In reality though you may opt for a career, leave the family but fail. Or you may put your career on a lower pitch only to have your wife and you decide it won't really work out. In reality, it's more like you start to climb for a fat purple fig only to find it rotten, or just edible. At least in some of the cases, and it won't be your fault and your success depends on how you deal with the said fig. Maybe you can still climb to another?
She struggled with mental health issues and depression most of her life. She excelled academically and she was driven to write, but at the same time, she struggled with her own self. Her life is marked by several suicide attempts.
She married the poet Ted Hughes and moved around frequently during their short marriage. While she was ambitious, a deep sense of anxiety kept her from exploring and expressing her own identity through her writing.
Most of her poetry was written during a short burst of creativity, over the course of a few months, in late 1962. She died of suicide in 1963. Her famous novel, The Bell Jar, was published a month before her death. Major themes in this novel include "socially acceptable identity" and mental health. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Jar
Your criticism is a certainly correct, but would have been removed to the author of the quote. As Plath received treatment and openly discussed her mental health issues, undoubtedly she was told this many times over.
My understanding is that Ted Hughes' contribution to Plath's mental health went beyond "mov[ing] around frequently during their short marriage" [1].
> In 2017, previously unpublished letters written by Plath between 18 February 1960 and 4 February 1963 accuse Hughes of physically abusing her months before she miscarried their second child in 1961.
Hughes also began an affair with another woman, Assia Wevill, in 1962 and (apparently) had a kid with her in 1965. Plath knew about the former and committed suicide in 1963. Wevill also killed herself as well as her child with Hughes in 1969 after, you guessed it, "Hughes began affairs with Brenda Hedden, a married acquaintance who frequented their home, and Carol Orchard, a nurse 20 years his junior, whom he would later marry in 1970" [2].
It might be too reductive to say Hughes just drove two women to suicide, but it seems like we can be confident that he had, uh, extensive personal failings?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Hughes#Death_of_Sylvia_Pla...
You might find someone climbing the tree and ask them if they could tell you how they taste up top.
Sitting in the crotch of the tree lamenting your situation is a fig too. We all bite into a sour one every now and again.
For sure, however it is better to have tried and experienced than not have. I have tried and failed at picking many of those figs, and it is worth it, the good and bad. Don't stand there, give yourself a time, and then chose freely.
I happened to reconnect with a childhood friend in that crowd of 15,000+ and that got the ball rolling.
"Life is funny. You start out with limitless potential, but time is always shaving away the possibilities. Every choice you make is the choice not to do a thousand other things. What's important, when all is said and done, is that you made a difference. Your choices, and everything undone, have to mean something. Otherwise, what is the point?"
We branch out, but we ultimately keep heading towards the very same outcome.
The best I've got these days is that I suspect none of it means anything. But I hope I'm wrong.
"For although in regard of that which is already past there may be some inequality, yet that time which is now present and in being, is equal unto all men. And that being it which we part with whensoever we die, it doth manifestly appear, that it can be but a moment of time, that we then part with. For as for that which is either past or to come, a man cannot be said properly to part with it. For how should a man part with that which he hath not? ... that life which any the longest liver, or the shortest liver parts with, is for length and duration the very same, for that only which is present, is that, which either of them can lose, as being that only which they have; for that which he hath not, no man can truly be said to lose.
-- Marcus Aurelius, http://gutenberg.org/files/2680/2680-h/2680-h.htm#link2H_4_0...
"XorNot" is a title inhabited by many different people over time: the person that held that title this time last year is not you, and the "XorNot" of today will give way tomorrow to yet another person. Each can only be properly considered in the context of the situations they inherited and those left for their successors.
14. Even if you were to live for three thousand years or ten times as long, you should still remember this, that no one loses any life other than the one that he is living, nor does he live any life other than the one that he loses, so the shortest life and the longest amount to the same. For the present is equal for all, and what is passing must be equal also, so what can be lost is shown to be nothing more than a moment; and no one could lose either the past or the future, for how could he be deprived of what he does not possess? So always bear in mind these two points: firstly that all things are alike in nature from all eternity and recur in cycles, and it therefore makes no difference whether one sees the same spectacle for a hundred years or two hundred or for time everlasting; and secondly that the longest-lived and the earliest to die suffer an equal loss; for it is solely of the present moment that each will be deprived, if it is really the case that this is all he has and a person cannot lose what he does not have.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/meditations-97801995...
My one life advice: Don't search for greatness, search for peace.
It was the initial stage where I felt I had a death sentence that shifted my outlook on life. When you think you're going to die you re-evaluate some things. I looked at my life, thought about what I'd regret, and made 5 year plans to get things on track. I'm now in the habit of setting plans for 5 years to ensure I don't regret the life I do have.
And I hope you find that path too.
But we’re 29, not 49 or even 39. There’re still figs on the tree.
That said, time is ticking and while it isn't too late, now is the best time to start!
To be honest I've felt like this since I was 18 and it never went away. What made you realize this wasn't the case?
42 here, already two major career changes. And I am glad I made both changes.
Beautiful, this is the explanation I was looking for because whenever I'd hear that "it's never too late," I just felt like that enabled procrastination, but your explanation solidified that life is not long, but rather it is short indeed. It's true that it's not too late for many of your future opportunities, but eventually, time will run out.
They might think they do, but life never unfolds itself according to our plans.
Never compare to others. You don't know what they're going through, or what they're going to go through.
It took me until my mid 30s to realize just how impossible the idea of "having life figured out" really is.
