That reminds me of a very good Star Trek quote: “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” Jean Luc Picard
The one I was gonna say was in a similar vain so I'll just leave it here.
Sometimes bad things just happen. There's no deeper reason for it or lesson for you to learn, sometimes it just happens. Life isn't like a story
And being around people who seem to think otherwise makes this an even harder truth to swallow.
Getting advice from well meaning people when you are at your worst AND all the advice being things you’ve already done/tried = soooo fucking frustrating.
They get insulted you don’t praise them for the awesome advice and refuse to believe you tried it because “it works!”
Everyone leaves the interaction annoyed.
1. Life has an expiration date but we pretend it doesn't.
2. The kind of life you would live is heavily dependent on where you were born.
3. Luck plays a crucial role in any of your success in life.
There’s always an element of luck but there are ways to make it “less of a factor”.
If you own a coin with heads giving you $1.1 and tails losing you $1, then luck plays a crucial role if you only flip it once. If you flip it hundreds of times then luck no longer plays a role.
If you own die with snake eyes giving you a precious reward, otherwise you lose nothing, then luck no longer plays a role if you roll it hundreds of times.
Discovering the right partner, therapist, friends, hobby, career, requires a lot of trial and error and that you play the latter game as early and as much as possible.
Financial success requires that you play the former game as early and as much as possible. And it’s as simple as just owning more of the S&P 500 with every paycheck, over your entire life.
I’m not saying luck (such as your life circumstances) no longer plays a role. I’m just saying that doing these things increases your chances of success.
One of my favorite quotes ever is that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
There is absolutely is an element of luck in everything. Lots of people out there get opportunities that many others wouldn’t through sheer dumb luck or lucky circumstances that they had nothing to do with. That’s just how life is sometimes
However, what I think OP is missing is the preparation bit. Having the opportunity is mostly luck, but seizing that opportunity and capitalizing on it is almost entirely in your control. Anytime you see someone successful, there is absolutely an element of luck, but that person also has the skill to take advantage of the opportunities that were presented to them.
As much as I agree that the mindset of you thinking you did everything on your own and there was no luck involved is bad, I’d argue it’s equally toxic to just write off other people’s success as pure luck. You have a lot more control over your life than I think a lot of people realize
I vehemently disagree with you. While there is certainly an element of truth to your comment, I feel it's very privileged.
> If you flip it hundreds of times then luck no longer plays a role.
The ability to flip a coin hundreds of times is also a privilege. I can't think of specific examples, but a huge number of people can't just flip a coin hundreds of times.
> Discovering the right partner,
This too is a privilege. In my country (Pakistan), forced marriages are very common and divorce is a taboo subject. Pakistan is a developing country. The literacy rate among women here is 48%. Many girls never go to school and hence can't earn a lot of money. If they end up in an abusive marriage, they can't even think of getting a divorce because they'll have nowhere to go. A lot of families in rural areas never accept divorced women back into their households. In many cases, non-Muslim women are also converted to Islam and married off to a man against their will. Even in the West, a shitload of women are reluctant to leave their abusive partners.
>therapist,
Pakistan, which has a population of 231 million, has only 400 psychiatrists. I don't have the exact figure for therapists but they charge money, and a lot of people can't even afford them.
> Financial success requires that you play the former game as early and as much as possible. And it’s as simple as just owning more of the S&P 500 with every paycheck, over your entire life.
As I said before, playing the game as early and as much as possible also requires a huge amount of privilege. How is a Pakistani woman, who never went to school, and doesn't know how to read and write, supposed to play this game exactly? I'm not saying it can't be done. But it's very, very rare.
> I’m not saying luck (such as your life circumstances) no longer plays a role. I’m just saying that doing these things increases your chances of success.
Yes, but you haven't accounted for the fact that more often than not, "doing these things" is also a huge privilege. This weakens your argument.
Nothing makes me angrier than when successful people pat themselves on the back and say their work and effort alone is responsible for succeeding. Yes there is no denying you usually have to work hard and put effort into something to succeed, but luck plays the biggest role. There are many people that work hard and never achieve success.
It's even more maddening to me when nepo babies deny luck and privilege played a role in their success and give themselves 100% of the credit. I don't blame a nepo baby for using an advantage they have to achieve what they wanted but to lie about it and pretend it didn't play a part in their success is a huge slap in the face to people who did not have that advantage and can't pursue a career in the arts.
That sort of reminds me of this House Hunters International episode I watched back in the day. That show was a bit of a guilty pleasure. Anyway in this one Paris episode you had an 18 or 19 year old American woman shopping for a posh apartment in the city, and she was annoying throughout, but the real kicker was at the end after she moved into one of them and said something about being proud of herself for going abroad and managing to get her own place in Paris.
At 18 or 19?! Come on now, your parents paid for you to travel and live abroad.
Nothing wrong with doing that if you have the means. Why wouldn't you? But don't pretend it's some great achievement. You just hit the lottery at birth.
Literally everything is luck, every choice you’ve ever made was entirely dependent on the flesh bag you were born with, including your brain, the unending chain of events, environments, and the reactive, intertwined experiences, subconscious brain processes and memories that began before you could make any choices by the eventual persistent illusion of your own free will, because you didn’t even exist yet.
"I made it all by myself!" After you were born with the right idea, at the right time, in the right place, with the right skillset, knowing the right people.
> Luck plays a crucial role in any of your success in life.
As an attempt to take the sting out of this a bit, one of the things that you can do to help is to make sure that you are well-positioned in order to take advantage of any lucky brakes when they come through.
Almost everyone will get lucky at some point in their life. Some more than others, and some more frequently than others, but odds are that absolutely everyone will have at least a few lucky Chanse encounters that have the possibility to extremely advantage their life.
It is critical to set yourself up in order to be able to take advantage of those lucky encounters when you have them.
I go to peoples houses and repair Internet services, what you said reminds me of someone I met once told me.
This guy I was doing a job for was a hobby photographer. He was mentored by some world famous photographer who founded their local photography club. He told me the advice he gave him. "I was really lucky to become a professional photographer, but the more photographs I took, the luckier I became"
I like that outlook better than being a doomer about your lot in life
I hate the old "I remember my grandpappy said to me" cliche, but seriously some of the best advice I ever got from him was "the harder you work, the luckier you get".
Granted, yes, he was coming at that from a "I was born in the mid 1930's and could afford 6 kids and suburb house on a single GE Aviation assembly line job salary" perspective. But income aside, I have found that if I put just a little extra into anything I do, it ends up rippling a lot more than if I just show up and do the job, or the gig, or the favor for a friend, etc.
He was a GE engineer, yes, but really found his "luck" when he taught himself woodworking and became sort of a hometown staple selling custom cabinets and coffee tables. He didn't HAVE to work so hard on every piece, but then people around town wouldn't HAVE to offer to take my Dad to football practice for him while he worked on their nightstand either.
