What If You Could Do It All Over? • Hacker News Board

Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?

#301

Post by dm319 » Sun, Dec 27, 2020, 9:50 AM UTC

teekert wrote: post #284

acwan93 wrote: post #8

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,…

What I don't like about this quote is that it pretends you just have to choose between all these attractive and worthwhile goals and that the choosing is the difficult part. In reality though you may opt for a career, leave the family but fail. Or you may put your career on a lower pitch only to have your wife and you decide it won't really work out. In reality, it's more like you start to climb for a fat purple fig…

Yes I agree, but maybe the quote means it in the sense that these were potential outcomes, which became impossible at some point. I agree it is arrogant to assume all these futures are within their grasp.

Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?

#302

Post by jjklmn » Sun, Dec 27, 2020, 10:26 AM UTC

Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken revolves around the fact that both pathways inevitably lead to the same end though:

>" Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,"

>" I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

Ironically, a close friend of Robert Frost joined the army and died in WW1, as a result of Frost's poem, believing he had to choose another path as well.

[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken]

Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?

#303

Post by _leo » Sun, Dec 27, 2020, 10:29 AM UTC

I used to wonder about the different life paths I could have taken, or could take in the future, and it would make me very anxious. Anxious that I would "waste" my life, that I wouldn't seize the opportunity to make the absolute best of it, that I would fail the only thing that mattered in my existence.

I changed my perspective. In a way I now compare life to what it would have been to never have been born, and it's wonderful. I feel privileged and gifted to have been "given" (metaphorically for me, but it's up to one's beliefs) the chance to live, to experience the truly insane thing that it is to be a human being! Sure, maybe I could've had more, but in a way it's like being upset because you sold your startup for 1 billion instead of 2 billion...

Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?

#304

Post by XorNot » Sun, Dec 27, 2020, 10:30 AM UTC

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #208

acwan93 wrote: post #8

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,…

I am not sure why, but the quote triggered a memory of 8bit theater in my head: "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 po…

Quotes like this have gotten a lot less comforting as I've aged. It all ends in darkness and black holes, and in the end not even those.

The best I've got these days is that I suspect none of it means anything. But I hope I'm wrong.

Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?

#305

Post by XorNot » Sun, Dec 27, 2020, 10:32 AM UTC

yason wrote: post #294

If you really could go back and choose differently the first thing that would happen is you would eventually become lazy. You wouldn't have to think too deeply or listen to your guts in making your choices because you could effectively just undo and retry. Your life would basically revert to depth-first search instead of carving out your own, unique path in life. This would also mean it would be much, much easier to…

Pontifications on the idea that life is meaningless without death are a bit rich coming from members of a species which is still mortal.

Get back to me when it's choice not an inevitability and I bet we find much different answers.

Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?

#306

Post by jjklmn » Sun, Dec 27, 2020, 10:33 AM UTC

dorchadas wrote: post #144

acwan93 wrote: post #8

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,…

As someone who feels like I've wasted most of my 20s since graduating university (turning 29 in 2021) with a job(s) I don't see any future in, man this hits hard. My lack of risk taking, and an unfortunately timed death in the family in 2016, really are me sitting there watching these figs dry up. Damn.

Similar situation here. If you don't mind me asking, what did you study and what's your current job?

Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?

#307

Post by mvellandi » Sun, Dec 27, 2020, 10:43 AM UTC

I would have punched a kid at 16 and kissed Cassandra at 19. That's about it -- many years later, I'm happy with a family today :)

Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?

#308

Post by 0df8dkdf » Sun, Dec 27, 2020, 10:51 AM UTC

teekert wrote: post #284

acwan93 wrote: post #8

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,…

What I don't like about this quote is that it pretends you just have to choose between all these attractive and worthwhile goals and that the choosing is the difficult part. In reality though you may opt for a career, leave the family but fail. Or you may put your career on a lower pitch only to have your wife and you decide it won't really work out. In reality, it's more like you start to climb for a fat purple fig…

>What I don't like about this quote is that it pretends you just have to choose between all these attractive and worthwhile goals and that the choosing is the difficult part.

For sure, however it is better to have tried and experienced than not have. I have tried and failed at picking many of those figs, and it is worth it, the good and bad. Don't stand there, give yourself a time, and then chose freely.

Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?

#309

Post by ck425 » Sun, Dec 27, 2020, 10:51 AM UTC

fy20 wrote: post #271

Last year I had my first kid, and it has really got me thinking about a lot of things in life including whether I want to continue my career in software developer. Sure the pay is good, it's a pretty cushy job (compared to something like a labourer), and I feel I'm pretty good at what I do... but I wish for something more fulfilling. I just feel that in my career path, all my jobs have been about making other people…

I'm in the same position. No advice yet. I've been trying to figure out why I want a meaningful career/job so much (rather than being satisfied with cushy) but no insights yet.

Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?

#310

Post by beardyw » Sun, Dec 27, 2020, 10:56 AM UTC

"What If You Could Do It All Over?" - well without the benefit of hindsight it would be exactly the same of course. Free will exists up to the time we make a choice, but that is just the weighing up of the situation. The choice itself is inevitable.

When we release a dice from our hand it could land on any face, but the face it lands on isn't truly random, it is just too hard to establish the factors which caused it. So with our choices.

A sure belief that my choices right or wrong were all I could do at the time has saved me from endless doubt and speculation. The only choices I can make are today.

I saw the film About Time recently which is based on this whole idea of going back and doing it differently - with hindsight. Whilst it was quite enjoyable, the inconsistencies caused by the idea just shouted out throughout. Life isn't and can't be like that.