There are other cultural and societal factors at play, but the greater longevity and better medical care have opened up the time period for the expectations that previous generations had for their 20s.
There may be future interventions that correct for that, but generally, quality of ova starts declining after 30 and much more so after 35.
Not to mention the energy to keep up with little ones, and if you ever want the option of more than 2 kids. And of course if you’re 30+ when you have kids, and your kids are 30+ when they have kids, you are pushing 65 to 70+ which makes playing with the grandkids not as much fun and you’re soon to be less of an asset in terms of help and possibly a liability for your kids due to declining health.
On the other hand, you may have increased your chances at having a higher paying career, but I suspect, for many, the extra savings don’t quite make up for the trade offs.
I had mine in 30 to 35 range, but if I could go back in time and had found my spouse, I think I would have opted to have them in 25 to 30 range. However, no one in my social circles has kids in their 20s and barely anyone is married by 30 so we also may have been socially isolated if we had chosen to do that.
But I try to think back to what I did in my 25 to 30 range that I thought was worth delaying starting a family and I can’t come up with anything, other than being a little bit further ahead in the rat race. But all the other rats are thinking the same thing, so who is really benefiting?
It also seems useful to become a parent with that extra decade of life experience. And if we incentivize exercise in the later years, it could offset the "feeling tired at 70" thing? My fiancé's grandpa runs marathons and honestly has more energy than I do!
The bottleneck is the same as it is for any issue regarding children.
The prospective mother must be willing.
I also don’t think you’re thinking about things too soon. We’re all slightly different. Also don’t make decisions for other people by writing them off. Just because they present one way doesn’t make that the sum total of who they are. You’ll need to have relationships in order to meet someone to have kids with.
Since then I've been a teacher. Looking at pivoting into finance in Ireland/Europe (with a masters in Quantitative Finance) next year; was planning on doing it this year but, y'know, corona kinda destroyed finance jobs over there and I'd need a work visa (thankfully it's a high need field so it's a bit easier)...
And, it has to be a single specialty. In my particular case, it was hard to accept that I couldn’t be both a successful programming language designer and a successful game developer.
Why not? Jonathan Blow seems to be making a pretty good run at it.
See also this webcomic:
Should you really dig in and focus on mobile, web, server, game, firmware? If so, should you focus on one language?
I don't so much question paths in my life as I feel very lucky to have ended up where I am. I do question on a daily basis, whether I should stop learning and adopting new technologies, and focus on ONE domain for the rest of my life.
It seems I am destined to be a jack of all trades, master of none, if I let life continue to unfold as it has over the last 10 years, bumping around as needed from my employers to new or different domains.
Jordan Peterson Pick Your Sacrifice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5--W9mhC4zA
I know there are people who hate on him for basically misinterpretations of things he has said regarding transgender issues.
But then on top of that, there are right wing people that hate him equally much and think he's basically a nonsense-spouting sycophant.
I guess listening to the things he has to say, I think they are on par with the more useful things I ever heard from a professor at university.
Anyway, he seems to be someone people love to hate.
So I err on the side of caution by assuming he isn't worth listening to. He also reeks of certainty, like I'm wrong just for asking what the fuck he's trying to tell me because it's so obvious... to him.
I can possibly sift through YouTube to get to the videos where he claims these things, but it will not be the most palatable of chores.
I guess it seems completely unremarkable that someone would have useful things to say in one regard while having less useful things to say in another.
Also I guess I view him in the context of a university professor who wrote a book and has some lectures online, not in the context of the mega-celebrity he became. I think being catapulted to fame like that is bound to mess up pretty well everyone and probably also muddy their message quite a bit.
I mean, at its core none of the things Peterson has to say are really all that revolutionary, they are pretty basic life advice. "Take responsibility for your life", etc.
Obviously there is an unmet need for that basic life advice because people (particularly young men) ate it up.
One article complained about him relaying a story of getting a kid to eat. My only conclusion is the person that was complaining doesn't have kids, because his story was extremely relatable, and I'd guess basically universal among parents.
Anyway, yes if you try putting Jordan Peterson up on a pedestal, he'll probably fall off it. If you view him as someone that maybe could give some good advice while you'd otherwise just be killing time anyway, I guess I think he holds up to that metric pretty well.
No, he has a long established pattern of attracting a crowd by talking about basic self-help and then sneak in politically charged ideas like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th... , "people are lobsters", and plenty of sexism.
> I view him in the context of a university professor who wrote a book and has some lectures online, not in the context of the mega-celebrity he became.
You can't pick and choose the context: a person is responsible for they say in public.
Besides, even as a university professor a person is responsible for speaking honestly.
> being catapulted to fame ... muddy their message quite a bit.
No, he was playing the same tricks since the beginning. There are a lot of old videos on youtube.
Given the yard stick / metric you are measuring him with there would be teeming millions who would qualify -- anyone who is capable of a half decent parenting. In the kind of life advice he offers, Peterson feels quite unremarkable.
I live in the US and not that interested in US politics, so no dog in the fight -- just an fly on the wall observation.
I don't know, I've listened to some of his stuff and what doesn't come across as simplistic platitudes has baked in assumptions that seem unnecessary, like defining truth to be an evolutionarily useful principle.
That he inspires people doesn't surprise me, the religion of my youth did the same and was more hokum than Peterson's mythological substrate mappings.
But it's still a good idea to clean your room.
He's good at manipulating the crowds - the amount of downvotes that you are getting say a lot.
> "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."