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Ask HN: What do you wish you had done/known in your 30s?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you wish you had done/known in your 30s?

#81

Post by kstenerud »

I wish I had known the truth about romantic relationships. Would have saved me a lot of trouble:

- Women are not all the same. Men are not all the same. There is no single approach. What works for your friend won't necessarily work for you, because you're different people and thus after different things.

- "pick up lines" and pick-up-artist techniques and all that kind of bullshit are just that: bullshit. At best you get a roll in the hay, and not a relationship that lasts (because you're lying).

- You really really REALLY need to be yourself. Any potential SO will discover who you really are as they get closer, and if you're putting on a front, you're attracting people to a person who doesn't exist, and won't like the person who really does exist. Look for people who are attracted to the kind of person you actually are.

- There is a certain amount of marketing involved in presenting yourself, but never go so far as to deceive.

- Don't try to change for people. You can't change who you are, and anyone who tries to change you is selfish. Don't waste your time with them.

- Accept people as they are. They're not going to change.

- The most important personality trait that MUST be compatible is dominance and submission. Two dominant people will fight all the time, have great sex probably, and a terrible relationship that's more off than on. Two submissive people will suffer in silence as their relationship gives no fulfillment or direction. You need to be compatible in who leads on what (and communicate that!).

- If you're looking to get noticed, find a way to stand out. Waiting for a potential SO to find you by pure chance is risking a life alone.

- If you find someone you like, at the very least greet them. The sooner you get the fear of rejection over with, the better.

- You'll have a bunch of failed relationships on the way to the successful one. These failed ones teach you about yourself and about what you need in a SO.

- Don't be in a hurry to get to the successful one. Slow and steady wins the race. Just make sure you STAY in the race!

- Communication is the single most important thing in a relationship. And trust. Without those, your relationship doesn't have a prayer.

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish you had done/known in your 30s?

#82

Post by Xeoncross »

dartdartdart wrote: post #76
scionthefly wrote: post #17

In your 30s, if you are waiting to have kids for various reasons, you really need to stop delaying. Your probability of successfully having kids goes down every year, and by your early 40s your options for medical help if you have infertility stop being available because even those interventions lose effectiveness. If you want kids, just have the kids. You're not going to care that you were being responsible and wait…

Waiting is not bad, most child abuse cases come from people who shouldn't have had kids in the first place. The worst case if you wait is that you'll have to adopt kids, which is arguably way more humane than introducing another hungry soul into the world.

It's not that we have too many mouths to feed, it's that we have too many selfish people in positions of leadership and authority who exploit the masses to line their own pockets.

Having 50% less people would reduce the overall hunger numbers, but not the ratio.

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish you had done/known in your 30s?

#83

Post by jka »

motohagiography wrote: post #59

Spend time before money on things you enjoy. Spend money before time on things you don't. Happiness is a choice. It's only the regret for the things we didn't do that is truly inconsolable. Good luck.

I think I spend time trying to reduce the amount of (time and/or money) that other people will have to spend on those same items in future. Thus I'm reluctant to spend money on them (I'd prefer to reduce their costs).

It's possible I'm self-deluding, but your comment is wise and I felt like chiming in.

(late-30s here)

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish you had done/known in your 30s?

#84

Post by prometheus76 »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #66
prometheus76 wrote: post #29

I joined the Orthodox Church in my 40s. I wish I would have known about it when I was younger, especially in my 30s, with my young family. The benefits that come from daily spiritual devotion both individually and a family, as well as the benefits that come from being part of a faithful community are impossible to list. Is it all easy and is it all benefits? Of course not. But centering my life around God through dai…

I could see the benefits of having a spiritual community around you, but, like, how do you convince yourself that supernatural things like gods exist? There's just very little tangible or logical there. Or would it be worth it to participate without really believing? Or you just somehow start believing? Frankly, for me doing that would probably be comparable to asking you to convert to Hinduism or something similar.…

The first struggle (and it took a couple of years, and is still in process) is learning that my entire worldview is rooted in the presuppositions of the Enlightenment and of modernism (and postmodernism, to a lesser degree). That is not how people saw the world for most of the history of humanity. And most of the experiences of religion and God that I had growing up were through that same empirical, Enlightenment worldview.

