It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.
But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it.
Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.
Seneca lived in different times. By the time you get "proper education" and then secure yourself financially you are quite old in today's world. So better enjoy the process treating it as the thing rather than the means.
Longer lifespan helps but not that much. Biologically we just tend to peak pretty early.
One thing I may disagree with PG is that if you enjoyed doing something while doing it, then I think the time wasn't wasted, even if later in life you think you may have spent that time better. Otherwise logical conclusion is that you should live with a mind of a very old man.
Seneca didn't have a "career" (as a senator) until he was nearly forty. Emperor Nero also ordered him to kill himself (around age 68) and Seneca complied. If anything, he had less time than the average person does today.
Maybe that is the point? We are all brainwashed to think we need to secure ourselves financially. Most of us (on HN at least) could probably do barely any work now, and not die. But you'd have to sacrifice a lot of stuff we think we need. Me included, it's a hard trap to escape when everyone is in it.
There's this big "Aha" moment I had while reading a book this vacation; I realised that I wanted to be financially secure since it was the only means available in today's society to be "set" - secure.
If I was to live in a small community where I'd know my neighbours, everyone did the things most valuable to the community - farm, smith, care, socialise, guard - and I knew everyone had each other's back, this would give the same feeling.
Alas, we live in a disconnected society, not even close to having local ties, so we feel we have to earn a ton of money in order to survive by buying our security.
Yeah but those small communities also had rich and poor. You miss one season of rain, and a significant number are now indebted or lose their livelihood.
It does, but how much of this is objectively the parent deciding?
And how much of it is FUD society.
I’m yet to meet the parent whose run the numbers and can tell me what is more likely that their one drink before driving will kill their kids or letting them play out.
So we rely on messages - and the media provides them. Tells us to be scared. The thing to be scared of is the new thing that’s interesting. In the early 2010s it was terrorism - but I haven’t heard that word for a while. Next it will be something else.
So I keep two thought processes going, one is protect kids of course, but the other is “am I being bullshitted”. What is the trade off by wrapping them up in a bubble.
Yes. I remember a "bullshit" task once: An old version of the FOCUS database query & programming language: It limited the length of a row in the results, and I needed a lot of data in a query. I split it into multiple queries and automated daily outputs. I was working in an ancient VMS system, so I had to write a programs to join them. I'd never used C for any practical purpose, but I managed to write a basic program to join the two queries on a key and append the matching lines, and then automated the whole thing into a SFTP to and ETL system for integration with another system.
It was absolutely a BS task that shouldn't have been necessary if we'd even bothered to install a 15-year old upgrade. But I had a lot of fun figuring it out.
A long-lived Roman would live to their 70s just like today. Fewer of them made it that far due to war disease.
Early Rome had a celebration called a Jubilee. It was held when the last living person from the previous Jubilee died, typically about a century apart.
You can get that "proper education" and be pretty secure financially by your late twenties. Yes, in theory our biological peak is somewhere between 27-30 or so, but it's not like everybody "made it" by thirteen in Seneca's time. You aren't even finished growing until your early twenties.
Roman coming of age rituals varied with time and social status. Still, most Roman males came 'of age' at ~25, with females considerably younger, sometimes as young as 14: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_of_age#Ancient_Rome
Strangely, Seneca's wife, Pompeia Paulina, was ~26 years older than Seneca. I'm not super sure I have the sources right on this (Seneca the Younger vs. Seneca the Elder), but from what I could find it seems legitimate.
As is typical with humans, it seems each person comes of age at their own pace, society be damned.
Incredible. I grew up in Italy, studied Latin, and never heard of TWO Senecas. The most famous one is the Younger Seneca. The Elder was simply his father.
From wikipedia:
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (54 BC – c. 39 AD), known as Seneca the Elder.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65),[1] also known as Seneca the Younger, is the one that married to Pompeia Paulina.
Both born in today's Spain (Hispania, then a Roman province), but both educated in Rome.
From the Wikipedia's page on Seneca the Younger [0]:
In AD 65, Seneca was caught up in the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy, a plot to kill Nero. Although it is unlikely that Seneca was part of the conspiracy, Nero ordered him to kill himself. Seneca followed tradition by severing several veins in order to bleed to death, and his wife Pompeia Paulina attempted to share his fate.
Also interesting about Seneca the Younger [1]:
His life took a sharp turn in 41 A.D. once Claudius became the emperor as he exiled Seneca to the island of Corsica on the premises of supposed adultery with Julia Livilla, the emperor’s niece and Caligula’s sister. During his exile, he wrote a letter to his mother consoling her during his exile. Eight years later, in another twist, Agrippina, mother of future emperor Nero and wife of Claudius secured permission for Seneca to return and for him to become her son’s tutor and adviser. Nero later became one of the most notorious and tyrannical emperors in the history of the Roman Empire raising even more questions about Seneca’s character. Not surprisingly, Seneca’s wealth came largely while in service to Nero.
This is very wrong. Seneca did most of his writing as an old man. I believe he was in his 50s. You can certainly secure yourself earlier in today’s world.
Furthermore, a tiny fraction of Romans were able to achieve wealth enough to retire. Meanwhile, in today’s world, virtually anyone can do it.
(Before anyone pipes up to argue with that last point, I used to work in restaurant kitchens. All the Mayan and southern Mexican dudes working for minimum wage were on track to retire in the next 10 years. They lived extremely cheaply and bought land where they could afford.)