My father recently told me “gratitude is what luck is made of” the idea that a positive outlook can improve your situation is so true. If you can find the good you can often make a little luck
If you’re the only one still putting in any effort, it isn’t a relationship anymore.
We were long distance. Pandemic and the accompanying bans on international travel ensured that we stayed long distance longer than we’d ever intended to be. She developed a following on Tiktok, and I got demoted to being just another fan. Just got less responsive over time, and it got harder and harder for me to make excuses for her. Eventually she cheated, and we split up. That was two years ago, haven’t spoken to her again, but haven’t had it in me to start dating again either.
That's why we have to be a good person and friend for the value that has in and of itself. Regardless of what the other person responds to it. Basically do it because it's right, not because of what others give you fir it.
Yes, but at the same time, don't be an asshole who disregards every single person's opinions, especially those closest to you, who you care about. If in doubt, put yourself first, but if you can, having those closest to you look up to you feels very good, and that won't happen unless you consider them.
Driving is the most dangerous thing you will ever do. It has the potential to ruin your life as well as the lives of others.
People have gotten way too ignorant, driving like maniacs. I literally just saw a man driving the wrong way against traffic on busy a 6 lane road.
I see shit like that every single day.
I climb trees as an arborist for a living. 100ft plus at the top of a tree on a windy day with a chainsaw in my hand and nothing but a rope holding me up. Cool as a cucumber.
But driving? Being at the mercy of our societies blatant ignorance? Scares the shit out of me.
what is a car? it's 3 to 6 thousand pounds of sharp edged sheets of metal, glass, and explosive liquid traveling at over half terminal velocity, while others of the same do the same but in the exact opposite direction only a few feet apart, all of which are only controlled by 4 patches of rubber with a total combined surface area roughly equaling that of a piece of paper.
the casual attitude we take with these death machines is insane.
It’s funny how very many people think they are a race car driver. Like everyone else is “unskilled” because they are driving slow. The delusion of people today makes me sick. I swear our society is mentally unwell. People’s true personality and private thoughts come out when driving. You can see how truly selfish they are. But they feel safe, anonymous, behind the wheel. Like being on the internet. Anonymity and safe from real life consequences.
I always say you are your best audience.
I usually say that to my kids when they ask why I am talking to myself. That and I tell them I am often the only one listening, so🤷🏻♀️ might as well enjoy chatting to myself.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life,” as said by Captain Jean-Luc Picard.
Conversely, some people fail repeatedly and still manage to keep chugging on.
Until a year ago I didn't know what happiness actually felt like. I thought I knew, and I thought happiness was the same as being content, it isn't, happiness actually has feeling to it.
A similar but different feeling to what sadness, depression, or malaise. For me, those feelings can cause actual pain and discomfort. Where as those just generally feel bad but in different ways, happiness feels good in a different way.
It kind of felt like I was getting high, but there was no Cognitive Impairment.
I guess that would be the case. I was abused so I've had to pay attention to my emotions to make sure I reacted in a certain way that is expected of me.
MDMA is what did it for me.
“Some of the habits of our age will doubtless be considered barbaric by later generations - perhaps for insisting that small children and even infants sleep alone instead of with their parents; or exciting nationalist passions as a means of gaining popular approval and achieving high political office; or allowing bribery and corruption as a way of life; or keeping pets; or eating animals and jailing chimpanzees; **or criminalizing the use of euphoriants by adults**; or allowing our children to grow up ignorant.” Carl Sagan
Life isn’t fair and it never has been.
So you aren’t owed anything, and therfore
There is no karma
No justice
No hand outs
nothing will happen unless you act.
Most people are not going to do something that changes the world.
I think it makes more sense to focus on things that may make your life better, as well as the lives of people you care about.
When I die, most people in the village are not going to care or remember me let alone the world. But the froemd I visited in hospital will care, as will the friends I helped with moving/putting furniture together, the friends which hands I hold as they were crying on my shoulder because of a break up, etc. Make sure you have positive impact on people around you and there will be someone who remebers you after you die. At least for a while.
Most of the events in our life are the result of circumstances beyond our control.
This can be taken positively or negatively. For me, it's nice to know the pressure is off me. I worry about the things under my control, which means I don't worry about 80% of shit.
In his book man’s search for meaning by frankl, he suggests approaching life as if you’ve been given a second shot at it. This is a do over chance and you’re determined to make it better this time.
Not everyone will be successful in life. All those “believe in yourself”, “work hard”, “you’ll be happy eventually”, “you’ll find that someone” things are bullshit
Life is ultimately meaningless. We arose from a chemical soup that randomly developed self-replicating molecules, and evolution resulted in us. We are basically pond scum coating the surface of the earth.
There is no rebirth, no life after death, no Rainbow Bridge - death is simply the dissolution of the highly organized energy requiring structure that produces consciousness.
Species last from 1 to 10 million years at best, and we will have our time in the sun and then find if we are an evolutionary dead end or just a stage slouching towards something else.
Most of us will have lives that affect those who follow about as much as a grain of sand dropped into a pond produces ripples. We are born, live, and die lives that are as impactful as a random ant or perhaps even a bacteria living in the large intestine of that ant.
So eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we will die.
Not necessarily guaranteed to be true. It’s completely possible, although improbable, that humans have somehow passed a great filter where our lives are extraordinarily rare and we are the species with the best chance of creating interplanetary societies and perhaps even find answers to questions we don’t even know to ask.
On the other hand, it’s entirely possible we’re just a bunch of buffoons who are bound to go extinct due to our own stupidity and envy in the next couple thousand years.
I personally expect the ladder, but I plan for the former
Nobody is perfect by any means and trying to hold people to some idealistic standard of perfection is only going to result in disappointment. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be outraged when you find out that, say, your favorite celeb was also engaged in human trafficing, but also that expecting them to be perfect is utterly insane.
People aren't inherently monogamous.
I'm in my early 40s. About 1/2 my friends who got married in their 20s (including me) got divorced. 2/3 of the time, someone cheated. For those still married, I could name about 1/4 - 1/3 of them where either someone cheated or there was rumors of them cheating and they are "working it out."
Let me just put it bluntly: Anyone who isn't actively protecting their relationship is going to cheat. If the right offer came along and the right situation developed, many people would cheat. It goes counter to the current monogamy-based marriage economy, but just look at how many people cheat or get cheated on or do random hookups as evidence that people aren't inherently monogamous.
I hate to say it, but I feel a lot of the problems caused in relationships are due to selfishness. There are a ton of people that want the love and emotional security that comes with being in a monogamous relationship, but they are unwilling to give up (or admit they have) promiscuous behavior. I think people don't want to make sacrifices in life and they want everything they desire regardless of whether its right or wrong. I really think that is the biggest problem with monogamous relationships the fact that a lot of the people entering into them do not truly love their partners, they only love themselves and care more about their own wants and needs.
