Can anyone summarize that long text?
Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband
151–160 of 235 posts
Re: Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess my juxtaposed argument is that to me the notion of any sort of legacy is just not good. I'd rather have my daughter be remembered for being a good dad. Than some guy who made something neat. A "legacy" is an ideology. To me when you're dead, you're dead, that's it.
I think I feel similar to AndrewKemendo. "Legacy" is a wrong word, maybe "positive impact" is better. Being a good dad is cool and nice, but if I had to chose one, I'd rather die knowing that I helped lift a million people out of poverty. Or even a thousand. I get strong feelings of love and need for relationships, but I sometimes feel they're more of an hormonal failure mode than anything fundamental. I want to love…
>but the "common wisdom" is that to be happy, you should focus on yourself and your relationships as opposed to the world around you
Apart from the genetics thing, part of it is that most people are not going to be involved in impactful work. They do bullshit jobs and fret over it way too much than they really should. In turn, they lose out on quality family time and take people close to them for granted. So some of the comments about 'deathbed regrets' is actually valid for such people. If they were really fretting about solving cancer, aids or any thing that would change millions of lives, the apparent wisdom would immediately make less sense.
Re: Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Investing money, creating new products, and all the other things we do are wonderful games and can be a lot of fun, but it's important to remember that it's all just a game. I feel like this sentiment is very common, but is implicitly stating that all of the other things, family, friends, personal health etc... are not games - when I don't see why that would be the case. Nothing distinguishes those things for me. Cre…
What are the things that—on your deathbed—you expect to regret? Will it be that you didn't spend as much time as you could've with your parents before they died? How about with your siblings? Maybe it was all of the times that you didn't make it to your kids' soccer games, piano recitals, school plays, or graduations? Or will it be that you didn't spend nearly enough nights at the office fixing your social media star…
Everyone says: "No one on their deathbed regrets not spending more time at the office". Perhaps that's true. But I bet there are people who, on their deathbed, regret not having been more able to provide their families with financial security, or not doing a better job on something important they worked on.
You might die tomorrow. But it's more likely that you won't, and you should plan accordingly.
(I am not arguing that today's culture of overwork isn't harmful. I think it is, and I think most people in tech startups should probably be spending less time working. And if that what-if-I-died-tomorrow question is what it takes to get someone to think about what they really want to be doing with their lives, that's great. But it's still something of a cheat, and if you draw the conclusion from it that you should be optimizing your life for minimal regret on premature death then I think you're probably making a mistake.)
Re: Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are the things that—on your deathbed—you expect to regret? Will it be that you didn't spend as much time as you could've with your parents before they died? How about with your siblings? Maybe it was all of the times that you didn't make it to your kids' soccer games, piano recitals, school plays, or graduations? Or will it be that you didn't spend nearly enough nights at the office fixing your social media star…
> What are the things that—on your deathbed—you expect to regret? What does it matter? Let's say the deathbed will last seven days. That's nothing compared to the rest of your life (let's say ~70 years). Why would you guide your life according to a projection of what you will feel in a mere seven days of your whole life? Why not ask more immediate questions: is anything I do right now, day to day , that I could do di…
I don't think it is about feeling satisfied on the deathbed. We imagine the deathbed as the place where we finally understand what is important and what isn't, and then try to apply this knowledge to the limited timespan in between. It is a way to take a step back and evaluate our lives.
Re: Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't explain it now that I have a child and family and have lost people very close to me. As I posted to someone below you, I am married and have three kids. I have also lost a lot of my friends - I am an Iraq war veteran and was in the Air Force from 2003 until last Feb. All of that has led me to my conclusion because I see what is left after these people have gone away - and largely it's...nothing. Once their fr…
What do you see in a legacy? The opportunity to do good for humanity, or the opportunity to be remembered? For there will come a day when even Jesus, Shakespeare, and Newton will be forgotten. Eventually, we will all be forgotten.
I feel 'leaving a legacy' would be dying knowing that your work left some tangible mark on humanity that you shared the planet with. It doesn't have to change people lives twenty years from now. Just the fact that my creations were enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of people in an year(or five years) is the satisfaction most people would happily die with and would include in 'legacy'. Of course there is a different spectrum of 'legacy' for different profession and depending on your work the value of 'legacy' would fall somewhere in the spectrum specific to your work. So comparing 'legacy' across professions might not even make sense as long as you are helping thousands(or some higher number) of people. And as others have said, I believe 'impact' is a better word for hacker/scientific community than legacy.
Re: Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Today, 21,000 children died from causes that are preventable. I don't see any posts on HN about that. Guinae after ebola: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9544278 Why murder rates matter to humanitarians: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9519472 Rohingya screen light portraits (Internet huts used by refugees) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9194870 Socio economic impact Of Ebola: https://news.ycombinat…
Guinae after ebola: 1 point Why murder rates matter to humanitarians: 1 point Rohingya screen light portraits (Internet huts used by refugees): 1 point Etc. Thanks for the validation.