It totally ignores that we have constructive limits, i.e. we seem designed to live parts of the day on auto mode (which here equals to waste, but who knows, we don't control the background, and stuff happens even when sleeping).
Its why some people try to optimize economy of daily constructive decisions by removing what seems to waste it (like choosing what to wear or not playing games). This is way way more prominent today than 2k years ago since in single day you are exposed to more information then for entire life back then.
Lets get serious: Seneca, Buddha, Jesus, whoever, are irrelevant. Context changed dramatically.
Living life on auto pilot for certain points and moments actually is not the default way of existence, it's just the one many of us are most used to. I would highly recommend considering some mindfulness exercises or meditation. You'll begin to appreciate how much of the day you can live fully and attentively.
I highly disagree. Living life on auto pilot seem to be default. Its all over our biology on every level because 'mindfulness' takes a lot of scarce energy.
Not sure why you think this is a new problem. If you read more of Seneca, Buddhism, or Jesus' thought, you'll see this is part of the reason they talk about awareness, giving up your possessions, not running around doing useless tasks. They had a lot more insight into human nature than you appear to realize.
Are humans really designed to live life in auto-mode, of is that a byproduct of living in a modern society? Philosophers of the past may not have been exposed to the same amounts of information we take for granted daily, but biologically there's very little difference between them and us.
I can identify with the Seneca quote, mainly for it's perspective that time is a resource to be spent, and potentially invested. Seems truer today than ever.
What do you mean 'biologically'? Genome? Epigenome? Wings?
I bet some of those differ a lot (hint: not wings:)
We don't exist in vacuum: humans live among and with and as hosts for other creatures, and there is also environment that literally plays most important role.
> I can identify with the Seneca quote, mainly for it's perspective that time is a resource to be spent, and potentially invested.
Yeah, everything can be awesome in theory with little word or number massage. In real life, its usually not.
“All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls” — 1 Peter 1:24
“Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.
So is all conditioned existence to be seen.” —Diamond Sutra
Do you really think that we have accomplished more as a society and technologically or are exposed to more everyday than the Romans 2 thousands years ago?
Living the way we live is a modern invention, it has no more than 150 years, and it's already collapsing
Meanwhile Romans built a city where a million and
a half people lived and acqueducts to bring running clean water to all of them
They built roads to go to every part of the empire and bring back to Rome thousands of tons of construction materials, mainly marble
That they than used to build giant buildings that only many centuries later have been copied successfully
They built ships to go to Africa and bring back to Rome elephants, tigers, lions, giraffes, rhinoceros, ippos and many other wild animals, alive!
Imagine going in the streets of a modern city and meet an elephant, an animal that nowadays people rarely see in real life and think again about experiencing more than people in the past
They did it for 450 years and did it so well that there are no elephants or lions in northern Africa anymore
They were probably the best engineers and sokdiers in history, the Colosseum was built in mere 8 years
But
Their way of life was "otium et negotium" even if you don't know what they mean, neg-otium is clearly the negation of the world otium
They were the foundation of Romans success, they worked half a day (negotium) and spent the rest of the day in idleness (otium)
It was obviously different from today idea of "doing nothing at all" it meant more something like if you are free from the obligations of life, you can engage in intellectual activities
They spent a lot of time not doing any kind of work or duty related stuff and yet achieved so much
Only many centuries later the work became something organized that must be carried on during certain hours (shifts) in certain places for a certain amount of money
So basically in ancient history most of the times people never really worked continuosly on the same thing and valued a lot their free time as a way to improve themselves, if their condition allowed it
We must be very careful when we think that we have more time or have seen more things or are more advanced than ancient civilization
Seneca was very modern, he discovered something universal about human struggle between certainty of death and the mundane uneventful life that most of us live and that's why his ideas survived
He certainly wasn't stupid and certainly the average human of today is not more intelligent than Seneca just because they read more news on social networks...
Auto pilot is not really what I would describe life in ancient times
That's a modern idea probably best depicted by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, that was in fact shot in 1925 when the effects of the mass industrialization were becoming clear
Trivia: the tower of Babel in metropolis is modelled around this painting by Pieter Bruegel
where the tower of Babel is painted as recursive Colosseums, one inside the other, to express the idea that the Romans tried to reach god and were punished for their hubris (there is more to that, the Colosseum was also a place that symbolised persecution for Christians)
> We must be very careful when we think that we have more time or have seen more things or are more advanced than ancient civilization
We have definitely seen more things. I think that is beyond questioning.
Being more advanced is questionable, especially because that term means something different for any human.
But the point is that wisdom from that time can not IMO be translated verbatim to current time - you can peak pieces of it but not rely on it as truth 100%. Both life expectations and habits and priorities are totally different now that makes any wisdom arised from such system distant and foggy.
> We have definitely seen more things. I think that is beyond questioning.
The average human has seen more of contemporary things but will never see what we lost, on average I will say the quantity is the same, they are simply different things
> wisdom from that time can not IMO be translated verbatim to current time
Wisdom of that time could not be translated verbatim not even when they were fresh ideas
That kind of wisdom was acknowledged only among a marginal fraction of the population that had the instruments to understand it and argue about it
Let alone applying it, you had to be someone in complete control of their lives, a thing that was extremely rare
We are talking about less than 1% of the population, something around one every ten thousands
But probably even less that that
It has more chances of being popular today than at the time it was formulated
All of Stoic Philosophy, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, etc. are pure gold.
