Nostalgia isn’t only a hell of a drug, but it’s a hell of an addiction too. Chasing times when you last felt good or when you felt things were right. Getting in touch with old flames that you forgot that there were reasons you moved on from, until you read the painful endings as to why those connections died.
Having those rose-tinted shades aren’t always good for you.
The heaviest love bombing, and the shades that come with it, are followed by the deepest and longest down turns.
I’ve traveled to 50 countries and lived in three. People are basically good, but the media shouters will try very hard to convince you otherwise.
I haven’t been to that many and I won’t say I’ve been to the other end of the spectrum. But, having been to other corners of the square, I’ve found that people are the same. There are wildly different cultural norms that can certainly be misconstrued as rude or invasive, but damn, the baseline human experience is so common.
We all think we need more money. We all know lots of people worse off. We all know several better off. We all celebrate births, marriages, and deaths. We all feed our guests to excess (not you, whichever Scandinavian country it is that makes guests wait in the other room while you have dinner). We all make liquor from anise.
The thing I’ve noticed is people who don’t have much, don’t really care if everyone around is the same. When they see others who are better off, suddenly they become dissatisfied.
It is same for everyone not just poor (instagram exists)
Moreover, we were like this even in 2000 BC
Never trust an addict. You might love them, they might be family, but their drug of choice will always be more important than you.
Only commit one crime at a time. Make sure you don’t have a headlight or turn signal out or speed if you’ve got something in the car you’re not supposed to. Being a person of color counts as a crime if you live in the south or a large city.
Authority must be questioned. Just because they’re your boss, a cop, or a politician doesn’t make them automatically right or justified. This also extends to subject matter experts whose qualifications, methodologies, and other bona fides should be interrogated.
You will have regrets for some of the things you didn’t do, but also some of the things you did. Choose the exciting risk over the boring comfort and you’ll have fewer.
You will have regrets for some of the things you didn’t do, but also some of the things you did. Choose the exciting risk over the boring comfort and you’ll have fewer.
This last line is such good advice
Life is essentially a sandbox video game. There’s no right way to play the game and you don’t have to do what others are doing - you can do your own thing. If you do what everyone else does you get what everyone else has. Do you want that? I don’t.
More specifically, life is a rogue-like. You get what you get and have to try to make the most of it. You might beat a very difficult stage and get a shot reward for it and that’s just the luck of the roll. Some will get lucky with a legendary that makes their run very easy. You likely won’t and still need to carry on even if you get an anti-synergy. No one is coming to help, this is for you to do.
More specifically, Binding of Isaac really resonated with me and I think I took away a lot of life lessons.
Always get it in writing.
Small talk is actually really easy. Just ask questions and then questions about what you heard. Hopefully they’ll be good at conversation and ask you as well, but it’s okay to be a little one sided.
drinking and smoking is a waste. sooner you quit the better. glad i quit 20 years ago or i wouldn’t be typing this. addictions kill
Good for you (genuinely). Some folk absolutely should never touch booze. Alcoholism is hell, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
But my God, Lemmy is so puritanical these days. I’m 50, an ex-smoker, and I still enjoy the occasional drink. There’s a massive middle ground for most people.
Countless people have a normal relationship with alcohol. Personally, I have met some amazing folk and had wonderful experiences where drink has played a part.
I’m sure many of you are poised to jump in with the health risks, but honestly, don’t bother. It’s been part of enlightened societies for millennia. You can keep your few extra years at the end of a life of joyless macro-nutritional slavery. I’ll have a beer.
Why joyless? Seems like skill issue to be honest
I agree. I’ll be one year sober in 5 days :)
You don’t get to choose what happens to you in life, but you get to choose how you feel about it.
Life is short, just enjoy every bit you can.
Stoicism is good
There are always additional choices available beyond the ones presented to you. They may not be optimal, but they are yours and they are there. And a principled choice with negative consequences can still be worth it. People get emotionally invested into all sorts of stupid shit, or never question why something is the way it is, or never express curiosity for alternatives. And you simply don’t need to accept these people’s framing for anything. It is even a parenting technique using the illusion of choice on children to force a decision that was never a choice to begin with.
I have an uncle that orders stuff not on the menu. Like ordering part of one meal and part of another (e.g. if the menu had “steak and fries” and “sausages and mashed potato” he might order steak with mashed potato).
95% of the time they can make what he’s asking for, and it blows people’s minds as they don’t even realise they can do that.
