially unconscious) faith. He concludes that this faith in the transcendent must be the source of life ("God is life") and that life is a logically impossibility save for this faith.

His post-Confession writings are all dedicated to his interpretation of the Christian scriptures. I'll also note that his advocacy and envagelism of Christian pacifism was a direct influence on Gandhi and MLK Jr.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confession [2] http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/confessions-tolst...

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#797

Post by sincarne »

tonguez wrote: post #666
user_235711 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second the "Man’s Search for Meaning" recommendation. That book is great for putting one's struggles into perspective, and emphasizing the importance of a "why."

This book gets recommended a lot probably because it relates to the Holocaust, but it's worth pointing out that "Man’s Search for Meaning" describes itself as "a story". It's not a philosophical book. If you want, you can learn about the development of human thought over time. There is an entire history of philosophy. "Siddhartha" or "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" might also relate to the meaning of life but th…

The book is a personal reflection, but it’s also a distillation of “logotherapy,” which is both a philosophy and a therapeutic technique. If the book resonates with you, then looking into a more formal application of logotherapy would be a logical next step.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#798

Post by math_denial »

feoren wrote: post #794
david38 wrote: post #791

You didn’t prioritize relationships. You chased money and now realize that money after a point is just a huge safety net. All you’ve done is check boxes. Go to Europe, check. Buy a toy, check. When you die, nobody will give a shit about the toys. Stop looking at what people brag about (money, travel, toys) and concentrate on relationships. Look at it this way - unless you have some physical impairment, how is it that…

Does this "tough love" bullshit work on anyone? This whole comment is just neg after neg. "Yeah dude, you're right, you suck ass! Maybe you should try sucking less, bro!"

I agree. Whenever someone has tried this approach with me the result has always been me shutting down and avoiding to confide in that person. I am already tough in myself, that's why I always feel like a failure, I don't need this kind of stupid anime protagonist motivational speech bullshit.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#799

Post by torbTurret »

alangibson wrote: post #522
thread_id wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that by 35 you can't get by on novelty anymore because you've seen some version of everything there is to see. This could not possibly be true. You have only just begun. The mere thimble full fo knowledge and experience that you have accumulated thus far is nothing compared to what lies ahead. But only you can make it happen. Make a decision. Take an action. The comments here are loaded with wonderfu…

> This could not possibly be true. The novelty you experience when doing something new must decrease over time. To say otherwise is to say the world is infinite, which it definitely is not. At some point the buzz one gets from the novelty of new experiences is not enough to make a satisfying life. That's when it's time to look for source of meaning for your life. It's different for everyone. For me and the OP it happ…

“Thanks coach”

The ego in this response and complete ignoring of the advice given to you is off putting.

And I’m quite younger than you ;)

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#800

Post by justsomehnguy »

inimino wrote: post #762
RickJWagner wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's a valid path, too. When I was just starting out (circa 1990) a good friend of mine had a pal that was making his living servicing punch card machines. They were completely unsupported by IBM at the time, this guy had been an IBM tech and saw the opening. He embraced the old tech, knowing there were people still using it and willing to pay for some form of support. So I don't disagree with that idea, it's…

SQL isn't quite comparable today to punchcards in 1990, is it?

Depends on who you would ask.

Anecdata: was asked by a client why the same query was running orders slower on our infrastructure (IaaS on Xeons) than on their test server (a regular desktop with i7). I check the load, IO, yada-yada and I don't see anything what could indicate the slowness. After a bit I check the db size and ... I'm pretty speechless, because it is 77MBs. 77 megabytes and the query runs for tens of seconds. I tell the client to give me the query. They are happily oblige and provide a two FullHD screens of SQL with like... 20? More? 'SELECT *' from the same tables on and on.

After speaking nicely with the client about the origins of this query and checking their dev environment, I learned:

1. this query was autogenerated by Lavarel

2. their dev environment is 100 times smaller than the prod

3. until I forced them to copy prod data to dev they didn't believe the problem was with the query

4. between two programmers and one sysadmin on the client side NOBODY was even close to reasons of slowness.

So... for some people SQL in 2022 is pretty equal to punchcards.

Post reply on HN