I have friends who are obsessed with watching the news. I point out that for every 1000 hours they spend watching the news, that is 1000 hours not building something great, or time with friends and family, etc.
Great read indeed - it's quite impressive to read these books from centuries ago and realize that people didn't change at all - we still have the same questions and problems to deal with.
I've got this feeling while reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius or Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - I highly recommend both.
Routines speed up your life. Time will blow by quicker if you are covered in routines. What is worse, your days will become blurred - each day - too similar to the next - for you brain to hold on to distinct memories. Example: if you drive to work the same way each day - you will often not even remember the drive by 10am. That hour will be gone forever. However, if you were to take BART instead for the first time, that one particular day will last a lifetime. Try moving. Move to a different town, force yourself to get new friends, take three saxophone lessons. Your days will last.
alternative: Alarm beeps, Wake up, drive your kid to school the same way, drive your commute the same way, work with the same people, tell the same jokes, work on similar problems all day, watch netflix all weekend. You will wake up at 45 when someone in your family passes.
Routines help to ensure that the more mundane aspects of life take less time and leave room for more interesting pursuits. Routines support living a life of integrity - I show up on time and I can keep my commitments easier when I have a steady routine. Routines help to reduce decision fatigue so that I have room for more important decisions.
It seems that you are arguing that following routines makes you a zombie, but my experience is quite the opposite. I find it easier to savor the mundane things in life when they follow a routine. I think that it may be a personality difference where some people thrive on routine and some thrive on extreme novelty. vive la differance?
Maybe, but I think it's important to distinguish what your routine covers and what it doesn't. I agree with gp when whole days are all the same and optimized to death for more productive time.
But I'd agree with you if you optimize the necessary errands, and fill the rest of your time with more interesting/meaningful activities.
Routine is a great counter to ADHD. On long motorcycle trips, I sleep in a different place almost every day. Routine is essential if I want to be on the saddle by 11AM and not forget anything anywhere.
At home, routine ensures that the groceries and cooking are done before I get hungry and that I get 8 hours of sleep every day.
When it's thrown off by jet lag or other events, I make mistakes that ripple through my day.
The only risk is to get lost in routine and tune out for a large portion of your life.
I’ve noticed this independently and agree with it (at least for me personally). For some reason, the more fixed and typical my schedule, the slower time goes by in the short term but the quicker it goes by in the long-term. For example, with the pandemic, almost every day is exactly the same and they all feel excruciatingly slow. But when I sit back and think “it’s already almost September”, it seems like the months just flew by and I can’t really remember what I spent all those months doing.
I purposely try to mix up my days as much as I can because it seems to change my perception of time, but it’s been a bit hard to do that this year without really being able to go anywhere.
I just read a chapter in Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain", which goes into exactly this - boredom or uneventfulness drags out time in the present, because nothing keeps your mind occupied, but contracts it in hindsight, because longer units of time like days are basically the same and "collapse" into one in your memory. Excitement / novelty on the other hand do the opposite - time seems to go by faster in the present, but you make lots of distinct memories, so looking back it all appears longer.
I think there's a balance here, as with everything.
If you're too far on the <---"unstructured" end of the spectrum, you hop from one thing to the next and take things as they come. You sleep at constantly fluctuating times, you eat meals of convenience, etc
But if you're too far on the "structured/run-by-routine"--> end of things then you get what is described in the parent comment
So it's like "how do I introduce the minimum routine that will set me up for good days without being stultifying". (just to be clear, hopefully I'm not coming off as lecture-y, I'm just kind of writing/thinking out loud what your comment kicked off in my head)
Exactly. I realised this a while ago that if I keep having the same day everyday, I'm not going to remember anything about my life. Everything would be insignificant because it happens everyday.
It came to my mind when I started to lose track of my week. Did I have pasta on Tuesday or Wednesday? What time did I come home last Thursday? Why can't I distinguish one day from the other? Because everyday is the same.
Now I track my days and its much much better.
This implies the primary intent of life is to collect memories. Memories die too. If not with you, probably with the grandkids.
These days when I enjoy a moment, I don't even bother clicking a picture. The goal of life is to have as much of those moment as possible with a confidence that you won't be searching for interesting memories when you get older.
I maybe wrong. Maybe in the end, memories are all that matters but I'm about to find out.
I used to think similarly. Then, a couple of years ago, in my mind I started to go back to my past. I now often think about my childhood, my grandparents, I look at the photos I took or other people took when I was doing what I loved doing, and I swim in those memories, which are mostly joyful, no need to remember what we don't want to.
And my life now is made less of moments that won't remain and more of a continuum of life that started with my family, with my dreams, some of them fulfilled and some yet to be or never to be.
It gave me perspective, new strengths, the understanding that most events disappear into nothing; 5, 10, 15 years of school and we barely remember the names of our classmates. Of the three years of middle school, I remember three episodes at most. Where did those pains and laughs and dreams go? I only know that the dreams remain.
Huh, I had not thought of routines in this way before. I like my morning routine of waking up and drinking coffee as I read the days interesting things on HN and elsewhere, but then I go about the rest of the workweek routines. The idea it actually speeds up my life ... it does. Days blur together, then weeks blur together. Before I know it, months and years can go by with only a few truly memorable moments.
Life went on fast forward when I worked 40 hour weeks in a corporation. Yesterday feels exactly like 6 months ago. It was 6 months of cereals, podcasts on the train, internet arguments to kill time and Youtube nights. The days are indistinguishable.