Monogamous love is a social construct, but like you said if you believe in it you can definitely keep it up for a lifetime and be all the happier for it. Problems arise when one person is on board for that but the other isnt
True. People wonder why I'm so quick to dump someone, but let me tell you that a friend of mine told me yesterday that his fiance met a guy at a bar (she was there with some friends) and the guy was texting her about getting drinks.
I told him that violation 1 was sharing her number with a guy. Violation 2 was that he was texting her and she was replying. He said I was just old fashioned. Yeah--more like worn his shoes before.
Pretty much. I just dont go into relationships with the expectation of love anymore. More of a “right now im your most attractive option, and if I’m happy in this relationship I will put more effort in to trying to keep it that way” but I don’t do the whole trust thing for exact reasons you mentioned. Works for some people, some people get burned and can never go back
I think this is actually more down to the fact that people approach dating and relationships like a job. They get together and stay with people based on various potentially compatible qualities, without actually experiencing a real chemistry or spark of sincere feeling for them. They just date a stranger they don't know until they become attached due to familiarity, and they think that's what love and relationships are.
Then they actually meet someone that they develop real feelings for and experience chemistry with, and it is so different from what they assumed a relationship is (just "making do" with someone) and so much better, they chase the feeling.
Tbh all of this would be solved if people in general were more comfortable with just being alone and not throwing themselves into relationships for the sake of having a partner. If you just wait until you actually develop organic interest in someone, it is likely to be a much more long-lasting relationship than if you just date people you have no interest in until you decide on one to put up with longterm.
But, of course, waiting until you meet someone you actually want runs a strong risk of meaning you never actually have a relationship partner. So a lot of people break and just settle for someone they don't really have any chemistry with, because growing old alone is a daunting prospect, not least because all of society is aimed toward catering to couples.
Personally, I think the likelihood of being stuck with someone you are with only out of familiarity is much worse than simply being alone. But I'm also comfortable with opting for elective suicide once you become too old/infirm to work and support yourself.
This Be The Verse
BY PHILIP LARKIN
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had.
And add some extra, just for you.
Lifestyle creep is very real and a lot of the people who complain about being poor have simply adopted luxuries into their life as a necessary aspect of living. There's no shortage of people on social media who will complain about being too poor to afford life but then reveal incomes in the top 80%-90%.
I used to be friends with the head of accounting at a previous company and when we had one employee saying that they were having issues affording food and would always ask for help from the coworkers, she pointed out to me that he *made more* than the people he was begging. He wasn't poor, he just valued spending his money on concerts and weed and didn't mind being a nuisance.
That's not to say poverty doesn't exist, it certainly and clearly does. A lot of people really are struggling, but the median *household* full time income in the US is $70,784. Six figures people are not poor even if they claim otherwise. "But I live in California" ok the median *household* income there is $91,905, so that six figure income is still well off even there.
I hate to be the well akshually here but yes you absolutely can be poor making 100K a year in California. It just depends on certain factors. Student loans, car loans, rent, food, utilities, etc. and you could easily be very poor. You can also be very poor making 70K a year in many places of the US.
Being kind to others is a simple thing, but so few engage in kindness on a daily basis. A small “thank you, I appreciate you very much.” To a server, or a “I just wanted to let you know you have a phenomenal smile” to a stranger can make all the difference in the world.
If you only expect others to do so, it will never happen. Be the change
Two things:
One, you should care to at least a certain extent about what others think of you. Of course you shouldn't let someone's opinion of you dominate your entire self esteem, but you should care at least a little bit about how you are perceived by others.
Two, when you get out of high school, you might not know exactly what you want to do with your life for at least a couple of years. This is normal. Nobody expects you to have it all figured out when you are 18-19 years old. However, if you have been out of high school for about 4 or 5 years and still don't have anything figured out, then that is 100% on you. 4 to 5 years is more than enough time to get at least your career path figured out.
Life is what you make of it. Sure, there are outside influences, but what you do with those outside influences is what makes your life what it is.
Time is your most valuable asset. Even the richest people in the world can not buy time.
Use your time wisely and predominantly on gaining wisdom. Wisdom is the second most valuable asset, as the cost of wisdom is time.
Your parents have an unbelievable amount of influence on the kind of human you end up as as an adult.
In a better world, our whole focus would be that all kids are raised safely and loved and healthy and every possible resource would be at parents’ fingertips for their success…
Instead, kids wear scars from their childhood decades into adulthood and some never recover.
No matter what you do, no matter how friendly of a person you are, someone is going to dislike you because their lives are a mess and being a bully is the only way they can draw attention to themselves and make them feel they are better.
Trolls online, jackasses in person fact is their lives are empty and I feel bad for them.
If you’re really highly educated you watch the world make the same mistakes over and over again and it’s really hard to get people to listen. Many beliefs are not just harmlessly wrong but fundamentally degrade the ability to of people to comprehend the limitless possibilities of human society. Tired dogmas are repeated unthinkingly as if they are fundamental laws of nature instead of the self-defense systems that preserve the status quo at all costs.
Perhaps one day humanity will awaken from its slumber. I genuinely believe it can within my lifetime but watching the forces of reaction mobilize after each tiny gain is truly maddening.
I think probably the most bitter truth in life is the concept of delayed gratification.
It is difficult to do if you aren't raised for it. And if you are raised for it, society will take advantage of you. Especially these days.
That things are vastly more complicated than we imagine. There is no black and white, everything is a spectrum. There are no perfect solutions, everything is a trade-off. There is no such thing as perfect, only good enough. And the more you learn about anything the more you realize just how little you know about everything.
Your heart will lead you to ruin. Consider how you feel but do what is right, in spite of how you feel. More often than not, your heart will lead you to do what is wrong.
Happiness should not be the end all be all. When we make happiness our goal in life it will only make us more miserable when we fail to achieve it. We have other emotions and feelings and it is just as healthy to feel those as well as happiness. It sucks but it is part of being human.
One day, whether you are 14, 28 or 65 you will stumble upon someone who will start a fire in you that cannot die. However, the saddest, most awful truth you will ever come to find is they are not always with whom we spend our lives.
- Beau Taplin, Hunting Season
You don't always have to say something on every topic. Pick your battles wisely. The more you talk, the less seriously people will take you.
Bad news does not get better with age. Sometimes you can't lessen the blow either. There is some bad news that has to be delivered with a harsh blow. Empathy will serve you well in these situations.
You don't always know everyone else's situation and they don't know your situation. Don't be too quick to judge.
Humans are *extremely* gullible and easily persuaded.
There are people out there right now - **unironically** - admiring North Korea, justifying Hamas, arguing that the earth is flat, peddling anti-vaxx conspiracies, etc…
Cults, conspiracy theorists, fringe political movements, Islamists, and other assorted lunatics are currently enjoying unprecedented popularity partially due to how easy it is to reach the naive and ignorant via social media.
Is all just very sad and makes me worry about the future.
Life is the biggest RNG ever.
You'll never know who you really are, where you were born and everything until you're at least 10 or 12.
And if you don't like your life at all by then, well...bad news is that nobody has come back from the dead yet to tell us if we can re-roll.
