When you get to the end of your life, old and tired, and you look back on all the things you did and time you spent, what will make you say: yes, I did well and it was all worth it?
Put another way, if you have an extra hour tomorrow with nothing planned, what could you do with yourself to later say: I’m glad I did that? What if you have an unplanned day? Or a week? Does how you use that time change? Would the choice of how to use that time be more or less deliberate, depending on how long you have? Does that choice define you as a person?
lasting contributions to open-source software
Definitely a worthwhile thing to do, but software is so ephemeral that it’s hard to say “lasting.” If I died tomorrow, all my projects would likely be irrelevant and forgotten within a few years. Though some projects have stronger lasting power than others. Now I’m curious what the oldest line of code in the FreeBSD kernel is.
Sorry, not trying to be negative on your accomplishments. Just been thinking about this lately.
How to make lasting contributions that will stand the test of time:
- Create a new project from scratch that would have wide-ranged-but-niche applications (i.e. some app, firmware, or library that fills an important-but-unrecognized niche)
- Design the code to be intuitive to you and you alone, prioritize functionality over readability, forgo documentation, and abstract as much as possible. You can be the only contributor during the developmental stage
- Go public and get as many people as possible to adopt your project
- Continue maintaining until you die
- Now companies and people that have unknowingly become heavily reliant on this are going to scramble to continue maintaining it, but will only be willing to create surface-level bandaid patches and will avoid making any more fundamental changes for fear of breaking literally everything everywhere because now the stakes are too high to take a fuck-it-we-ball approach. This is why it’s important to be niche: it reduces the chances of an actual tech wizard coming in and reverse-engineering the whole thing.
- Voila, your contributions shall remain for all time, like some sort of mystical wizard’s tome on whose magic the world continues to spin
Yeah I maintain a 30 year old legacy codebase how could you tell
That hour would need to be filled with whatever my conscience dictated. And if I never had yours like that, my conscience would dictate that I rearrange things until it did.
I hope that at the end of my life I can look back and say that I followed my conscience.
The four kids I raised after their mother passed. I did a good job. They all will be hanging out with me (and each other) for a week in December for the holidays.
From one father of four to the next: Damn good job!!
There are some philosophical undertones here, and I’m wondering what you really want to ask. Could you elaborate?
I don’t know what words might better express what I’m thinking. So I’ll tell a story. I was raised religious, in a demanding Christian sect. There were a lot of expectations and judgement about what it takes to be a good person. Now, I’ve arrived at a point in my life where I reject the religious ideology and the conception of what it means to be a good person. I think that life is due to chance, that life is brief and temporary and that meaning is created only in my mind. I’m married and have kids. That gave me a lot of meaning, but my wife and I have drifted apart and my kids are mostly grown and are mostly independent. What now? I enjoy sports, and VR gaming and public speaking. I also tried cannabis (legal in my country) and it’s fun. Is there any reason I shouldn’t use it often? Is there something more important I should do with my life? Will I regret later doing things that are fun now?
Maybe none of it matters, but I’m curious what other people think and feel and believe. I’m happy to hear philosophical views, but I’m really curious about how others live.
Thank you for your clarity. I don’t know how common it is for people to directly question existence, social contracts, our roles and purposes, but I imagine your thoughts resonate with many of us; the experiences and perceptions you shared are deeply familiar to me.
Since your story helped me understand where you’re at, I will reciprocate with a story for you.
I never quite succeeded at living a life that resulted in genuine acceptance from relatives, religious circles, authority figures , or peers. I tried to fit in for awhile, and to even please others a few times, but it isn’t who I am and it shows. This disconnect allowed me to metaphorically wander into the wilds.
For over 30 years, I explored almost all big religions and some philosophies, and by the time I was in my late 40’s I finally embraced my atheism with a growing sense of liberation, although I don’t mention it around theists. I think it scares them, and who am I to yank away anyone’s security blanket?
I’ve lived a long and unconventional life with my own credo. Sometimes this meant fine tuning who is in my life, and who is excluded, which can be controversial - but for me it’s been a relief. Also, controversy is just one spice in a feast.
