victorronin

I know we (Westerners) are often fascinated by Eastern philosophies and all these "sounds of clap of one hand".

However, this article crossed a line... by a mile.

"turning a steering wheel.... all need exactly the amount of energy that they need"

In theory, it's true. In practice, there are activities like "holding a cup". if you do not have enough grip, you may unfortunately spill the coffee on the floor. If you don't have enough grip while doing a sharp turn, it could be literally fatal. As a result, it is wise for the absolute majority of people in high-risk situations to exert more power than necessary. The energy investments are small, but changes in probabilities are significant.

And the rest of the article pretty much prophesies a flow slate. Yeah, in this state, things feel effortless. However, it misses two things. To learn how to get to this flow state, like a lot of people pointed out, you need TONS and TONS and TONS of practice where you exert WAY more than you minimally need. Oh... And on top of that, in the flow state, you perceive that things are effortless. And this is mostly about a perception rather than reality. Yes, if you are extremely experienced and get to flow state, you are spending less energy than an absolute beginner, but not zero... again, by a mile.

First of all, 30 is a very arbitrary deadline. I heard rumors that there is life even after age 30 :) ([cough]I am in my mid-40s[cough]).

Also, you are absolutely right; it's up to you to carve your own path. That being said, the path doesn't have to be glorious by somebody else's standard heck... it doesn't even have to be glorious by yours. However, as long as you are fine with it, who cares?

One thought, though. "I don't see any reason to take someone's best guess over mine.".

I think using black-and-white logic is detrimental. Even if people use "best guesses," the quality of these guesses (including yours) could be very different.

It's up to you to decide whether you want to climb the corporate ladder, build a business, or become a Tibetan monk. That being said, there are a lot of people who did it before you. Their advice will be imperfect, but the quality/probability of their advice will be better than that of a person who has never done it before.

Ugh... This touched a nerve. Surely, if you have a semi-unlimited amount of money (way-way more than will ever be asked from you), it's easy just to loan and forget.

I think it's a much harder game for the rest of us.

Also, it has a built-in assumption that people will self-limit what they are asking. I learned the unpleasant way that people don't. At some point in my life, I had a friend who was constantly asking for smallish amounts and conveniently forgetting to return them. Each ask for definitely in the category that I didn't care whether it was returned or not, but if you accumulate all of them, it was an amount big enough to care. After numerous unpleasant interactions with the money subject, I just decided to stop this practice.

That being said, I feel like it's critical to not become too thick-skinned. Sometimes people do need help and they are truly in a bad place and dismissing their ask just based on some other problematic person is not good.

Shameless plug.

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I have been doing security and auth for the last 20 years in different shape and form. It's a minefield. Grabbing and using some SDK for auth is simple. Making sure that you account for the whole lifecycle (identity, authentication, authorization, secrets management, secrets rotation, addressing vulnerabilities as they pop up) is incredibly complex.