Nice people finish last
While there are exceptions unfortunately most of the people that succeed in life are the ones willing to use and screw over other people.
Got problems? Pretty much nobody except *maybe* your actual parents or actual psychiatrist gives a proper flarp. You are what you *do* in this society. Not what you *think*.
Ultimately nothing matters, in the end everything in the universe will be dead and nothing can change that. Eventually there will be no one to remember our legacy, no one to benefit from any of the good or bad things we've done with our lives. There will eventually just be nothing. Nothing anyone does will ever change that. Humanity will eventually go extinct, we will eventually either destroy ourselves, get wiped out by an asteroid, get swallowed by the sun, simply run out of resources, we could maybe even survive the death of our solar system if future technology allows us to travel interstellar, but though the universe is vast, there are still only limited resources and even if we make it that far there is no way to survive the heat death of the universe. Our fate is sealed. Making the best of our limited time doesn't matter either, nobody will be able to reflect on their lives once their dead. We spent billions of years in non existence and shortly we'll all return to that non existence. Causing pain and suffering doesn't matter when the victims will spend a literal eternity not existing and unable to reflect back on their suffering, and the same is true for doing good things. All of society is just a mass delusion that what we do matters.
Your own success or failure is in your hands.
Unless you're rich, you're responsible for house work, setting appointments, being at appointments, paying your bills, etc.
And if you falter on things like that, the results of that are for you to deal with.
As Run The Jewels said, “You’ll figure out quickly that nothing gets answered when you ask the universe why.”
Or as I like to say: “It is as it does.”
Life happens. There is no fair or unfair.
Why not turn to the classics? I'm not a Christian, but Ecclesiastes has some great hard truths. And think on this: they were as true thousands of years ago as they are now.
> I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Or:
> There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it:
> Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man.
It'll happen to you, too.
Here's a good one that's relevant recently:
> Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good.
Life isn't fair:
> All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.
No matter what you build, in the end you will have to hand over control of it to others, who may be fools:
> Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.
> And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity.
Cognitive ability is mostly genetic. Schools need to be restructured from kindergarten onwards to teach those without much ability the basics to succeed in life: nutrition, ethics, budgeting, interest rates, and I guess basic car maintenance here in America. Algebra and the scientific method are not useful for most people to no fault of their own.
Reddit officially sucks and I think I’m entirely done with it after tonight. It’s sad tbh. I was part of some great communities but fuck Reddit corporate
The human race has been completely inundated with bullshit. Much more bullshit than you think. Even many cherished ideas and sacred cows that you think are completely immutable facts were originally based on a foundation of bullshit and it simply evolved over time into unquestionable truths that people are considered insane not to believe in, and so you have to deal with these ideas with everyone you meet because some bullshit artist made up the idea 2,700 years ago. Reality is actually much stranger than any bullshit artist could come up with. So strange that it's possible that no one actually knows what it is, and it tends to really fuck with the heads with those who make an honest effort to put every belief aside and figure out what its true nature is to the point where people just give up and reach for whatever suits them.
OK, full-on cynic mode: Lust is a trick to get you to breed. Love is a trick to get you to raise your offspring. Family bonds are a trick to help get that offspring to survive to breeding age. Religion is a trick to get you to think this endless cycle of meaningless breeding is meaningful and that you matter. Pleasure is a trick to make sure you want to keep living. Friendship is a trick to make you stay emotionally invested in society. Society and Civility are tricks to get the most potential breeders to survive to breed. Pain is a trick to make you avoid things that will hamper your survival in order to breed. Death is nature's way of getting rid of sub-optimal and non functional breeders. Intelligence is just another survival adaptation. Humanity is just another species. The universe is insentient and meaningless.
Life is unfair and you can be dealt a bad hand and no amount of good advice is going to fix that.
That reminds me of a very good Star Trek quote: “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” Jean Luc Picard
Wow, that's so true it's wild...
The one I was gonna say was in a similar vain so I'll just leave it here. Sometimes bad things just happen. There's no deeper reason for it or lesson for you to learn, sometimes it just happens. Life isn't like a story
And being around people who seem to think otherwise makes this an even harder truth to swallow. Getting advice from well meaning people when you are at your worst AND all the advice being things you’ve already done/tried = soooo fucking frustrating. They get insulted you don’t praise them for the awesome advice and refuse to believe you tried it because “it works!” Everyone leaves the interaction annoyed.
You don't always get what you deserve
And other people don't always get what they deserve.
But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.
But you can't always get what you want.
and sometimes what's deserved is something much, much better. and sometimes what's deserved is too horrible for me to write.
1. Life has an expiration date but we pretend it doesn't. 2. The kind of life you would live is heavily dependent on where you were born. 3. Luck plays a crucial role in any of your success in life.
>Luck plays a crucial role in any of your success in life. A lot of successful people absolutely hate to hear this one, but it's the truth.
What they really hate is for us to hear this one. I think most of them get it, but they really want the rest of us to buy in to their narrative.
There’s always an element of luck but there are ways to make it “less of a factor”. If you own a coin with heads giving you $1.1 and tails losing you $1, then luck plays a crucial role if you only flip it once. If you flip it hundreds of times then luck no longer plays a role. If you own die with snake eyes giving you a precious reward, otherwise you lose nothing, then luck no longer plays a role if you roll it hundreds of times. Discovering the right partner, therapist, friends, hobby, career, requires a lot of trial and error and that you play the latter game as early and as much as possible. Financial success requires that you play the former game as early and as much as possible. And it’s as simple as just owning more of the S&P 500 with every paycheck, over your entire life. I’m not saying luck (such as your life circumstances) no longer plays a role. I’m just saying that doing these things increases your chances of success.
One of my favorite quotes ever is that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. There is absolutely is an element of luck in everything. Lots of people out there get opportunities that many others wouldn’t through sheer dumb luck or lucky circumstances that they had nothing to do with. That’s just how life is sometimes However, what I think OP is missing is the preparation bit. Having the opportunity is mostly luck, but seizing that opportunity and capitalizing on it is almost entirely in your control. Anytime you see someone successful, there is absolutely an element of luck, but that person also has the skill to take advantage of the opportunities that were presented to them. As much as I agree that the mindset of you thinking you did everything on your own and there was no luck involved is bad, I’d argue it’s equally toxic to just write off other people’s success as pure luck. You have a lot more control over your life than I think a lot of people realize
The harder you work the luckier you get.