I agree with you that institutions or culture leaders or mythological deities can’t dictate what is good. My direction has always come from within because that’s the loudest voice*, and when I need to be reminded of what that means, I focus on the REAL life around me.
I don’t look for a purpose or a life well-lived because humans are no different than fish or rabbits or deer … except for how we lost our way. Seriously, look at the animals; this is what I mean by REAL life. They don’t waste their energy striving for someone else’s declared ideal. They don’t worry about yesterday or tomorrow. They don’t get wound up in possible outcomes or fake rewards. They just … are.
As you stated, we are briefly here on an insignificant rock spinning around in a tiny solar system of a regular galaxy, in one universe among countless universes, and we weren’t deliberately placed here to hoard crap, exert “dominion”, destroy everything, or delude ourselves that we should be famous or rich or impactful. (Okay, I took your thought and ran a bit with it.)
My life is filled with the things I need to do for survival, with interludes of connection that bring me joy. I try to not think too much about the survival part because for humans it’s so contrived, and it blocks natural feelings. My biggest struggle is keeping that shit where it doesn’t ruin the things that matter.
And what matters is YOUR call. Time with the people you love or being immersed in music or reading or looking at stars or laughing at how your dog zooms or touching trees or breathing or … whatever you want. As long as you can be in the moment with your true self, you aren’t wasting this magical blink of life.
*I don’t have an actual voice within, because I have total Aphantasia.
I love this answer so much. Thank you for taking the time to share it.
I will think it was all worth it because I lived in each moment making it the best and not fretting about how I’ll look back on it when I’m about to die
For these unplanned hours, I look to the majesty and simple wisdom of nature for my answer:
I sleep slovenly, pass gas, and growl half heartily at anyone who disturbs me. Plus, I think if great apes and big cats could read, they’d probably consume at least as much Yuri light novels as myself.
Fair enough. Thank you for sharing.
I would sit in a chair in my back yard, listen to the wind chimes and birds, and watch all of the wildlife just living their life. In essence, I’d spend the hour in mindfulness.
I love it.
Live
All of the things I’m going to do. I hope I have time to do them.
I hope you do, too.
I figured out how to escape others’ expectations and assumptions about how I ought to live. I did more of what I wanted and less of what other people wanted me to do.
When I had more, I gave more. When I had less, others helped me.
This resonated so much with me. I am nearly 40 and have spent far too much of my life obligated to others and not setting healthy boundaries. And of course, now that I’ve realized that and started setting stronger boundaries with people about what they may and may not demand of me, there is anger and pushback that I am declaring sovereignty of my own time.
This sounds really good to me. How did you escape others’ expectations?
Some of it was open contrarianism. No wedding, no kids, no car, all on principle. This was a way to refuse to live by someone else’s script. I/we didn’t need these things, so I/we opted out.
Some of it was fear of despair. My mom died a wage slave of a heart attack on the job. I was not going to let that happen to me, so I learned about personal finance and learned about refusing to live by the standard script of buying what I couldn’t afford, keeping up with the Joneses, and so on. This also meant leaving the big city. It also informed the decisions about wedding, kids, and car.
Some of it was metta meditation. As I learned to have compassion for others, I learned to see their expectations of me as regrets about themselves. This made it easier to consciously ignore them.
Ultimately I learned to pay attention to every time I thought about what I “should” or “ought to do” and challenged myself to find a reason to do that thing that felt genuine to me. Did I really need to? What bad thing would happen if I didn’t? Would I truly value it? And when this led me to find no genuine, compelling reason, I didn’t do it. I became allergic, in a sense, to “because I’m supposed to”.
I’m not sure whether that actually explains anything, but it’s what I can offer for now. Further questions are welcome.
Probably play the trumpet or play the bass guitar, I’m a giga musican nerd
Music makes life awesome.
Fuck yeah it does!
deleted by creator
I would consider my life “well-lived” if I die with no regrets.
I used to think that. Now I know that regrets are inevitable. And I think they make life interesting. I’d rather have regrets than boredom.
Stayed honest and followed my nose into whatever actually lit me up and really did things fully.
To crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentations of their women.
Ah, ambitions of conquest.