Where do I get a career I can retire from to complain about?
https://i.imgur.com/LMlTKLM.jpeg
Kaiji expressed the sentiment as well though imo a smidge better
Wasn’t this a villain speech? I don’t fully remember it but I feel like it might mean something different with the context
It was a villain speech, but sometimes the bad guys have a point. Remember the villain from the first James Cameron Avatar movie? He had this speech, which, gotta be real, he’s not wrong.
I have to say I totally disagree with the idea but this is really good writing.
They have a point, but ultimately it’s still a biased rationalization. The idea that life is impermanent and you can’t defer doing what you care about with it is true, but it does bug me when this is posted that it’s also an imagined, hostile caricature from the perspective of a character who sees people (in particular people who have found themselves in debt slavery to his organized crime group) as just worthless losers. That’s its focus, as a putdown from that perspective; portraying a man who works a low paying job, can’t get women, commits the sins of gambling and drinking. Unstated but implied is that this is about a failure of achievement that is at its core financial, that positions himself above them both by being rich and doing fucked up things that are by his logic “meaningful”.
The OP comic is kind of an interesting contrast to that, making a similar point, but about a woman with a successful career, where that success might not hold much meaning.
If I may add, to some people, connecting to nature is their “real life”, while building empires and going on adventurous journeys is but a struggle they have to endure.
“My kids will live the life I wish I had”
It’s never too early to do that thing you always wanted to do. Sure, you only get 5000 weeks at most, but that’s plenty if you make good use of them.
It took me until my early 30s before I realized this. It’s time to begin. Let’s do this!
(Next year I am going to go travelling to Paris and likely Amsterdam too)
skill issue. i would simply refrain from aging. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2bo_u_YmW8
Don’t worry, our overlords are planning for us to benefit from their anti-aging research too! When they turn us into servitors.
Accept the fact that nothing matters, obviously.
Nietzsche: Duh!
Nothing matters and all you have are the stories and the memories
These days, mostly panicking about getting everything on the bucket list set up. I’ve let too much just fly by already.
I notice a lot of comments here saying “Hey go live your life now! Pick up that guitar or paintbrush or dancing shoes or whatever! Live for you!” And I agree. I often struggle with these existential thoughts.
But something they might leave out is that it’s HARD.
Following your own path can be unpredictable, and meandering, and you need to know who to trust and lean on them, and let them lean on you.
It can be a one-move-to-the-next kind of existing without that facade of “predictability” a society-prescribed life will get you. The good news is that stability is a myth anyway, so why not see it for what it really is?
I was treading water in a soul-destroying job for almost a decade when I finally saw the opportunity to strike out for myself, and I ran for it. My wife was promoted to a position that paid more and she didn’t hate it, so we discussed it and I quit, and took on more household duties and put my efforts towards finally becoming a 3D artist.
It’s been like a year+ and I still haven’t “made it” yet! It’s scary! But I’ve gotten some gigs! I’m still slow, and not as wildly creative as I’d like to be, but I do random labor on the side and try to keep my costs as low as possible. But she’s happier with how not-depressed I am, and I’ve made so much progress more than I ever would have otherwise.
Are we even able to start saving for retirement? Not even close! But I’m betting on myself and in the process I get a lot more time well-spent with the person I love.
No, not everyone is gonna have these opportunities or privileges, I know. But keep looking, talk to people, DO THE WORK instead of just talking about it. Help people! Let people help you! There will be some foothold for you somewhere.
And if you gotta pull some shifts at a coffee shop to keep the lights on there’s no shame in that! And you’re gonna have people who think you’re crazy and try to pull you back into the pot with the other cranky crabs because you’re there reminding them that they could’ve done something with their lives too.
My point is, taking charge of your life instead of asking permission from various gatekeepers is HARD. You might follow your dreams and find out you suck at it. The dream might even change at some point.
But it’s worth doing. Because what’s the alternative?
Lord knows if the worst were to happen, your boss will be filling your job before your body is cold. So where is your effort, energy, discipline, talents, love, best spent?
As Bruce Lee once said: “Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”
I’d add, “one worth living.”
Yeah… it’s hard.
The status quo, even if its dredged from a lake, is so comfortably uncomfortable. You resolve to change, but do futilities. You resolve to change, but your leg is caught and you return by week two (aka the New Years’ Resolutions number).
And to leap out and be instantly different is to play as something that doesn’t have the safe façade of being a system gear. Then you’re an oxbow lake, rather than in the river, and you wonder if everyone else is “floating by” already while you erode the soil that kept you streamlined down the main.
And then comes the “Should I have stayed? Was I being arrogant, spoilt enough to give up what I had?”
Idk what the moral of my comment is. I don’t want to say “I’ll discover it in a few years” either (,>ࡇ<,). Hopefully the mystery box is truer to my self than the alternative
I did this with having no kids.
“Ohh I’m not in a position to create a good life for an offspring.”
“Ohh now I’m over 40 no kids for me, I guess it’s better anyway. The climate catastrophe is real the World is on fire.”Here’s the secret no one tells you and you have to learn for yourself. There is never a good time to have kids. Either you want them or you don’t. If you want them you make it work. I have 3 and would have happily had 20. As soon as you have one your life is fucked anyways lol.
I’m over 40 and want kids. Unfortunately I’m a male so I don’t get to reproduce until someone else decides to carry my child for me.
Capitalism is the hidden antagonist here.
There are no destinations, only journeys. If you don’t find meaning in the path you’re walking you have three choices:
- Change the path
- Change yourself
- Live a life you feel is meaningless
There is no right or wrong answer, only choices and your experience of making them.
I have outlook on life similar to lichen
Let go and let life slip through your hand like sand
I don’t like sand. It’s coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.
just like life
Ani, have you always been such a whiny bitch?
Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.
All we are is dust in the wind.