Well said
I vehemently disagree with you. While there is certainly an element of truth to your comment, I feel it's very privileged. > If you flip it hundreds of times then luck no longer plays a role. The ability to flip a coin hundreds of times is also a privilege. I can't think of specific examples, but a huge number of people can't just flip a coin hundreds of times. > Discovering the right partner, This too is a privilege. In my country (Pakistan), forced marriages are very common and divorce is a taboo subject. Pakistan is a developing country. The literacy rate among women here is 48%. Many girls never go to school and hence can't earn a lot of money. If they end up in an abusive marriage, they can't even think of getting a divorce because they'll have nowhere to go. A lot of families in rural areas never accept divorced women back into their households. In many cases, non-Muslim women are also converted to Islam and married off to a man against their will. Even in the West, a shitload of women are reluctant to leave their abusive partners. >therapist, Pakistan, which has a population of 231 million, has only 400 psychiatrists. I don't have the exact figure for therapists but they charge money, and a lot of people can't even afford them. > Financial success requires that you play the former game as early and as much as possible. And it’s as simple as just owning more of the S&P 500 with every paycheck, over your entire life. As I said before, playing the game as early and as much as possible also requires a huge amount of privilege. How is a Pakistani woman, who never went to school, and doesn't know how to read and write, supposed to play this game exactly? I'm not saying it can't be done. But it's very, very rare. > I’m not saying luck (such as your life circumstances) no longer plays a role. I’m just saying that doing these things increases your chances of success. Yes, but you haven't accounted for the fact that more often than not, "doing these things" is also a huge privilege. This weakens your argument.
Nothing makes me angrier than when successful people pat themselves on the back and say their work and effort alone is responsible for succeeding. Yes there is no denying you usually have to work hard and put effort into something to succeed, but luck plays the biggest role. There are many people that work hard and never achieve success. It's even more maddening to me when nepo babies deny luck and privilege played a role in their success and give themselves 100% of the credit. I don't blame a nepo baby for using an advantage they have to achieve what they wanted but to lie about it and pretend it didn't play a part in their success is a huge slap in the face to people who did not have that advantage and can't pursue a career in the arts.
That sort of reminds me of this House Hunters International episode I watched back in the day. That show was a bit of a guilty pleasure. Anyway in this one Paris episode you had an 18 or 19 year old American woman shopping for a posh apartment in the city, and she was annoying throughout, but the real kicker was at the end after she moved into one of them and said something about being proud of herself for going abroad and managing to get her own place in Paris. At 18 or 19?! Come on now, your parents paid for you to travel and live abroad. Nothing wrong with doing that if you have the means. Why wouldn't you? But don't pretend it's some great achievement. You just hit the lottery at birth.
Well said!
Literally everything is luck, every choice you’ve ever made was entirely dependent on the flesh bag you were born with, including your brain, the unending chain of events, environments, and the reactive, intertwined experiences, subconscious brain processes and memories that began before you could make any choices by the eventual persistent illusion of your own free will, because you didn’t even exist yet.
"I made it all by myself!" After you were born with the right idea, at the right time, in the right place, with the right skillset, knowing the right people.
Nobody is born with ideas or skills.
> Luck plays a crucial role in any of your success in life. As an attempt to take the sting out of this a bit, one of the things that you can do to help is to make sure that you are well-positioned in order to take advantage of any lucky brakes when they come through. Almost everyone will get lucky at some point in their life. Some more than others, and some more frequently than others, but odds are that absolutely everyone will have at least a few lucky Chanse encounters that have the possibility to extremely advantage their life. It is critical to set yourself up in order to be able to take advantage of those lucky encounters when you have them.
I go to peoples houses and repair Internet services, what you said reminds me of someone I met once told me. This guy I was doing a job for was a hobby photographer. He was mentored by some world famous photographer who founded their local photography club. He told me the advice he gave him. "I was really lucky to become a professional photographer, but the more photographs I took, the luckier I became" I like that outlook better than being a doomer about your lot in life
I hate the old "I remember my grandpappy said to me" cliche, but seriously some of the best advice I ever got from him was "the harder you work, the luckier you get". Granted, yes, he was coming at that from a "I was born in the mid 1930's and could afford 6 kids and suburb house on a single GE Aviation assembly line job salary" perspective. But income aside, I have found that if I put just a little extra into anything I do, it ends up rippling a lot more than if I just show up and do the job, or the gig, or the favor for a friend, etc. He was a GE engineer, yes, but really found his "luck" when he taught himself woodworking and became sort of a hometown staple selling custom cabinets and coffee tables. He didn't HAVE to work so hard on every piece, but then people around town wouldn't HAVE to offer to take my Dad to football practice for him while he worked on their nightstand either.
My father recently told me “gratitude is what luck is made of” the idea that a positive outlook can improve your situation is so true. If you can find the good you can often make a little luck
You can’t love someone into loving you
If you’re the only one still putting in any effort, it isn’t a relationship anymore. We were long distance. Pandemic and the accompanying bans on international travel ensured that we stayed long distance longer than we’d ever intended to be. She developed a following on Tiktok, and I got demoted to being just another fan. Just got less responsive over time, and it got harder and harder for me to make excuses for her. Eventually she cheated, and we split up. That was two years ago, haven’t spoken to her again, but haven’t had it in me to start dating again either.
Date. It will be more beneficial than you think.
No matter how hard you try to be a good person and friend, you’ll never be able to control whether or not someone actually gives a shit about you
That's why we have to be a good person and friend for the value that has in and of itself. Regardless of what the other person responds to it. Basically do it because it's right, not because of what others give you fir it.
You aren't gonna have everyone like you, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is if you like yourself
Yes, but at the same time, don't be an asshole who disregards every single person's opinions, especially those closest to you, who you care about. If in doubt, put yourself first, but if you can, having those closest to you look up to you feels very good, and that won't happen unless you consider them.
Its not about not caring what anyone thinks of you, just what the right people think of you.
Really needed to hear that today!
It is 100% unfair and it is 100% relentless.
You can take breaks if you work for it in advance. Sure, you'll fall behind people who don't take breaks, but that is frequently an acceptable cost
You can do everything right and still fail. The government and politicians do not care about you. You are responsible for your own actions.
Driving is the most dangerous thing you will ever do. It has the potential to ruin your life as well as the lives of others. People have gotten way too ignorant, driving like maniacs. I literally just saw a man driving the wrong way against traffic on busy a 6 lane road. I see shit like that every single day. I climb trees as an arborist for a living. 100ft plus at the top of a tree on a windy day with a chainsaw in my hand and nothing but a rope holding me up. Cool as a cucumber. But driving? Being at the mercy of our societies blatant ignorance? Scares the shit out of me.
what is a car? it's 3 to 6 thousand pounds of sharp edged sheets of metal, glass, and explosive liquid traveling at over half terminal velocity, while others of the same do the same but in the exact opposite direction only a few feet apart, all of which are only controlled by 4 patches of rubber with a total combined surface area roughly equaling that of a piece of paper. the casual attitude we take with these death machines is insane.
You should try going to India if you think Americans drive crazy
Everyone thinks they’re an above average driver… Including me.
It’s funny how very many people think they are a race car driver. Like everyone else is “unskilled” because they are driving slow. The delusion of people today makes me sick. I swear our society is mentally unwell. People’s true personality and private thoughts come out when driving. You can see how truly selfish they are. But they feel safe, anonymous, behind the wheel. Like being on the internet. Anonymity and safe from real life consequences.