Then you pay for fries and mashed potatoes but get only second
If it’s something like my example, then they will generally just charge for the main meal as swapping fries for mashed potato is pretty cost neutral. If you start adding bacon that’s a different story.
God I find it difficult enough to decide what to have just ordering of the menu without chopping and changing
It is even a parenting technique using the illusion of choice on children to force a decision that was never a choice to begin with.
I raised my children to be unafraid to question or challenge authority. And I fucking regret it. I hope they’re happy I did in ten years but it sucks right now.
There are three rules that I live by:
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Never get less than twelve hours sleep
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Never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city
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and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body.
Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese.
12 hours? I am getting 9 hours and already feel like I have little time after work
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As a white man, even when I’ve got it rough, my life is 20 times easier than if I was anything else. Women can’t even walk down the street without at least the thought a man they walk by might suddenly rape them. A black man can’t walk down the street without worrying about a cop deciding it’s their day to die. Meanwhile, I can walk down the street and not worry about a damn thing other than my heart rate.
It pains me daily that I can’t fix it. It pains me more that men that look just like me have done those awful things and will do those awful things and I’m looked down on by everyone that isn’t a straight white man because of it. And I’m still better off than the vast majority of folks, even though I have trouble paying rent most months.
So, the life lesson I’ve learned? Don’t leave the apartment. Seems to work pretty well for me.
Real heart wrenching moment realizing women fearing being murdered on their walk home is a euphemism for being raped. They’d rather describe being stabbed and mugged.
Being aware of it is the first step to actually helping a little bit. e.g. I’ll cross to the other side of the street if I am walking past a woman at night, but even just not being a total arsehole puts you in the top 50% of the male population.
The assertion that women can’t even walk down the street without thinking that a man they pass might suddenly rape them is an extraordinary generalisation. Of course, women have legitimate reasons to be conscious of their personal safety, and sexual violence is a serious problem. But there’s a difference between acknowledging that reality and suggesting that women live in a constant state of fear whenever they leave the house. You’re presenting an extreme scenario as though it’s the universal female experience.
And the suggestion that your life is 20 times easier simply because you’re a straight white man is equally hyperbolic. Privilege isn’t a mathematical equation, and disadvantage isn’t experienced exclusively by women or ethnic minorities. Male suicide rates, loneliness, social isolation and the difficulties many men face in forming meaningful relationships are serious issues too. Men can experience profound disadvantage, vulnerability and suffering. Those things don’t disappear because they happen to be white.
None of this is to deny that women experience sexual violence, that racism exists, or that certain groups face systemic disadvantages. They do, and acknowledging those realities matters. But recognising one group’s difficulties shouldn’t require exaggerating them, diminishing another group’s struggles, or engaging in a competition over who has the hardest existence.
I also find the self-flagellation rather tiresome. You aren’t personally responsible for every terrible thing committed by another man who happens to share your skin colour. You don’t need to feel guilty for existing, nor do you need to apologise for advantages you didn’t consciously create. What you can do is recognise them, avoid dismissing other people’s experiences, and treat people as individuals.
And perhaps most importantly, stop confusing having privilege in certain respects with having an easy life. Struggling to pay your rent is a genuine hardship. Male loneliness and mental health are genuine problems. You can acknowledge those things while still recognising that other people face obstacles you don’t.
The answer isn’t to stay in your apartment. It’s to stop treating social inequality as either a reason for personal guilt or a competition in comparative misery.
I tried to reconnect with an old friend for that reason, but eventually remembered why we drifted apart. So a bit of a waste of time, but also a learning experience
when everything seems out of control you can always control sleep and nutrition and breath.
Unless you have insomnia, anorexia, and sleep apnea.
Or have fallen ill to poor
Enjoy the moment yadda yadda yeah you’re not going to remember it fondly, most likely. Even the moments I tried to allocate to permanent memory didn’t stay without significant effort. What matters is feelings of the moment and you don’t control that very often.
Understand that life is a series of experiences and you absolutely cannot predict them. Your life will be totally stagnant and then BAM you get hit with something hugely significant out of the blue.
Stop trying to optimise, the only optimisation is staying alive for the next life changing event, and it’s definitely worth the misery in between. Always.
No matter how hard things get, they’re actually easy and in no way threaten the ability to survive. The hardest thing in your life is just the current record for how good you are at getting through things. Life’s challenges are opportunities to exercise your resilience. Bad times are something to look forward to because you get to see what’s achievable when you operate at 100%.