On the other hand, when I travel, I vastly overestimate how fast time goes by. Last week feels like a previous life.
It's great to introduce change like this. But micro-routines - drills - can be life-savers. They stop me from locking myself out of the house, losing my lens cap, mis-starting my chain saw, etc.
Routines are a tool. An exercise routine may not be memorable, for example, but the routine might be how you manage to keep doing it.
I run the same loop at least once a week. Because it's routine, I can just throw on my shoes & go. No need to engage my brain at 5am. This helps keep me exercising.
Variety will keep life fresh. But routine will help you get through the same old stuff that still needs to get done.
Yep. The time between graduating college and now (admittedly only 4 and a half years for me) has blown by. My fondest memories from the last few years are those weeks I spent travelling internationally.
Hopefully I'll be able to travel again at some point after the pandemic, people aren't all to keen about Americans right now.
Routines slow life down, for me at least. I get things done every day that each week when I reflect on it, I realize just how much I got accomplished. The individual days feel short but the week feels long.
In the other mode, if I'm a zombie most days, while the day itself feels long, the week feels short.
On this level of thinking I think we should consider the possibility that the notion of time is highly subjective. Indeed I think we should consider the possibility that time is an illusion.
That illusion is created by the mind, which habitually simulates the past and the future. The thinking mind is a simulator.
This is why the past can be changed, because the past is a thought. It is also possible to suspend this simulating, and you can experience timelessness. You might have experienced something similar in "flow states".
A practical mnemonic I use is to consider not filling time with your actions, but rather filling your actions with time. This means slowing down, observing in as much detail as possible, and appreciating every possible moment within each action.
It's funny -- as a young adult I thought that "time is an illusion, mannnnn" was such bullshit.
As I get older and have this longer relationship with time, the more I realize there's something to it. How long ago was it that I was in my twenties? Or in high school? I can't really say. Anything further away than a few months all feels the same to me. Other, fairly new things, feel like they have always been there with me.
My experience of time has become much stranger.
My boss told me I should be working ten hour days. I told him life was too short and went on a vacation. I'm looking for different jobs now.
I feel like there is more here however. If our perception of time is manipulable (e.g. flow states, psychedelics, confabulation), how do we use that knowledge to perceive having lived a more enjoyable life?
Is it mastery over self-delusion? Does undivided attention on the passage of time contribute to well-being? What resources would you recommend to learn more (e.g. science? Eastern philosophy? etc.)
> how do we use that knowledge to perceive having lived a more enjoyable life?
I think this is also a construct of the simulating mind. It is simply a thought (or series of thoughts) that leads you to "perceive" that your past was enjoyable. This thought passes and once it has, there is no concept of your past. Of course this thought might come back again.
I would suggest rather than hoping you can live a life in which you regularly perceive your past as enjoyable, simply observe the fact that you are thinking this thought.
> Is it mastery over self-delusion?
I am not sure what you mean by this.
> Does undivided attention on the passage of time contribute to well-being?
In my experience, definitely yes.
> What resources would you recommend to learn more (e.g. science? Eastern philosophy? etc.)
This is a hard one to answer I think. (Good) Science I think won't lead you astray. Eastern philosophy has so much to offer I think, but there is also a lot of nonsense that you probably should be careful to avoid. I think you have to use your common sense when judging. Does it make sense to you? Does it correspond with your experience, or is someone simply asking you to believe something? (This of course is the scientific process.) BTW, these ideas are not confined to Eastern philosophy, similar ideas were philosophised in the West.
There is so much written about these ideas so I couldn't give you the canonical source of it all. One thing that I probably should mention is meditation. It seems to be the one common denominator. The way I see it, is it's the exercise that practically helps change the way you see, think and act.
If you want some concrete recommendations I am happy to suggest some, but I find it's often more helpful for people to discover what resonates with them.
Removing all clocks from my life made it more enjoyable. There is no time visible to me. I took down the wall clock. I hid all digital clocks on my devices. I never set alarms unless I absolutely need to. I can still access the time if I need it, which is rarely if ever.
It took time to adjust to this. It only really hit me how frequently I had looked at the time when I constantly caught myself looking at the empty spot on the wall where the clock had been. I realized I'd look at the clock to decide if I should eat, instead of listening to my body's needs as I should be. I'd look at the clock to decide if I should sleep, instead of how tired I felt. Etc. Living without clocks has made me more aware of my self.
One experiment I did was installing an app on my phone that vibrates it every 10 minutes or so. It was interesting observing how the passage of time changed depending on circumstance. When e.g. waiting for a bus, the phone took ages to vibrate. When out drinking with friends, it seemed to vibrate constantly.
While I tend to prefer this view and think this is a psychologically useful idea, we probably shouldn't take it too literally: how can it be squared with general relativity and its apparent implications of eternalism [1]?
I do in fact believe life is eternal: that we began before birth, this life has a purpose (an important preparation step, in some ways), & it doesn't end at our mortal death. There is the whole science vs. religion debate, or one can see all real truth as compatible, learn some key things for oneself, and wait for the details that may seem conflicting for now, to get sorted out as one learns more. Much more detail at my site (a very tech-simple site, linked in my HN user profile, which I try to make skimmable). I hope that offends no one...
(With any downvotes, thoughtful comments are appreciated; thanks.)
