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Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)

nik.art

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Re: Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)

#111

Post by Scroll_Swe »

CobaltFire wrote: post #34

I read the article and fight with this from a different angle. My son was diagnosed with cancer at 3, then during chemo it became abundantly clear that he had far more severe autism than we originally thought. Could have been made worse by the chemo and trauma; no real way to know. Now my wife and I have had to give up all the dreams we had for when I retired from the military. A few good moves means that I actually…

These kind of stories do help. In that sick reality TV way. "At least I'm not this guy lol"

Re: Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)

#112

Post by Scroll_Swe »

stego-tech wrote: post #50

It’s the not-knowing that is the most haunting. I know I’ll never be able to take martial arts; I have made peace with that. I know I will never be an amazing athlete; I have made peace with that as well. Same with my body composition: I will never be rail-thin, I will never “fit” into most “fun” cars even when I finish my weight loss journey, I will never be the kind of guy who can fit into a Medium of anything clot…

Feels good growing up a skinny gamer.

I fit into M. And "fun cars"

(I dont drive)

(Im a virgin)

Re: Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)

#114

Post by trick-or-treat »

shermantanktop wrote: post #85
trick-or-treat wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking of happy memories sounds like a perfectly healthy activity to me, TBH

Sure. I won’t be 16 again and I look back fondly on that too. IMO it’s a problem if doing that stops you from making new happy memories. Life is for living.

At some point, for all of us, our happiest memories will be behind us.

It sounds like you're not there yet, but when you are, I hope you will be less judgmental of us old folks who simply care to reminisce.

Re: Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)

#115

Post by gbuk2013 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #110
stego-tech wrote: post #50

It’s the not-knowing that is the most haunting. I know I’ll never be able to take martial arts; I have made peace with that. I know I will never be an amazing athlete; I have made peace with that as well. Same with my body composition: I will never be rail-thin, I will never “fit” into most “fun” cars even when I finish my weight loss journey, I will never be the kind of guy who can fit into a Medium of anything clot…

Hm. I think Proust put it well: Desire makes everything blossom and flourish. Possession makes everything wither and fade. I’m a lucky son of a gun. Managed to slap the eject button on the treadmill early enough in life that I found myself in my early 30s with all the time in the world, and enough cash that it certainly felt like it. I went and lived so many dreams. Did a whole bunch of things I had already, in my de…

Sound like it’s time for yoga :) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=txNkzlJ0tc4

Re: Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)

#116

Post by crossroadsguy »

stego-tech wrote: post #50

It’s the not-knowing that is the most haunting. I know I’ll never be able to take martial arts; I have made peace with that. I know I will never be an amazing athlete; I have made peace with that as well. Same with my body composition: I will never be rail-thin, I will never “fit” into most “fun” cars even when I finish my weight loss journey, I will never be the kind of guy who can fit into a Medium of anything clot…

I can connect with it as someone who has been trimming down his dreams, one dream at a time, one bit at a time, for so long that it hurts now and feels suffocating at times. The worst are the still lingering around, flickering once in a while.

Re: Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)

#117

Post by mettamage »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #48
gmuslera wrote: post #11

We have to distinguish "our" dreams from, let's say, cultural ones. A lot of what we want, what we perceive as living a full life, having fun and so on comes from culture (and increasingly in the last decades/centuries, with mass media). Besides that, we can't achieve everything, we could not be everywhere when something interesting happens there, at the very least because a lot of those things happened in the past,…

> A lot of what we want, what we perceive as living a full life, having fun and so on comes from culture (and increasingly in the last decades/centuries, with mass media). This is very important. I didn't figure it out until late in life, and wasted a lot of effort and money that could have been better spent. When you want something ask yourself "why", then ask yourself "why" about your answer as well. Keep doing tha…

The 5 why’s and all that

Re: Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)

#119

Post by Ngraph »

Japanese here. Took me years to stop looking up and wishing for what I'll never have, and just accept this is the body I've got and live with it fully.

I don't even follow baseball anymore, but every now and then Ohtani (the Dodgers guy) is in the news and the kid who dreamed of it is right back there for a minute. Not painful, just bittersweet.

Re: Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)

#120

Post by mettamage »

senorqa wrote: post #55

These kind of articles remind me of an article in Polish I read few years ago: "Millennials are a generation that has fallen into the trap of constant self-development" It helped me to deal with my own unrealistic and unrealized dreams/aspirations/etc. Here's a version in English done by Google Translate https://archive.org/details/millennials-are-a-generation-tha... The original article in Polish: https://weekend.ga…

> Millennials are a generation that has fallen into the trap of constant self-development

Self-development brought me so much though. I am happily married because of it, and probably wouldn’t have been romantically seen without it.

I know this because I have a friend who is a lot like me and he didn’t develop himself enough and he stays single. Because of his strides in self-development from back in the day. He does get a lot of dates, but every time they say after one or two dates that they should just be friends.

It’s harsh to say he didn’t develop himself enough. I also find it true. He didn’t find it worth it to overcome his fears and wants to stay in his comfort zone. He has fun playing sports, board games with friends and video games. But I also know that he yearns for a romantic connection. And that’s the issue.

I do agree that for people like me and my friend the self-development route is really demanding. I simply hate being single more. So I dedicated my life to it, and at some point I figured it out and realized it was more like a 5 year journey of which 4 years were back to back and then 1 year spread out over like 12 years (so a good month per year, I didn’t need to do more).

Now I’m on a similar journey for financial independence but I’m noticing that I don’t have a similar drive. Constantly forcing myself to do self-development is now perhaps too much to ask.

So I guess it also depends on once drive.

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