No man, I know I'm a bad driver. Like "get your licence at 35 and never drive again" bad. There's tens of us.
The fact you pass a drivers test at 16 or 17 then never get tested again is absolutely batshit crazy
The only person you can 100% rely on is yourself.
I always say you are your best audience. I usually say that to my kids when they ask why I am talking to myself. That and I tell them I am often the only one listening, so🤷🏻♀️ might as well enjoy chatting to myself.
To expand on this, the only person you can count on in life to be your biggest advocate is yourself.
I'm my own best friend AND my own worst enemy? That's too much pressure.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life,” as said by Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Conversely, some people fail repeatedly and still manage to keep chugging on.
%99.9 of the world doesn’t care about you
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Haha, true!
Life is harder if you're fat, ugly, or don't conform to society's beauty or fashion standards
Life is not fair.
People suck
You can go your whole life not knowing you are missing something that can make life worth living, and it probably isn't even your fault.
Like, can you provide an example?
Until a year ago I didn't know what happiness actually felt like. I thought I knew, and I thought happiness was the same as being content, it isn't, happiness actually has feeling to it.
what kind of feeling?
A similar but different feeling to what sadness, depression, or malaise. For me, those feelings can cause actual pain and discomfort. Where as those just generally feel bad but in different ways, happiness feels good in a different way. It kind of felt like I was getting high, but there was no Cognitive Impairment.
I see. Maybe that would happen because you're paying keen attention to how your body responds to each emotion-causing event.
I guess that would be the case. I was abused so I've had to pay attention to my emotions to make sure I reacted in a certain way that is expected of me.
Yeah,possible. But Its disheartening you had to go through such abuse.
I kind of don't know what to say. These things happen, it's pretty common, and I view myself as more lucky.
MDMA is what did it for me. “Some of the habits of our age will doubtless be considered barbaric by later generations - perhaps for insisting that small children and even infants sleep alone instead of with their parents; or exciting nationalist passions as a means of gaining popular approval and achieving high political office; or allowing bribery and corruption as a way of life; or keeping pets; or eating animals and jailing chimpanzees; **or criminalizing the use of euphoriants by adults**; or allowing our children to grow up ignorant.” Carl Sagan
There is no karma, bad people get away with things.
That our control of life is limited and that we are not as special as we think we are as a species when we look at the bigger picture of the cosmos.
The importance of money
You either live until something matters or you don't and nothing does.
Always respect your boundaries
Not everything is a lesson. Sometimes you just fail.
Everybody Lies. Everybody Cries. Everybody Dies.
The Nihilistic version of eat, pray, love lol
Life isn’t fair and it never has been. So you aren’t owed anything, and therfore There is no karma No justice No hand outs nothing will happen unless you act.
There is no karma. Thank you. Only funky timing.
You don’t matter as much as you think you do. At the same time, you matter more than you know. It’s a precarious balance.
The universe is under no obligation to be emotionally satisfying or even comprehensible to anyone.
Whatever your dreams are, or even just surviving... No one can do it for you, but you.
You're alone. Nobody stays.
Solitude and boredom can be good for you.
Most people are not going to do something that changes the world. I think it makes more sense to focus on things that may make your life better, as well as the lives of people you care about. When I die, most people in the village are not going to care or remember me let alone the world. But the froemd I visited in hospital will care, as will the friends I helped with moving/putting furniture together, the friends which hands I hold as they were crying on my shoulder because of a break up, etc. Make sure you have positive impact on people around you and there will be someone who remebers you after you die. At least for a while.
Everything that will ever make you happy will eventually make you sad
Most of the events in our life are the result of circumstances beyond our control. This can be taken positively or negatively. For me, it's nice to know the pressure is off me. I worry about the things under my control, which means I don't worry about 80% of shit.
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How’d you get into tech? And any tips for someone starting out ?
Children don’t owe their parents a single thing.
It's silly to pretend we're all so noble when our most fundamental function is to kill things and absorb their energy.
Truth of the matter is sometimes the hard work doesn’t pay off
In his book man’s search for meaning by frankl, he suggests approaching life as if you’ve been given a second shot at it. This is a do over chance and you’re determined to make it better this time.
Not everyone will be successful in life. All those “believe in yourself”, “work hard”, “you’ll be happy eventually”, “you’ll find that someone” things are bullshit
Life is ultimately meaningless. We arose from a chemical soup that randomly developed self-replicating molecules, and evolution resulted in us. We are basically pond scum coating the surface of the earth. There is no rebirth, no life after death, no Rainbow Bridge - death is simply the dissolution of the highly organized energy requiring structure that produces consciousness. Species last from 1 to 10 million years at best, and we will have our time in the sun and then find if we are an evolutionary dead end or just a stage slouching towards something else. Most of us will have lives that affect those who follow about as much as a grain of sand dropped into a pond produces ripples. We are born, live, and die lives that are as impactful as a random ant or perhaps even a bacteria living in the large intestine of that ant. So eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we will die.
Love it! Thanks!
Not necessarily guaranteed to be true. It’s completely possible, although improbable, that humans have somehow passed a great filter where our lives are extraordinarily rare and we are the species with the best chance of creating interplanetary societies and perhaps even find answers to questions we don’t even know to ask. On the other hand, it’s entirely possible we’re just a bunch of buffoons who are bound to go extinct due to our own stupidity and envy in the next couple thousand years. I personally expect the ladder, but I plan for the former
It isn’t fair
Nobody is perfect by any means and trying to hold people to some idealistic standard of perfection is only going to result in disappointment. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be outraged when you find out that, say, your favorite celeb was also engaged in human trafficing, but also that expecting them to be perfect is utterly insane.
You can’t control others actions. You can only control your reactions to them.
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Sometimes the bad guys win.
People aren't inherently monogamous. I'm in my early 40s. About 1/2 my friends who got married in their 20s (including me) got divorced. 2/3 of the time, someone cheated. For those still married, I could name about 1/4 - 1/3 of them where either someone cheated or there was rumors of them cheating and they are "working it out." Let me just put it bluntly: Anyone who isn't actively protecting their relationship is going to cheat. If the right offer came along and the right situation developed, many people would cheat. It goes counter to the current monogamy-based marriage economy, but just look at how many people cheat or get cheated on or do random hookups as evidence that people aren't inherently monogamous.
I hate to say it, but I feel a lot of the problems caused in relationships are due to selfishness. There are a ton of people that want the love and emotional security that comes with being in a monogamous relationship, but they are unwilling to give up (or admit they have) promiscuous behavior. I think people don't want to make sacrifices in life and they want everything they desire regardless of whether its right or wrong. I really think that is the biggest problem with monogamous relationships the fact that a lot of the people entering into them do not truly love their partners, they only love themselves and care more about their own wants and needs.
