The truth here that many people won’t get is that you can start your life anytime you want. Waiting for a good menu option to click on doesn’t work. In my early 20s I was an introverted, anxiety-ridden computer geek. Then I took a community college acting class and discovered my passion for theatre - did acting, stage design, lighting, directing… it created almost an instant social life, tons of friends and looking forward to every day. My job became just a necessary detail, my real life was after work.
Anyway I encourage everyone to figure out how to get their life started. Doesn’t matter what the economy is like or your personal history or circumstances - it’s not you - nobody’s life has ever cared if they lived it or not.
These days, mostly panicking about getting everything on the bucket list set up. I’ve let to much just fly by already.
Just hit my mid 30s. Feeling like working hard only gets your more hard work. Not that I’m in a bad spot but for real what does it all mean
Also known as the “protestant work ethic” by someone trying to sell protestantism probably
skill issue. i would simply refrain from aging. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2bo_u_YmW8
Let go and let life slip through your hand like sand
Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.
All we are is dust in the wind.
I don’t like sand. It’s coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.
Ani, have you always been such a whiny bitch?
just like life
For work-life balance on the basis of the comic, by refusing to do any kind of overtime on a regular basis, and making sure any time it happens I’m compensated for it. I’m also fortunate enough to earn enough that I was able to reduce my working hours to have Fridays free. Having half of the year free gives me the opportunity to actually do some living.
Now for the more general question, I mostly try to not think about it, because it tends to throw me into a FOMO driven frenzy where I do things to cross them from a checklist and end up not really enjoying anything. For the most part, I found I’m much happier trying to live in the moment even if I’m not very good at it.
It’s part of the reason I’m a transhumanist.
When you die, they will put two dates on your tombstone. The day you were born and the day you died. And, in between will be a little dash. That dash represents everything that mattered about your life. All your achievements and failures, all your joy and all your pain. All roll up in just a little dash. Make the most of it before that second date is written.
Remind me to start writing a diary in clay tablets, I’m gonna own the rest of graveyard and future archaeologists!
It worked for our boy Ea-Nasir.
Make sure those tablets get baked by a fire when your city is pillaged and burned. Raw clay doesn’t stand up well to water.
Bold of you to assume everyone gets a tombstone, some are gonna end up in a mass graves after being mass murdered by their government.
I like watching the changes. The world and everything in it, including me, isn’t in stasis. People get old, I’m getting old, wild to look back at ‘young me’ or think of a close friend at a time when they were totally unfamiliar. My hometown is 10x larger and looks wildly different but I can still point out some unchanged spots when I go to visit.
I wish I could stop time and do whatever but I acknowledge that I was thrust into this with no say in any of it, so I just strive to be at peace with it I suppose
“My kids will live the life I wish I had”
Don’t worry, our overlords are planning for us to benefit from their anti-aging research too! When they turn us into servitors.
This shit really gets to me but not in a way you might expect.
I’m extremely content in life. It amazes me there are so many of you that just aren’t happy existing. Every day is what you make of it and if you live life as glass half full no amount of milestones is going to fill it.
There is something to be said about simplicity. It can be as little as appreciating the sun on your face but you need to be open to appreciate it.
Life only has meaning when you give it meaning and the longer you hold off doing that then empty you shall remain.
I notice a lot of comments here saying “Hey go live your life now! Pick up that guitar or paintbrush or dancing shoes or whatever! Live for you!” And I agree. I often struggle with these existential thoughts.
But something they might leave out is that it’s HARD.
Following your own path can be unpredictable, and meandering, and you need to know who to trust and lean on them, and let them lean on you.
It can be a one-move-to-the-next kind of existing without that facade of “predictability” a society-prescribed life will get you. The good news is that stability is a myth anyway, so why not see it for what it really is?
I was treading water in a soul-destroying job for almost a decade when I finally saw the opportunity to strike out for myself, and I ran for it. My wife was promoted to a position that paid more and she didn’t hate it, so we discussed it and I quit, and took on more household duties and put my efforts towards finally becoming a 3D artist.
It’s been like a year+ and I still haven’t “made it” yet! It’s scary! But I’ve gotten some gigs! I’m still slow, and not as wildly creative as I’d like to be, but I do random labor on the side and try to keep my costs as low as possible. But she’s happier with how not-depressed I am, and I’ve made so much progress more than I ever would have otherwise.
Are we even able to start saving for retirement? Not even close! But I’m betting on myself and in the process I get a lot more time well-spent with the person I love.
No, not everyone is gonna have these opportunities or privileges, I know. But keep looking, talk to people, DO THE WORK instead of just talking about it. Help people! Let people help you! There will be some foothold for you somewhere.
And if you gotta pull some shifts at a coffee shop to keep the lights on there’s no shame in that! And you’re gonna have people who think you’re crazy and try to pull you back into the pot with the other cranky crabs because you’re there reminding them that they could’ve done something with their lives too.
My point is, taking charge of your life instead of asking permission from various gatekeepers is HARD. You might follow your dreams and find out you suck at it. The dream might even change at some point.
But it’s worth doing. Because what’s the alternative?
Lord knows if the worst were to happen, your boss will be filling your job before your body is cold. So where is your effort, energy, discipline, talents, love, best spent?
As Bruce Lee once said: “Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”
I’d add, “one worth living.”
Yeah… it’s hard.
The status quo, even if its dredged from a lake, is so comfortably uncomfortable. You resolve to change, but do futilities. You resolve to change, but your leg is caught and you return by week two (aka the New Years’ Resolutions number).
And to leap out and be instantly different is to play as something that doesn’t have the safe façade of being a system gear. Then you’re an oxbow lake, rather than in the river, and you wonder if everyone else is “floating by” already while you erode the soil that kept you streamlined down the main.
And then comes the “Should I have stayed? Was I being arrogant, spoilt enough to give up what I had?”
Idk what the moral of my comment is. I don’t want to say “I’ll discover it in a few years” either (,>ࡇ<,). Hopefully the mystery box is truer to my self than the alternative
Accept that good actions will not give an immediate or always measurable result for you to observe.
You are a social being. What matters most is often not what increases you in status, but what increases others in wellbeing or allows you to appreciate the beauty in lifem
On your death bed you will not wish to have worked more, but probably to have spent more time with people dear to you or that you had spent more time for actions that nudge society a tiny bit more towards your values.
Capitalism especially todays consumerism is built around manipulating you to identify yourself with superficial status. Breaking free of that will open yourself to value your time and actions as meaningful as they become meaningful, even if there is no number or title attachable to it.
Capitalism also exploits the inherent nature of humans to please and feel validated by others through work. However, the system initially stems from the idea that individuality is sovereign and the cornerstone of successful being and society as a whole. However, no one notices or questions this paradox. Capitalism promotes individualism, and yet if you are not immersed in the grind, hustle and productivity culture, you are deemed lazy and unproductive by society. In other words, even in a system that touts individuality, the worth of someone is still tied to impressing society at large. At the end of the day, you’re not pleasing yourself or your colleagues, you are pleasing those at the top who are earning more than you ever will.
I made a vow to myself long ago, because this world’s warped ideals tend to creep up on you when you’re not looking.
I often recite that vow any time someone dear to me apologizes for something like “taking up [my] time.”
I tell them that I vowed to myself that I woud never, ever, regret time spent in good company. Even if it might have been a little inconvenient for whatever reason. We were put here to love thy neighbor, not to hustle and hoard.
Simple as that. It’s kept me from losing the picture so far.