> One heuristic for distinguishing stuff that matters is to ask yourself whether you'll care about it in the future. Fake stuff that matters usually has a sharp peak of seeming to matter. That's how it tricks you. The area under the curve is small, but its shape jabs into your consciousness like a pin.
This is so concisely and beautifully put. It's a good mental model and test for me to apply to things in my life to see whether or not I should spend time on them.
“Oh my god he’s just shitting all over my code with his different linting settings”
I started too many fights caring about the dumbest stuff.
It absolutely was a sudden spike of mattering. But ultimately matters almost not at all: the area under the spike is nada.
Another thing I do is rubber duck it with my wife. I explain what’s bothering me in terms she (A non coder) understands. And usually by the end I already have my answer.
If someone who's been postponing living now with the aim of saving up for the distant future gets hit by a truck today, they'll never get what they saved and their life would have been in vain.
There's something to be said for living in the present instead of delaying gratification to a time that you might never get to or not be able to enjoy much when you do get there, due to bodily or cognitive infirmities, or the friends or family you could have appreciated something with now being gone then.
One trick I learned to slow down time is to keep a journal and write both about the future (either as a narrative or plan a schedule) and about the past (either as a journal entry or an audit).
This could be about anything, any minute detail you encountered throughout the day or goal you are planning - the number of clouds outside or an application to graduate school you're thinking about or seeing someone interesting on the street.
Do this regularly, each day for 30 minutes, for 2-3 months and you will find that your memory improves by 10x and your days feel much more fulfilling and purpose driven.
The reason I think this works, is that by both explicitly planning and examining, your brain will create its own BS filter and guide you to things that are naturally fulfilling and worth your time.
Of course. Just expanding on the idea behind journaling is that it is a scaffolding for your mind. For me, without journaling, my mind will wander and probably resemble a random walk. Instead, I found that by organizing my days into "packets" which have a forward-looking journaling session in the beginning and a backward-looking journaling session at the end was a tremendous boost to how structured my thinking is and how I spend my time.
For me, each "packet" is 2-3 day period and each journaling session is about 30 minutes. So two journaling sessions is a 1 hour investment to get better results over 48 hours (~2%) doesn't seem too bad.
More practically, I just keep two composition notebooks for these journals, and try to keep to a zettelkasten style[1] in Evernote.
Agreed with child sibling comment, I would love to hear more. I used to journal so much more in college, whereas nowadays I do not. It seemed like life just got so busy all of a sudden and it fell to the wayside.
This is one of those things that everyone “knows” but no one really gets until they experience it. In my case it’s the realization that the deadline to establish the relationships for this chapter of life passed in March. The social network may open up again in a few years, but my peer group is going to be a bunch of newlyweds and new parents by then.
I am 27 with a lot of people around me already married or getting closer to getting married. Whereas I am probably not going to be at that place for maybe the next 5-7 years. I fear the next 5-7 years are going to be very lonely, maybe I will get another chance to socialize once I am married myself. But till then, maybe I'll have to contend myself with my own company.
The sad bit is that its only now that I have finally started to grasp social interactions. Lived a majority of my life in a very depressive state and only been able to get out of all that recently.
This one hits me hard, I'm in a very similar situation right now. After finally overcoming social anxiety to the point I could get out I was starting to finally build some connections, but now it pretty much seems hopeless.
By the time this is all over and society resumes I will be pretty far past the cutoff point for fixing my social life and still managing to be relatively "normal"
> I will be pretty far past the cutoff point for fixing my social life and still managing to be relatively "normal"
There's no cutoff for this, and don't let anyone else decide what's "normal" for you. Or barring that, don't let other people's perceptions of normal prevent you from doing what you need to in order to be happy.
People you want to form relationships with are going to have expectations of your experience, skill, and maturity levels that increase with age. You’re going to find fewer people willing to tolerate your adolescence at 45 than you will at 25. Beating yourself up over “normal” isn’t helpful, but this is a real problem.
I'm not discounting the challenges, just the idea of some arbitrary "cutoff" where relationships (romantic or otherwise) are no longer possible. Certain things might become harder as you get older, but there's never a cutoff (and some things might actually become easier).
(I originally responded with a different message that I deleted, since it looks like you edited your message in such a way that my original reply wasn't super applicable anymore.)
>By the time this is all over and society resumes I will be pretty far past the cutoff point for fixing my social life and still managing to be relatively "normal"
It's like anything else you want. Put the work in; enjoy the process; and don't get frustrated when progress isn't linear. The more you get in your head, the harder the work will seem, the less you'll enjoy it, and the further what you want will seem.
Eh, you're probably exaggerating. There's definitely a bunch of single people in the same position, and also a bunch of people stuck in dead-end relationships itching to get out. We will find a way to adapt. If anything, it's a business opportunity.
> When I was a kid I used to wonder about this. Is life actually short, or are we really complaining about its finiteness? Would we be just as likely to feel life was short if we lived 10 times as long.
This reminds me of Parkinson‘s Law: „work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion“. So if we know we will be travelling in three days, we need tree days to pack our stuff. And if we get a message from our boss telling us we need to travel this noon, we‘ll quickly pack a few things and get a toothbrush at the airport.
If we had 10 times more time to live, we wouldn‘t necessarily be getting ten times more out of it. We would just - my hypothesis - need that much more time to accomplish our milestones.
I read somewhere about putting Parkinson‘s Law in reverse: Committing to return the assignment in a week. That way we have a limited time budget, a boundary. That pushes us to move quickly.