(I upvoted you, I think your downvotes for this comment are unfair.)
I tend to agree. HN seems to be uninterested in those stories. Submitting them on different days or at different times doesn't make much difference.
The Screen Huts was, I thought, pretty interesting and touches on things that do get discussed on HN like Facebooks weird Internet offering or the Google blimps.
I know it's only a slideshow, but still, it gives some powerful stories that explain the severe need for good, cheap, communications in developing nations.
http://www.trust.org/slideshow/?id=356b4ab3-7e12-440f-9781-b...
Re: Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband
#157The way I see it, life is basically a long-winded effort to get loved. To get loved by ourselves, by others and by our gods. Everything everybody does in life boils down to this. From Hitler to Mother Teresa. From Osama bin Laden to the Dalai Lama. You want to do things that matter, to change the world? Why? How do you know they matter? Because those to whom they matter love you for it. You love yourself for it, others love you for it and by your own spiritual presumptions, your gods love you for it, or they will some day. And so, it is not the big things or the small things that matter. It is not saving the lives of millions or attending your kid's play that matters. The only thing that matters is you finding love, however you find it. If there is no love feedback for you, it doesn't matter. That's why nobody is trying to save the starving children in the planets of the Andromeda galaxy, coz there's no feedback for it. And if you think that's a poor analogy, well, there was nobody coming to the slums of Africa to do the things people these days come to do.
Re: Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband
#158> Judaism calls for a period of intense mourning known as shiva that lasts seven days after a loved one is buried. It's strange to me to prescribe how long people should mourn. Some people are appalled when someone seems to get over someone quickly after they've died. But if they are truly not sad about it any more, I say good for them. What does it help the deceased for the living to be sad over them?
Often people who have lost close ones feel overwhelmed by all sorts of emotions, including guilt - whether over mourning too much or mourning too little. "Is it ok that I'm still grieving? Should I still be expressing this grief to people I meet? Do people expect that I should be moving on now? Am I moving on too soon?" By declaring the length of the mourning period, religion does there one of the things it does best…
So religion tries to reduce guilt. Well I guess I learn something totally new every day...
Admittedly I'm not familiar with Judaism except through the limited view of the Bible and comparing it to Christianity.
Re: Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Often people who have lost close ones feel overwhelmed by all sorts of emotions, including guilt - whether over mourning too much or mourning too little. "Is it ok that I'm still grieving? Should I still be expressing this grief to people I meet? Do people expect that I should be moving on now? Am I moving on too soon?" By declaring the length of the mourning period, religion does there one of the things it does best…
So religion tries to reduce guilt. Well I guess I learn something totally new every day... Admittedly I'm not familiar with Judaism except through the limited view of the Bible and comparing it to Christianity.
Religion is a pretty complex thing. I totally agree that christianity tends to be, as Alan Watts described it, "institutionalised guilt"... but that's just one dimension of it. Religion is a huge topic. It's many things to many people. It's never helpful to intelligent conversation to reduce a big thing to a single axis.
Re: Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
To first approximation, there are almost no people who would have a "grand legacy" that could extend centuries. How many do you know from 1850? Eventually, no one will remember you, and that is true even if you are the most successful person on earth. The urge to have a legacy is a manifestation of the fear of death, and is primarily an exercise of ego. It does not have to overtake one's life.
It's not about being remembered, it's about your life having positive impact beyond those you can personally see.
Pardon me to interrupt strive for greatness, but the world I live in is massively interconnected, and it's becoming more and more every day.
Even if you try hard to avoid it, you have some impact, mixed with impact of other people. Yes, it might be local, and in some really unfortunate situations it might really eventually +-die, but let's focus a bit on average joe.
The world I see does indeed need to improve a bit, on all possible levels. If you strive to improve mankind as a whole, or at least big parts of it, please go ahead and do your best. Just don't neglect that personal, "local" aspect as so many do these days (ie crappy parents raising even crappier kids). This world also needs happy, balanced and positive people, not only depressed, exhausted overachievers (or overaimers) I see so often around me.
I tend to focus locally (friends, family, coworkers), and let the effects seep wider if possible, on their own. One example - 2 weekends ago, I took my girlfriend to Mont Blanc with guide, on skis, and on top, after gruelling march on skis, I surprised her proposed marriage. The reactions from people around, but also total internet strangers were overwhelming, quite a few wrote that in these (for them) depressing days, seeing this gave them positive energy and hope (for life, relationships, people around etc.).
Did I change the world with it? Of course not, I am not the first nor the last guy that did it. Does this have some, maybe minor but positive impact on other people? Definitely yes. Enough drops in the pond can also have an effect.