Earlier quoted context omitted.
Highly recommend asking them for help with chores when they come knocking.
I was firewood cutting last time. It was only getting cut due to that being god’s will, apparently.
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Ask HN: How do I find my “purpose”?
231–239 of 239 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I find my “purpose”?
#232First world problems.
maybe you find a greater purpose, maybe you don't.
But a purpose can be just "breathe, eat, crap until you die." That's a purpose. This is the purpose of most people in the world. You have someone who didn't graduate from high school and not Einstein, they might work as a convenience store clerk for their entire life. Nothing wrong with that at all, but it's not like it is Norman Borlaug, whose Green Revolution fed billions of people and kept them from starving to death.
All this "find your purpose" stuff just puts a lot of unwarrented pressure on peole and if you can't find one, it is a negative. It won't give you higher happiness or well-being. It will just be a massive frustration and make your life miserable. I guess I'd be more of the mindfulness/live-in-the-moment kind of person.
I have no life purpose or meaning of life. I'm like everyone else, though. Mostly average days, some great days, some shit days. The gaussian distribution, right? I don't think that people who have a "purpose" in life live every day as a 12 hour orgasm. Everyone has mostly average days, some great, some bad.
As far as happiness goes, at least 50% of it is genetic. If you have shitty genetics and have unhappy genes, even if you are happy with the other 50%, you'll never be as happy or at peace as someone with happy genetics. Never. No higher purpose will make someone with unhappy genetics as happy as someone with happy genetics.
So my point would be to not worry about it. Do the best you can do. Plan where you can. Do what you can. Get your pleasures where you can. Before we are turned into dirt.
Maybe take 3 entire hours and listen to Thích Nhất Hạnh's Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Re: Ask HN: How do I find my “purpose”?
#233For this one person’s answer, watch it until the end:
Re: Ask HN: How do I find my “purpose”?
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Volunteer work is a good start, missionary work is even better. I couldn’t disagree more with regard to missionary work. Having someone tell me why their sky friend needs to be in my life is outright offensive. I get a fair few US 20-25 year olds trying this crap out at my home in Auckland, New Zealand.
On the other hand, beneficiaries of missionary work may be more interested in the actual tangible benefits they receive from missionary initiatives than they are in your imaginations about reality (which is what they are).
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Re: Ask HN: How do I find my “purpose”?
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Volunteer work is a good start, missionary work is even better. I couldn’t disagree more with regard to missionary work. Having someone tell me why their sky friend needs to be in my life is outright offensive. I get a fair few US 20-25 year olds trying this crap out at my home in Auckland, New Zealand.
On the other hand, beneficiaries of missionary work may be more interested in the actual tangible benefits they receive from missionary initiatives than they are in your imaginations about reality (which is what they are).
Missionaries also have "imaginations about reality" but they think that their imaginations are so much more important and meaningful than everyone else's. It's annoying. I don't care that they get value out of it. They get value out of something that's annoying and offensive to others; that's just selfish.
Re: Ask HN: How do I find my “purpose”?
#236I think the words "meaning" and "calling" are a bit strong. They all kind of imply the notion that there is one thing that will make you happy and that you have to find it. In reality, I think there are lots of different (company, position) that can make you happy. You also used the word "value", which I think is more on point. We all have a different set of values. If you do things that are in conflict with those va…
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Re: Ask HN: How do I find my “purpose”?
#237Most of the adult search for meaning cases i’ve met (including myself) comes down to disguising one of these underlying issues: 1. Depression and similar type of disorders. You seek for some “purpose” as a magic pill that will suddenly make your troubles go away. 2. Fear of taking responsibility for your own life and decisions. Sort of a passive infantile position when you subconsciously hope that Santa Claus will fi…
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Re: Ask HN: How do I find my “purpose”?
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't suggesting anything secular. Programs like Doctors Without Borders was more what I had in mind, but that particular example requires specialization and longer-term commitment. The point is to travel, see the real rest of the world, and to get something from the experience other than hangovers and gonorrhea. Door-to-door evangelism amounts to harassment and is not at all in scope.
Absolutely agree that this example is a good things. I’ve never heard Doctors Without Borders described as missionary work.
I've always used the term to describe anything with (an ideological) Mission. Looking it up, it appears to have strictly religious connotation. Oops...
Re: Ask HN: How do I find my “purpose”?
#239No offense, but how many years have you lived in this world? Have you seen it? Have you never cared yet? If not, what is your problem? How about you actually go and when you read a piece of news or see a problem out in this world, you CARE. For one second in your life, you actually dont just look at yourself and do everything for your own higher happiness and well being and you actually try to help somebody else or f…
You don't know anything about me or about why I am asking the question. Chill. You don't get a cookie.
pretty big assumption reader viewing on-line & private mode disabled.
Obviously, typical HN'ers purpose is finding/using a local minimum balanced set of paranthetical s-expression(s) that can be quoted with out being concerned over how things stack up.
aka (text.[0-9]) such that cons(text) is the appropriate set of macros for quote([0-9])
Aforementioned used approrpiately with Nyquist[1], does modify things to allow finding defun of reading between the line of the Beach Boys 'Good Vibrations' and Eurythmics 'Sweet Dreams' independent of sound off.
But, haven't found the HN ARC for that yet.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_(programming_language)