When you get to the end of your life, old and tired, and you look back on all the things you did and time you spent, what will make you say: yes, I did well and it was all worth it?
Put another way, if you have an extra hour tomorrow with nothing planned, what could you do with yourself to later say: I’m glad I did that? What if you have an unplanned day? Or a week? Does how you use that time change? Would the choice of how to use that time be more or less deliberate, depending on how long you have? Does that choice define you as a person?
There are some philosophical undertones here, and I’m wondering what you really want to ask. Could you elaborate?
I don’t know what words might better express what I’m thinking. So I’ll tell a story. I was raised religious, in a demanding Christian sect. There were a lot of expectations and judgement about what it takes to be a good person. Now, I’ve arrived at a point in my life where I reject the religious ideology and the conception of what it means to be a good person. I think that life is due to chance, that life is brief and temporary and that meaning is created only in my mind. I’m married and have kids. That gave me a lot of meaning, but my wife and I have drifted apart and my kids are mostly grown and are mostly independent. What now? I enjoy sports, and VR gaming and public speaking. I also tried cannabis (legal in my country) and it’s fun. Is there any reason I shouldn’t use it often? Is there something more important I should do with my life? Will I regret later doing things that are fun now?
Maybe none of it matters, but I’m curious what other people think and feel and believe. I’m happy to hear philosophical views, but I’m really curious about how others live.
Thank you for your clarity. I don’t know how common it is for people to directly question existence, social contracts, our roles and purposes, but I imagine your thoughts resonate with many of us; the experiences and perceptions you shared are deeply familiar to me.
Since your story helped me understand where you’re at, I will reciprocate with a story for you.
I never quite succeeded at living a life that resulted in genuine acceptance from relatives, religious circles, authority figures , or peers. I tried to fit in for awhile, and to even please others a few times, but it isn’t who I am and it shows. This disconnect allowed me to metaphorically wander into the wilds.
For over 30 years, I explored almost all big religions and some philosophies, and by the time I was in my late 40’s I finally embraced my atheism with a growing sense of liberation, although I don’t mention it around theists. I think it scares them, and who am I to yank away anyone’s security blanket?
I’ve lived a long and unconventional life with my own credo. Sometimes this meant fine tuning who is in my life, and who is excluded, which can be controversial - but for me it’s been a relief. Also, controversy is just one spice in a feast.
I agree with you that institutions or culture leaders or mythological deities can’t dictate what is good. My direction has always come from within because that’s the loudest voice*, and when I need to be reminded of what that means, I focus on the REAL life around me.
I don’t look for a purpose or a life well-lived because humans are no different than fish or rabbits or deer … except for how we lost our way. Seriously, look at the animals; this is what I mean by REAL life. They don’t waste their energy striving for someone else’s declared ideal. They don’t worry about yesterday or tomorrow. They don’t get wound up in possible outcomes or fake rewards. They just … are.
As you stated, we are briefly here on an insignificant rock spinning around in a tiny solar system of a regular galaxy, in one universe among countless universes, and we weren’t deliberately placed here to hoard crap, exert “dominion”, destroy everything, or delude ourselves that we should be famous or rich or impactful. (Okay, I took your thought and ran a bit with it.)
My life is filled with the things I need to do for survival, with interludes of connection that bring me joy. I try to not think too much about the survival part because for humans it’s so contrived, and it blocks natural feelings. My biggest struggle is keeping that shit where it doesn’t ruin the things that matter.
And what matters is YOUR call. Time with the people you love or being immersed in music or reading or looking at stars or laughing at how your dog zooms or touching trees or breathing or … whatever you want. As long as you can be in the moment with your true self, you aren’t wasting this magical blink of life.
*I don’t have an actual voice within, because I have total Aphantasia.
I love this answer so much. Thank you for taking the time to share it.
lasting contributions to open-source software
Definitely a worthwhile thing to do, but software is so ephemeral that it’s hard to say “lasting.” If I died tomorrow, all my projects would likely be irrelevant and forgotten within a few years. Though some projects have stronger lasting power than others. Now I’m curious what the oldest line of code in the FreeBSD kernel is.
Sorry, not trying to be negative on your accomplishments. Just been thinking about this lately.
How to make lasting contributions that will stand the test of time:
- Create a new project from scratch that would have wide-ranged-but-niche applications (i.e. some app, firmware, or library that fills an important-but-unrecognized niche)
- Design the code to be intuitive to you and you alone, prioritize functionality over readability, forgo documentation, and abstract as much as possible. You can be the only contributor during the developmental stage
- Go public and get as many people as possible to adopt your project
- Continue maintaining until you die
- Now companies and people that have unknowingly become heavily reliant on this are going to scramble to continue maintaining it, but will only be willing to create surface-level bandaid patches and will avoid making any more fundamental changes for fear of breaking literally everything everywhere because now the stakes are too high to take a fuck-it-we-ball approach. This is why it’s important to be niche: it reduces the chances of an actual tech wizard coming in and reverse-engineering the whole thing.
- Voila, your contributions shall remain for all time, like some sort of mystical wizard’s tome on whose magic the world continues to spin
Yeah I maintain a 30 year old legacy codebase how could you tell
When I was 26, I looked at my career and realized I would wake up old one day having accomplished nothing – largely due to government spending cuts in my original area of expertise (biology / forestry). Oh well, no hard feelings. Governments need to do that sometimes.
So I quit, sold all my possessions, immigrated to Vietnam, and spent literally every dime to my name setting up a company (I had the equivalent of $0.025 left). Then I cram-studied software and electrical engineering every spare moment for 3 years (meanwhile I survived on low-value, high effort contracts that no one else wanted). I also met my wonderful wife at an engineering club while doing this.