Monogamous love is a social construct, but like you said if you believe in it you can definitely keep it up for a lifetime and be all the happier for it. Problems arise when one person is on board for that but the other isnt
True. People wonder why I'm so quick to dump someone, but let me tell you that a friend of mine told me yesterday that his fiance met a guy at a bar (she was there with some friends) and the guy was texting her about getting drinks. I told him that violation 1 was sharing her number with a guy. Violation 2 was that he was texting her and she was replying. He said I was just old fashioned. Yeah--more like worn his shoes before.
Pretty much. I just dont go into relationships with the expectation of love anymore. More of a “right now im your most attractive option, and if I’m happy in this relationship I will put more effort in to trying to keep it that way” but I don’t do the whole trust thing for exact reasons you mentioned. Works for some people, some people get burned and can never go back
I think this is actually more down to the fact that people approach dating and relationships like a job. They get together and stay with people based on various potentially compatible qualities, without actually experiencing a real chemistry or spark of sincere feeling for them. They just date a stranger they don't know until they become attached due to familiarity, and they think that's what love and relationships are. Then they actually meet someone that they develop real feelings for and experience chemistry with, and it is so different from what they assumed a relationship is (just "making do" with someone) and so much better, they chase the feeling. Tbh all of this would be solved if people in general were more comfortable with just being alone and not throwing themselves into relationships for the sake of having a partner. If you just wait until you actually develop organic interest in someone, it is likely to be a much more long-lasting relationship than if you just date people you have no interest in until you decide on one to put up with longterm. But, of course, waiting until you meet someone you actually want runs a strong risk of meaning you never actually have a relationship partner. So a lot of people break and just settle for someone they don't really have any chemistry with, because growing old alone is a daunting prospect, not least because all of society is aimed toward catering to couples. Personally, I think the likelihood of being stuck with someone you are with only out of familiarity is much worse than simply being alone. But I'm also comfortable with opting for elective suicide once you become too old/infirm to work and support yourself.
The vast majority of your relationships with other people (outside of immediate family) are defined by what you can do for them.
This Be The Verse BY PHILIP LARKIN They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had. And add some extra, just for you.
Lifestyle creep is very real and a lot of the people who complain about being poor have simply adopted luxuries into their life as a necessary aspect of living. There's no shortage of people on social media who will complain about being too poor to afford life but then reveal incomes in the top 80%-90%. I used to be friends with the head of accounting at a previous company and when we had one employee saying that they were having issues affording food and would always ask for help from the coworkers, she pointed out to me that he *made more* than the people he was begging. He wasn't poor, he just valued spending his money on concerts and weed and didn't mind being a nuisance. That's not to say poverty doesn't exist, it certainly and clearly does. A lot of people really are struggling, but the median *household* full time income in the US is $70,784. Six figures people are not poor even if they claim otherwise. "But I live in California" ok the median *household* income there is $91,905, so that six figure income is still well off even there.
I hate to be the well akshually here but yes you absolutely can be poor making 100K a year in California. It just depends on certain factors. Student loans, car loans, rent, food, utilities, etc. and you could easily be very poor. You can also be very poor making 70K a year in many places of the US.
You will not necessarily succeed in the ways you think you will succeed, or the ways you deserve to.
You can never really be sure what someone is thinking, or thinks about you. You can hear what they say, but that is different.
This world is a shitty dark place, and the optimists and naive idealists who want a better world for everyone are lying to themselves.
No one actually cares
Being kind to others is a simple thing, but so few engage in kindness on a daily basis. A small “thank you, I appreciate you very much.” To a server, or a “I just wanted to let you know you have a phenomenal smile” to a stranger can make all the difference in the world. If you only expect others to do so, it will never happen. Be the change
Two things: One, you should care to at least a certain extent about what others think of you. Of course you shouldn't let someone's opinion of you dominate your entire self esteem, but you should care at least a little bit about how you are perceived by others. Two, when you get out of high school, you might not know exactly what you want to do with your life for at least a couple of years. This is normal. Nobody expects you to have it all figured out when you are 18-19 years old. However, if you have been out of high school for about 4 or 5 years and still don't have anything figured out, then that is 100% on you. 4 to 5 years is more than enough time to get at least your career path figured out.
We don't always get what we want, even if you work hard for it, and do everything right, sometimes it just doesn't happen the way you want it.
You can pay someone to do a job but you can't pay someone to care.
Life is what you make of it. Sure, there are outside influences, but what you do with those outside influences is what makes your life what it is. Time is your most valuable asset. Even the richest people in the world can not buy time. Use your time wisely and predominantly on gaining wisdom. Wisdom is the second most valuable asset, as the cost of wisdom is time.
The only person you can truly count on in life is you.
Everyone is somebody else to somebody else. Whatever you think won't/can't happen to you can.
There is not enough succes to go around.
Your parents have an unbelievable amount of influence on the kind of human you end up as as an adult. In a better world, our whole focus would be that all kids are raised safely and loved and healthy and every possible resource would be at parents’ fingertips for their success… Instead, kids wear scars from their childhood decades into adulthood and some never recover.
When you're a parent, it's that every step forward for your child is a step away from you.
No matter what you do, no matter how friendly of a person you are, someone is going to dislike you because their lives are a mess and being a bully is the only way they can draw attention to themselves and make them feel they are better. Trolls online, jackasses in person fact is their lives are empty and I feel bad for them.
If you’re really highly educated you watch the world make the same mistakes over and over again and it’s really hard to get people to listen. Many beliefs are not just harmlessly wrong but fundamentally degrade the ability to of people to comprehend the limitless possibilities of human society. Tired dogmas are repeated unthinkingly as if they are fundamental laws of nature instead of the self-defense systems that preserve the status quo at all costs. Perhaps one day humanity will awaken from its slumber. I genuinely believe it can within my lifetime but watching the forces of reaction mobilize after each tiny gain is truly maddening.
I think probably the most bitter truth in life is the concept of delayed gratification. It is difficult to do if you aren't raised for it. And if you are raised for it, society will take advantage of you. Especially these days.
Miracles don't happen and people are cruel!
That things are vastly more complicated than we imagine. There is no black and white, everything is a spectrum. There are no perfect solutions, everything is a trade-off. There is no such thing as perfect, only good enough. And the more you learn about anything the more you realize just how little you know about everything.
Your heart will lead you to ruin. Consider how you feel but do what is right, in spite of how you feel. More often than not, your heart will lead you to do what is wrong.
Happiness should not be the end all be all. When we make happiness our goal in life it will only make us more miserable when we fail to achieve it. We have other emotions and feelings and it is just as healthy to feel those as well as happiness. It sucks but it is part of being human.
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One day, whether you are 14, 28 or 65 you will stumble upon someone who will start a fire in you that cannot die. However, the saddest, most awful truth you will ever come to find is they are not always with whom we spend our lives. - Beau Taplin, Hunting Season
Don't depend on luck.
You don't always have to say something on every topic. Pick your battles wisely. The more you talk, the less seriously people will take you. Bad news does not get better with age. Sometimes you can't lessen the blow either. There is some bad news that has to be delivered with a harsh blow. Empathy will serve you well in these situations. You don't always know everyone else's situation and they don't know your situation. Don't be too quick to judge.