> If we had 10 times more time to live, we wouldn‘t necessarily be getting ten times more out of it.
We would probably need to work 10 times longer, because everything would be more expensive. We compete for scarce resources with other people, and if we have more time and they have too, the extra time will be burned in the zero-sum competitions.
That and the human population would rapidly saturate the planet within this century. That of course may happen anyway, however as is we at least have a fighting shot at managing it. Life expectancy expansion has to be gradual so we can adjust to it (in numerous ways), otherwise it'd likely prompt a cataclysmic humanity crash (bubble then crash). Beyond things getting more expensive, we'd probably just have a plain resource-driven civilization crash in much of the world.
Annual births more or less peaked in 1988 at around 139/140 million, which is close to the level we're still at today [1]. Annual deaths however keep climbing, from roughly 48m in 1988 to 60m or so today. Births are set to decline while deaths keep climbing throughout the century.
Clear most of the natural deaths for just the next 80 years, and it's the difference between then having 18-20 billion (or more) people in the year 2100 versus the present common projections of around 11'ish billion. Would have to resolve in the fantasy age extension scenario whether people can keep having children for hundreds of years, as that would change projections radically. Governments would likely aggressively regulate population expansion if so, rather than hoping for self-restriction (eg if it took a natural form of tapering via per capita births dropping to match the changes). Does raising a child become a 100 year responsibility? Does our pre-adult immaturity / adolescence time expand to fill the allotted life expectancy? Lots of questions in the fantasy premise.
The problem with this attitude is as always, where is the limit. Certainly some limits can't be crossed - why a week, why not an hour, or even better, a minute ? Because you know stuff takes time and its never sure (at least in IT) how much time is it.
So this is unhelpful in general, as there is no action you can deduce from it without risking maybe huge downsides (i.g. quality or quantity of work).
The point I am trying to make is: Budgets are a good tool. Limits and boundaries are necassary to define a system, an organism, a project. And so in life it might be valuable as well to have a limited time to be on earth.
I read this essay in 2016, and was fortunate to have a child in late 2018.
This essay had a profound impact on me, and by extension a profound impact on our son's upbringing. There are very few weekends that go by that I don't think of it.
I am sure PG isn't wasting his time on HN anymore, but if he does happen to read this, I just want to say thanks.
That sounds like an enormous amount of time. Time is like money. For some people it always seems to slip away. For other people its a multiplicative empowering factor that builds on itself like a compound interest. For others still there is plenty of time meaningfully spent performing intentional tasks.
------------
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
---
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
---
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
---
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
Some people seem to be able to shrug off bullshit at work, just go home and think about things that “matter”. If I see bullshit, things that are wrong, or just legitimately hard problems I have a very hard time not working hard to fix it even though I would not really care about the outcome in 10 years.
The dilemma is the balance between doing work that matters, maybe finding something where I care more about the outcome, or learn to brush things off and focus on other things in life that matters.
Life is short when you want more than what is available around you. I just chill, tend to the nature around me, do my best, and try to make people around me happy. Simple life, just the right amount of time.
Sometime I need to read The View from 80, but an excerpt my father sent me was to the effect that, being in his eighties, the author can now view with amusement all the young people around him so busy white-rabbitly striving.
Ok, but we have to remember that not all 80-year-olds have the same outlook on life.
Some people remain very active and ambitious well in to advanced age, as long as their body and mind can hold out, which is something that will differ from person to person.
Here's a telling example: [1] In his 60's, Robert Owens was running marathons and undergoing Navy SEAL tests that would regularly crush 18-year-olds, and everyone he knew was trying to dissuade him from because they thought it would kill him. He still did it, and though he wasn't quite 80 at the time of the video and his body was starting to give out, he was insanely ambitious and accomplished at an advanced age, well past the point where most people would have thrown in the towel.
I've seen artists who are very active in to their 90's, and have heard of people running marathons in their 90's. On the other end of the spectrum, the rate of suicide, depression, and loneliness among the elderly is very high. That's not to mention the devastation of dementia and other mental and physical afflictions.
People deal with aging very differently depending on their body, mind, socio-economic circumstances, support networks, how they were brought up and their outlook on life, all of which vary greatly.
> And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was.
If you had 8 cars to choose from, it wouldn't seem so limited, would it? The idea that you can take a number, and in absolute sense say that it's "not a lot" is bizarre. Even 8 books might seem like a lot in a different situation, like if someone packed that many books in his suitcase for a weekend trip.
Plus only 8 christmas but with 2 kids you'd have 16 birthdays, plus maybe 100 or so friends birhdays, 2 first days at school, etc. etc. lots of moments.
I'm simultaneously in a married relationship where children are off the table (by our choosing), and am hopelessly bored most of the time. It's interesting to contrast these two facts.
I think life is too long, because I don't believe in any afterlife and if I die today or 40 years from now, what's the difference? Just a bunch of pain and boredom all the way down from now until then.
Nietzsche's writing on "eternal return" helped me with similar thoughts. It gives life heaviness, as Kundera says in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Would you mind expanding a bit on what you mean by "it gives life heaviness"? Is the idea that if Eternal Return is true, you should live your life to its fullest because it will be repeated for eternity?
If there was a thing as an eternal self I would find that idea terrifying rather than motivating, personally. But I tend to lean towards the concept of non-self. Even if the cosmology of the universe means my life will be repeated infinitely, there's no continuous "me" that experiences it. Just like how running the exact same instance of Conway's Game of Life a million times doesn't mean there's some essence that persists between each instantiation.