Looking back, it was an unreasonable, absurd, dangerous journey. Maybe there is something about those qualities that define actions I value? I used to wonder if I was entirely sane at the time, until I had the chance to visit my home country recently. I saw the economy hadn’t changed, and I would still be in the same dead-end job at 40 if I was lucky. Is accepting drudgery really more sane than taking a risk?
Maybe there is no sanity, only the ways we are mad together, and the ways we are mad alone. I don’t know which is better.
When I have spare time, I create things. Music boxes of exotic wood, robots, particle detectors. Lamps that shine in colors that are hard to identify (via optical illusion). Artificial plants that quiver in anticipation of rain. Nightlights designed to last forty thousand nights. A Lemmy bot that does I-Ching divination with a hardware TRNG. Machines that try to detect if the Universe is a simulation. Those musical greeting cards that no one likes. Anything, so long as it is strange and new!
I never regret time spent this way, and all my days are unplanned at some fundamental level.
I hope that every word of this is true. I loved reading it.
Oddly enough!
If you want to read about stuff I work with, I post some of it to vintech@voltage.vn from time to time.
Also you can use the I Ching implementation by sending your query to kong_ming@voltage.vn (the bot will communicate with the machine on my desk using a little Lemmy-MQTT bridge I wrote). Internally, that machine uses an el-cheapo version of the simulated-universe-detector – using a circuit that is hard (but not provably impossible) to simulate that is based on diode breakdown in 2N3904 transistors.
I’ll connect up the fancier version eventually. I’ve built it before, but the original design used export-controlled parts and could be construed as nuclear technology (it’s a very sensitive particle detector), so I don’t really want to carry it across borders. I live in Vietnam, my luggage gets searched 100% of the time as-is, and someone at CERN published a neat design I can adapt that relies only on unregulated parts (https://github.com/ozel/DIY_particle_detector)! So I’ll get to that in a few months or whatever.
I could also use a Geiger tube but that feels sort of boring.
I would consider my life “well-lived” if I die with no regrets.
I used to think that. Now I know that regrets are inevitable. And I think they make life interesting. I’d rather have regrets than boredom.
To crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentations of their women.
Ah, ambitions of conquest.
Living a life well-lived vs feeling like you’ve lived a life well-lived are two different things. The first… be a good person, treat others and yourself with kindness, try to leave the world a little better than it would have been without you.
Feeling like you’ve lived a life well-lived though, that’s different for everyone. In the Sims games there are Lifetime Wishes. One wish to accomplish over that Sim’s entire life. I think real life is similar - everyone has a lifetime wish that once accomplished will fill a hole and help them be more at peace with dying. I got lucky, mine was easy. I wanted to help someone in a way that positively impacted the rest of their life. When I discovered that I had accidentally done that for a friend, the effect was amazing. I felt spiritually whole and like I was done doing what I was put on this earth for. I’m not religious, btw. I’m still living so I’m going to keep doing my best… but now I feel like my life has been well lived.
I don’t think the answer is so clear for everyone. My spouse doesn’t know their “lifetime wish”. Maybe it’ll be revealed with time or maybe they’ll never consciously know. I don’t think it’s something you get to choose, either. If you ask yourself what’s the one thing you absolutely need to do to be at peace before you die then you may figure it out eventually.
I wouldn’t say it was well-lived. If I had magical unlimited free time, maybe I could figure that out.
If I had magical unlimited free time, I’d probably just spend it watching porn and jerking off.
One thing I’ve learned about living well is that there are many many many different aspects and it isn’t just about what you produce in your limited time here. Treating yourself well and with compassion is so important. Taking care of your physical form frees you to live even more well for longer.
The thing that I learned that has had the greatest effect on me is living authentically to myself. When you don’t live authentically, you deny core aspects of your being. Everything you do is a facade regardless of your intentions. Not everyone has this problem, but if you want to know that you’ve lived your life well, this is mandatory.
Between work and two small children, I’ll gladly spend an extra hour with them. Or just with me, to get away from all that.
All of the things I’m going to do. I hope I have time to do them.
I hope you do, too.
What’s the point? In 100 years, everyone here now will be dead. Nothing we do really matters. Life is pointless.
The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life. Rabindranath Tagore
Do you think this makes any sense? If not, why not?
That is the point. Do whatever you want because no one’s gonna remember it anyway. Once I realised that, life because a bit more bearable.
Probably play the trumpet or play the bass guitar, I’m a giga musican nerd
Music makes life awesome.
Fuck yeah it does!
Life well lived for me is the following.
- My life ends in a comfy bed surrounded by friends and family having died before becoming a burden on them.
- I’ve made a positive impact on those around me
- I’ve left my children/family in better financial shape than I was born into (which, frankly, was pretty good already)
- I traveled and saw what the world has to offer
Yeah, life is meaningless, and we’re one small speck in a universe so big it breaks our brains to think about and we only last a similar amount of time in regard to the vastness of time itself. . … so I might as well make myself and the people around me feel good
As far as the short term? Have a good conversation with friends/family, go for a walk through a nearby forest.
For these unplanned hours, I look to the majesty and simple wisdom of nature for my answer:
I sleep slovenly, pass gas, and growl half heartily at anyone who disturbs me. Plus, I think if great apes and big cats could read, they’d probably consume at least as much Yuri light novels as myself.
Fair enough. Thank you for sharing.
I will think it was all worth it because I lived in each moment making it the best and not fretting about how I’ll look back on it when I’m about to die