Through the work of Jonathan Pageau, I began to learn to see the world through a more traditional mindset. And I began to look at my own thinking and my previous presuppositions more carefully.

For example, you said "convince yourself that supernatural things exist". But you already believe all kinds of supernatural things exist. You believe in numbers. You believe in categories. You believe in grammar. You believe in logic. You believe in cities. You believe in political offices. Those are all above the natural world. In philosophy, that's called "metaphysics". It's "above" the physical world. You have a hierarchy of values (which is not physical) that determines how you see the world, how you act in the world, and how you categorize what your senses are feeding your brain. This is completely in line with our current scientific understanding of how our brains work. The work of John Vervaeke can also be very helpful.

Anyway, once I got over my empiricism and began to see that empiricism is completely blind to very large swathes of the human experience, it got much easier to say "well, since I have a value system intrinsically, and since a value system is completely necessary, perhaps I should put more effort into structuring it around the highest good."

Please keep in mind this process took a couple of years and will last for the rest of my life, but I hope you can see the stepping stones along the way.

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish you had done/known in your 30s?

#86

Post by prometheus76 »

webmobdev wrote: post #80
yuuu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to become an Orthodox Christian but feel like I would struggle with the whole "believing in God" thing. Should I still try it? Is there any way that I could "come to believe in God" in time?

If you have a hard time believing in God, then why limit yourself to just Christianity? Islam is ideal for exploring spiritualism through structure and discipline, Hinduism and Buddhism are great to explore spirituality from a psychological plane. This might offend some but while self-studying these religions, I found Christianity to be quite underwhelming, spiritually. In fact, if it wasn't for the writings of Desmo…

I agree that most forms of Christianity can be underwhelming, but Orthodoxy has a rich tradition that dates back over two thousand years of a mystical relationship with God, rooted in prayer. It's very different than any other form of Christianity that I have ever heard of.

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish you had done/known in your 30s?

#87

Post by splatzone »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #13

I wish I had realized that I was still young. I had some early startup-ish projects in the late-nineties/early-2k's, they crashed and burned with the dotcom crash, and I felt like I had lost any chance at making something cool or any kind of impact. I even felt like, at the age of 28, I was too old for dating and had missed all my opportunities. Things picked up for me in every respect — professional and personal — a…

This is encouraging. Thank you

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish you had done/known in your 30s?

#88

Post by willcipriano »

yuuu wrote: post #40
prometheus76 wrote: post #29

I joined the Orthodox Church in my 40s. I wish I would have known about it when I was younger, especially in my 30s, with my young family. The benefits that come from daily spiritual devotion both individually and a family, as well as the benefits that come from being part of a faithful community are impossible to list. Is it all easy and is it all benefits? Of course not. But centering my life around God through dai…

I really want to become an Orthodox Christian but feel like I would struggle with the whole "believing in God" thing. Should I still try it? Is there any way that I could "come to believe in God" in time?

Check out the Jefferson Bible. I'm a fan of Christ but consider him one of the great moral philosophers instead of the son of god. This reading of the surmon on the mount moves me even though I'm not religious: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-3nN9-C1yKU

Re: Ask HN: What do you wish you had done/known in your 30s?

#89

Post by acidbaseextract »

version_five wrote: post #3

I'm in my early 40s, I can't really think of anything, maybe because it's too close to realize what mistakes I might have made, and I don't really believe in that kind of retrospection generally. FWIW, if you are in a position where you could potentially start a family (and want to some day), consider doing it in your early 30s (or earlier), there are a lot of things that get tougher as you get older. I don't regret…

I don't regret putting it off until my 40s because it let me find a person I want to have a family with

Thank you for including this tidbit. I'm a man in my early 30s interested in having kids and recently discovered that I've poorly vetted my 5+ year SO's interest in having kids. Her "yeah, I'm hypothetically interested" has become "hard not interested".

The requirement to break up with her if I want kids is deeply painful, but the real source of my dread is the feeling that I won't then be able to find someone good in time. I'm very glad you found someone good to have a family with.

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