So for me, that idea doesn't do much for me either way (but I may also misunderstand it). Maybe sometime in the vastness of infinity there will be another instantiation of "me", but I don't think there's any connection between that instance and the current one (besides the curious property of an identical life).
My personal takeaway is that, horrifying or not, you cannot escape life, whether by hiding from the world or suicide, you must embrace it, because you will always live your life and there is nothing else. Further, questions of free will aside, you should live the life you would want to live again and again. Let the weight be your guide.
I think the alluring plausibility of eternal return helps sell the idea, but it's best to simply use the idea as a way to think about your attitude toward life, and not be too concerned whether it is a physical reality or not. I subscribe to pragmatism above all else.
I actually read the whole Sisyphus essay, but it didn't really inspire me. I think I'm probably an Existentialist to some degree, I believe that life has no inherent meaning or value and that we have to create for ourselves such meaning. But most days I'm just going through the motions and I'd rather tune out, or "drop out" as it were. Or as Weezer says "Why bother? It's gonna hurt me."
The "opposite" of Existentialism, if there is such a thing, might be the Japanese idea of shokunin or pure mastery of one's profession. In the West we'd probably call this craftsmanship: taking pride in the fundamentals of one's chosen profession and aiming to master it, not simply earn a living. It's an ideal that I've always found inspiring.
Once you decide on your profession, you must immerse yourself in your work.
Phrased another way, the craftsmanship model narrows the boundaries of meaning, whereas the Existentialist one expands them to the infinite, or destroys them entirely.
I have always been fascinated by all types of monomania, by persons wrapped up in a single idea; for the stricter the limits a man sets for himself, the more clearly he approaches the eternal.
Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee -- zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Ching-shou music.
"Ah, this is marvelous!" said Lord Wen-hui. "Imagine skill reaching such heights!"
Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, "What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now -- now I go at it by spirit and don't look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and following things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.
"A good cook changes his knife once a year -- because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month -- because he hacks. I've had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I've cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there's plenty of room -- more than enough for the blade to play about it. That's why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.
"However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I'm doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until -- flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away."
"Excellent!" said Lord Wen-hui. "I have heard the words of Cook Ting and learned how to care for life!"
Thanks for the share. I was just listening to an audiobook Zhuang-zi a few weeks ago (while biking by a farm, ironically) and remember this exact story.
Are you familiar with Epicureanism at all? It's not as popular these days as, say, Stoicism, but I found it's general tenets somewhat helpful for very similar thoughts. I'm also a bit of an Existentialist, so I agree that it's up to us to create our own meaning. But maybe that meaning can be just as simple as limiting our own suffering as much as possible, and finding the sustainable things that bring is happiness or enjoyment. The meaning we bring to our life doesn't necessarily need to be grand or far reaching.
Anyway, that's sort of where I'm at right now. My personal philosophy is a super messy mix of Stoicism, Epicureanism, Existentialism, and Buddhism. Not particularly well thought out, but it's been useful lately for helping me carve out a little bit of happiness from this bizarre existence.
For what it may be worth, I made a comment elsewhere in this discussion page (you could Ctrl-F for my username) about my belief that life indeed does not end at mortal death but is ongoing. Knowing stuff about that really helps relax about many subject, prioritize the things that do matter and make a difference for good, etc....
One interesting thing I hear repeated from a lot of my friends is that having children somehow makes you very good at getting things done, which @pg alludes to in this post. You get very good at making things finite, because your child is a natural marker of time.
If you are in a married relationship where children are off the table and you are hopelessly bored, what do you hope to get out of the marriage? I mean this sincerely. I know a lot of people for whom a married relationship with children off the table where you get the opportunity to be "hopelessly bored" is their idea of nirvana. No relationship drama, no children to manage, all the free time to take to travel or shared hobbies or shared life experiences. Perhaps I sense this may not be the case for you?
That’s pretty harsh to your wife, isn’t it? Your life with her is “just a bunch of pain and boredom”? It would make a difference to her if you die today or 40 years from now.
Start with the marriage. If no part of your life seems like more than a trudge towards the eventual grave, then this marriage can hardly be much of a joy. Get rid of it. Even if you fear the consequences, they will at least spice up your daily life enough to remove much of that seemingly sure boredom for a time. You will introduce something interesting: future options that no longer feel so predictable..
If you or someone else here finds refuge in alcohol can you explain what it does for you that makes you find use it for refuge? I drink socially. Have been drunk a few times. I get nothing from alcohol. Clearly others get something out of it I don't. For me it's just a break from other drinks (tea, coffee, milk, juice, water) that happens to have a feeling I actually don't enjoy so much but sometimes tastes that I do enjoy.
Hey sure. So everybody is different right, here is my experience.
On a normal day to day basis, my brain feels like it needs something. When I crack a beer, I feel better, funnier, happier, relaxed. My brain is getting something that it needs. So I crack another one. Pretty sure I'm drunk. It doesn't matter. I feel great. I'll pay for it in the morning but I'm living now. I can chug a beer in 5 seconds, it's a thirst but the thirst isn't for liquid it's for alcohol. The taste is so refreshing and quenches something deep inside, but it's never enough. I also like margaritas, ice cold ones with fresh tequila and lime juice. It hits the spot and gives me what I need. For the longest time I though it was just the deliciousness of the beer or the margarita, until I tried alcohol free alternatives. Totally different. It's the alcohol. This is the way that I'm wired.