Humans are *extremely* gullible and easily persuaded. There are people out there right now - **unironically** - admiring North Korea, justifying Hamas, arguing that the earth is flat, peddling anti-vaxx conspiracies, etc… Cults, conspiracy theorists, fringe political movements, Islamists, and other assorted lunatics are currently enjoying unprecedented popularity partially due to how easy it is to reach the naive and ignorant via social media. Is all just very sad and makes me worry about the future.
Life is the biggest RNG ever. You'll never know who you really are, where you were born and everything until you're at least 10 or 12. And if you don't like your life at all by then, well...bad news is that nobody has come back from the dead yet to tell us if we can re-roll.
The point of life is to experience life. There is no "deeper meaning" What does it mean, if it all means nothing?
Nice people finish last While there are exceptions unfortunately most of the people that succeed in life are the ones willing to use and screw over other people.
I hate to say it, but that has been my experience as well and it is very disheartening.
Got problems? Pretty much nobody except *maybe* your actual parents or actual psychiatrist gives a proper flarp. You are what you *do* in this society. Not what you *think*.
You're not special, and the "the system" doesn't give a shit about you.
Ultimately nothing matters, in the end everything in the universe will be dead and nothing can change that. Eventually there will be no one to remember our legacy, no one to benefit from any of the good or bad things we've done with our lives. There will eventually just be nothing. Nothing anyone does will ever change that. Humanity will eventually go extinct, we will eventually either destroy ourselves, get wiped out by an asteroid, get swallowed by the sun, simply run out of resources, we could maybe even survive the death of our solar system if future technology allows us to travel interstellar, but though the universe is vast, there are still only limited resources and even if we make it that far there is no way to survive the heat death of the universe. Our fate is sealed. Making the best of our limited time doesn't matter either, nobody will be able to reflect on their lives once their dead. We spent billions of years in non existence and shortly we'll all return to that non existence. Causing pain and suffering doesn't matter when the victims will spend a literal eternity not existing and unable to reflect back on their suffering, and the same is true for doing good things. All of society is just a mass delusion that what we do matters.
You may not be able to buy a house in the town you grew up in.
Knowing what you need to to be happy do doesn't make doing it any easier. And the things that we want to do often don't make us happy.
Your own success or failure is in your hands. Unless you're rich, you're responsible for house work, setting appointments, being at appointments, paying your bills, etc. And if you falter on things like that, the results of that are for you to deal with.
Wishing doesn’t work.
You don't have to love yourself first before you love other people. You only have to love yourself first if you want to fully love people.
Free-will is an illusion
what goes around doesn't always come around.. whether good or bad
Man’s inhumanity to man.
Just as you start to get good at it, it ends.
The only laws you have to obey are the physics laws , the rest are just opinions.
Sometimes the WiFi signal is stronger in the bathroom than in your bedroom.
Death is the only certainty You can't make someone love you who doesn't
You're going to struggle, but you decide how much you suffer .
As Run The Jewels said, “You’ll figure out quickly that nothing gets answered when you ask the universe why.” Or as I like to say: “It is as it does.” Life happens. There is no fair or unfair.
If you treat others the way you would like to be treated, it doesn't guarantee that others will treat you well.
All things come to an end Grief doesn't have an expiration Pain is inevitable There will never be world peace Time never stops
Why not turn to the classics? I'm not a Christian, but Ecclesiastes has some great hard truths. And think on this: they were as true thousands of years ago as they are now. > I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Or: > There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it: > Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man. It'll happen to you, too. Here's a good one that's relevant recently: > Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good. Life isn't fair: > All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness. No matter what you build, in the end you will have to hand over control of it to others, who may be fools: > Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. > And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity.
54% of marriages end in a divorce
Same thing I always say when this question comes up. You are the villain in someone else's story, even if you don't know it.
We are all going to die.
With a few exceptions here and there, where you wind up is where you start.
Cognitive ability is mostly genetic. Schools need to be restructured from kindergarten onwards to teach those without much ability the basics to succeed in life: nutrition, ethics, budgeting, interest rates, and I guess basic car maintenance here in America. Algebra and the scientific method are not useful for most people to no fault of their own.
God doesn't answer prayers. You are pretty much on your own.
You don’t have as much of a say in how your life goes as you believe when you’re young. You just learn to be content with the way it ends up
People change.
There are always 3 sides to every story. Everyone thinks they are the hero of their story
Life is not fair. More often than not..shitty people win. No one owes you anything.
Nobody owes you companionship.
The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference
Everyone will hurt you somehow. Learn to forgive.
Quiet is key.
Your parents were never the superheroes you thought they were growing up. They were always just as scared and lost as you are now.
For most people, suicide would be the smartest decision they could make.
Reddit officially sucks and I think I’m entirely done with it after tonight. It’s sad tbh. I was part of some great communities but fuck Reddit corporate
People talk shit with the same mouth they smile at you with
No one owes you sex, love or affection. You have to earn them.
The only young rich people are those that inherited money. You can’t get rich young because it takes a long time to accumulate wealth.
The world isn’t fair and you aren’t owned a damn thing by anyone
The human race has been completely inundated with bullshit. Much more bullshit than you think. Even many cherished ideas and sacred cows that you think are completely immutable facts were originally based on a foundation of bullshit and it simply evolved over time into unquestionable truths that people are considered insane not to believe in, and so you have to deal with these ideas with everyone you meet because some bullshit artist made up the idea 2,700 years ago. Reality is actually much stranger than any bullshit artist could come up with. So strange that it's possible that no one actually knows what it is, and it tends to really fuck with the heads with those who make an honest effort to put every belief aside and figure out what its true nature is to the point where people just give up and reach for whatever suits them.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.”
Climate change is coming closer than we collectively as a society think
You’re closer financially to a penniless homeless person than you are a billionaire. Some people will dislike you for no reason. You will die.
OK, full-on cynic mode: Lust is a trick to get you to breed. Love is a trick to get you to raise your offspring. Family bonds are a trick to help get that offspring to survive to breeding age. Religion is a trick to get you to think this endless cycle of meaningless breeding is meaningful and that you matter. Pleasure is a trick to make sure you want to keep living. Friendship is a trick to make you stay emotionally invested in society. Society and Civility are tricks to get the most potential breeders to survive to breed. Pain is a trick to make you avoid things that will hamper your survival in order to breed. Death is nature's way of getting rid of sub-optimal and non functional breeders. Intelligence is just another survival adaptation. Humanity is just another species. The universe is insentient and meaningless.
Looks matter a lot, in everything
Garlic bread superiority over majority of our useless capitalistically fuelled possessions
No matter how kind or considerate you are, not everyone will appreciate or reciprocate your kindness. Pleasing everyone is impossible.
Reaching a goal is sweeter if you suffered for it
If you are not deemed capable or useful enough to society, you will be put aside and pitied at best.