201–210 of 460 posts
Definitely not be a software engineer. No one told me how incredibly low the social status is. EDIT: I guess it was suspicious that 99% of my high school circle picked law or finance or business courses instead.
What are some higher status jobs where I can use my above average ability to work with computers and sheer tenacity to compensate for my woefully underdeveloped social skills?
Definitely not be a software engineer. No one told me how incredibly low the social status is. EDIT: I guess it was suspicious that 99% of my high school circle picked law or finance or business courses instead.
Most of us feel this, but an Elon Musk or Bill Gates may find this thought of an alternate life foreign, or at least horrifying.
They both could have "stopped" decades ago and have achieved more than 99.999999% of people who ever lived, but instead they are pushing against something different continuously.
> We seem to find meaning in what’s never happened. Our self-portraits use a lot of negative space.
That what we didn't do, the choices not made, are as essential to us being us as the choices we did. It's what "The Road Not Taken" is really about--as Joshua Rothman knows, but many people miss, including the guy who wrote that sticky-sweet self-help book.
I always consider my life is strange. Born in a 3rd world country in a broken home, families fight like in drama, many divorces and remarriage. I went where whoever my current father at that time went, moving from city to city, school to school. Then I find myself in the US, from odd jobs such as dry clean, laundry, sushi, deli, to church admin, to now working as SWE in one of big US tech company in NYC. Married a wi…
> I feel very insignificant every time I think about this and I realize, there are millions, and billions of people in this planet with stories as unique or more unique than me. And less unique. From my house, I can drive to my hometown, visit my family, and drive back in one day. I left the USA once, except for that I never spent a continuous week outside of the state where I was born. A lot of people online say tha…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's no more convincing than a missionary telling me that I'll go to hell if I don't repent. Simple solution: don't open the door for missionaries.
The idea is that everyone has unifying motivations, often in a higher power, where they derive their personal sense of morality from. Whether religion, family, tradition, survival, knowledge, the invisible hand of the market, a love of humanity or life for its own sake, sheer pleasure, whatever. The point is that regardless of the original intent of the Judeo-Christian text, it seems an admirable enough message that…
I always consider my life is strange. Born in a 3rd world country in a broken home, families fight like in drama, many divorces and remarriage. I went where whoever my current father at that time went, moving from city to city, school to school. Then I find myself in the US, from odd jobs such as dry clean, laundry, sushi, deli, to church admin, to now working as SWE in one of big US tech company in NYC. Married a wi…
> I feel very insignificant every time I think about this and I realize, there are millions, and billions of people in this planet with stories as unique or more unique than me. And less unique. From my house, I can drive to my hometown, visit my family, and drive back in one day. I left the USA once, except for that I never spent a continuous week outside of the state where I was born. A lot of people online say tha…
Probably every experience you have can make you a better person, it doesn't need to be travel.
I used to travel a ton for work and fun (there was a year where I hit 6 continents in a 10-month window) but spending the last 9 months in a one-bedroom apartment with my wife and our newborn is no less mind opening.
In fact, like everything, travel gets old. At some point you know that you "got it" - you can be dropped in a random point on the earth and make something out of it - and yet you may not know how to be at one place for a long time (I am learning that now.)
Also, it makes things less special. In a way I am jealous of people who are dreaming of going to Paris and then experience it for the first time.
You do you - save your money, invest in relationships around you, learn things on line, be a good child and parent. If that's "all" you have to show against someone who has been everywhere but doesn't have what you have, you're ahead.
This reminds me of “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, which has a quote Aziz Ansari used in his series “Master of None”: > "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor,…
"Life is funny. You start out with limitless potential, but time is always shaving away the possibilities. Every choice you make is the choice not to do a thousand other things. What's important, when all is said and done, is that you made a difference. Your choices, and everything undone, have to mean something. Otherwise, what is the point?"
We branch out, but we ultimately keep heading towards the very same outcome.
I used to think like this, but then I saw the Star Trek TNG episode Tapestry [1] where the premise is much like this question. Picard accepts Q's offer to relive his life, and it turns out that even the negative things in Picard's life help to shape the good qualities he has. I consider my life to be much the similar: even the negative things or the things I wish would change have helped shape qualities that I would…
The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best is now.