Don't get me started on weed. I am a weed junkie. Give me one puff and I'm derailed for 2 weeks smoking myself into a stupor.
All these desires stopped when I found the right treatment for my ADHD, which is methamphetamine. Methamphetamine is the least harmful and most benign, beneficial drug for me. Less side effects and more effective than any other ADHD drugs. It removes all my addictions. Unfortunately I am treated like a criminal for taking this drug as prescribed here in the USA and am view with suspicion by everybody in healthcare. Quite ridiculus, because if I wanted to abuse it I would pay $50 on the street instead of $1000 out of pocket for the same amount in a nice prescription bottle. Using this platform to say our drug war is a complete failure and to legalize all drugs to help people.
I had to build rapport with my psychiatrist for over 2 years before she finally prescribed it. Thank god because it saved my life. I still have to deal with so many issues regarding this being so highly controlled. I hear there’s only one brand allowed in the US, on my bottle it says “Hikma”. I see how this can be addicting because it has a slight euphoria, but I’m just not interested in pushing it more. I take 5mg/day. I believe recreationally they take 50mg hits in the pipe! Meth is so safe (LD-50 wise) people can smoke a gram a day and not die. Try that with adderall. The war on drugs is bullshit and harms the people it’s supposed to help.
Here’s the thing. Since it’s improved every aspect of my life (including my sleep), If I get cut off for some political reasons, I’m going to buy it in the street and take it. And that helps me how? Hah. Thank you for reading my story.
It's a drug like any other; if it has no effect on you then maybe you're just lucky? For me it just changes the way I think and trivial everyday worries float away for a while.
I'm not a heavy drinker, I can go months without a single drop, but if alcohol was to cease to exist I would miss it.
I once had a dream that felt like it lasted a lifetime. In this dream, I had a whole new life, a different wife, kids, and I lived it through to the end. Then I woke up. It was the weirdest thing ever and I often think about it.
That's the scary part! I woke up very disoriented, full of all sorts of emotions - disappointment, sadness, total confusion. I couldn't make sense of what just happened. It was scary. I also missed my "dream family". I couldn't believe they were gone and it was all a dream.
I've told this to people, and they did not believe me.
It took a good 3 days to shake off all of the emotions I was feeling over a dream. I did a fair bit of research on this and found that many people report the same happening to them.
I have a different take on this. Not everyone is Paul Graham. Paul Graham would not have written this before founding his company. He'd not have thought "there are only 52 weekends when I'm 25 so let me just party".
Most people, especially those who have not made it in life, are worried about survival. Especially people with kids. They sacrifice their time with kids so that their kids can have a better life than them. So that they can move them from <insert class here> to upper <insert class here>. They work hard, attend pointless meetings so that they can get ahead in their career, not upset anyone and make sure they have health insurance. They do insane commutes for the same reason. Most people do not have the luxury to choose.
People are more unsure of their survival despite greater wealth. A single medical incident could bankrupt them. There are people on Blind wondering if $2 million is enough to retire. A friend of mine was worried that he'd not be able to hit his goal of a net worth of $5 million at his current company (he makes around $600k). Everyone is trying to get ahead and there's serious FOMO if one is not ambitious. This is prevalent especially in Silicon Valley companies.
The only solution to live life the way PG envisions is to guarantee basic income, shelter and healthcare.
Sufficiently for my own decision-making at least, I have proven it and it helps me much.... (My simple-tech web site I hope provides more info in a skimmable way; it is mentioned in my HN user profile, for what that may be worth, or more specific links if requested.)
(With any downvotes, a thoughtful comment is appreciated. thanks.)
Jordan Petersen once said "working means sacrificing the present for the future", which is an amazing statement. Its incredible how much our society believes working is a must, especially fulltime. I once did a sabatical and people giving me a weird look, after finding out that I don't do a regular job. Quite sad, imho.
> One great thing about having small children is that they make you spend time on things that matter: them. They grab your sleeve as you're staring at your phone and say "will you play with me?" And odds are that is in fact the bullshit-minimizing option.
Love this passage. Don't have kids, but I can totally see this happening to parents I know.
I've discovered how during a holiday in a camper 2 years ago. Do a -lot- of new things on a single day. We had a 6 day trip and it felt like 3 weeks. It was magic. While routine and habits have their place, if you want to slow down or bend the flow of time - do new things every day.
> Arguing - Your instinct when attacked is to defend yourself. But like a lot of instincts, this one wasn't designed for the world we now live in. Counterintuitive as it feels, it's better most of the time not to defend yourself.
I love this one, certainly something I need to practice.
Is it just me or is SSL completely broken on this site?
First I get this:
Websites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for paulgraham.com. The certificate is only valid for the following names: .store.yahoo.com, .store.yahoo.net, store.yahoo.com, store.yahoo.net, .stores.yahoo.net, stores.yahoo.net, .csell.store.yahoo.net, .us-dc1-edit.store.yahoo.net, .us-dc2-edit.store.yahoo.net, .us-dc1.csell.store.yahoo.net, .us-dc2.csell.store.yahoo.net
OK, I guess that's close enough, but when I "Accept the risk and continue," I get this, which can't be bypassed:
An error occurred during a connection to paulgraham.com. Cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s). Error code: SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP
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But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it.
Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly.
- Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, 49 AD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_(Seneca)
http://www.crtpesaro.it/Materiali/Latino/On%20the%20Shortnes...