I always struggle with balancing the advice given in pieces like this. The author suggested that they "eat their cake today" suggesting that putting off pleasure is a useless denial. Death could come for us at any moment, but I can't live like I'm dieing every day. There is just a mountain of nuance and self reflection between living some bohemian lifestyle where every moment must be filled with something and some stoic monk who has removed all want from their heart. It's too easy for me to surrender to the dopamine hits of all the things around me and find that what I actually enjoy feeling numb. Not looking for answers, I just wanted to speak for those who might struggle against filling each quiet moment with "joy" because hollow entertainment has eroded my true enjoyment more often than not.
I think the point is not "live like you'll die next week" but rather "live in such a way that, if you were told you have a week to live, you wouldn't regret the choices you made".
If I knew I'll die next week, would I try crack? Well, maybe - there's nothing to lose and they say the highs are pretty high. But if I found myself in a hospice tomorrow, would I regret all the crack I didn't try? No - the pluses I got from living a not-crack-addicted life seem pretty solid from where I stand.
For a less dramatic example: I think that, when the time comes, I won't regret most of the time I spent programming. By being aware of how often people regret the time they spent on a dead-end job I've made the kind of choices that gave me a good life-work balance while keeping me working on interesting stuff. Of course I'm also severely underpaid, but middle class and happy seems better than rich and miserable.
Semi ironic username :) But I agree with you. Advice from people who is facing death can be overly dramatic and cause serious harm for people and environment. It's not sustainable to live like today is your last for 70+ years. It's not sustainable for all the interpersonal drama you will cause. And burning through resources to gain max experience will also tax the environment greatly.
Right! This whole life thing is about striking a balance between "eat your cake today" and "spend your day in the field cultivating wheat to make the flour to make more cake in the future".
In every moment of my life there has been some "cake" I could have "eaten" that would have been more enjoyable than all the hours I spent up in the middle of the night with screaming babies. But on my deathbed I'm certain it will be my investment of time in my children that I'm glad of, not the foregone "cake" I'm regretting.
One bit I find easy to lose sight of is that if I do spend my day cultivating wheat for flour for a cake, to make sure to eventually make and eat that cake, and not just spend all my time getting better at cultivating more and more wheat.
I think the real fundamental point that both you and the author make is that it's the things that are investments of time that are worthwhile, and that we should endeavor - in our mindfulness - to adjudicate the utility of time investments actively in order to maximize our ROI. I 100% agree! Going through the motions, getting dumped on, or losing one's ability to subjectively assess comparative value is no way to lead a happy life (for oneself of the ones around you).
I suspect this person does not write those words with the intent to drive people to fill every moment with pleasure.
I suspect their intent is more along the traditional lines of encouraging readers to not put off something into the “long term goal” category that would just as easily fit in the “short term goal” category.
If anything, I see it as complimentary to your thoughts because many folks will use momentary pleasures as a way to put off a highly rewarding yet difficult life challenge.
The most obvious example is the idea of waiting for retirement to do the things you want to do and, frankly, things you probably should be doing long before you’re in your late 60s.
Yes, the author's words are probably meant for someone who is living an inward looking life, not thinking for example to tell their aging parent, "I love you". And for all of us, it is a reminder.
A lot of the treadmills that society places upon us are just bullshit. It's packaged as "long term goals" to make it sound more plausible (you'll either forget you were conned or get used to it in some kind of Stockholm syndrome). But in those cases there's actually no trading short for long, it's just purely bullshit. Like, the high school geometry assignment for the author. It is literally wasting her time if she didn't enjoy learning it.
I guess "bullshit" might be objectively too strong a word -- given that "one man's trash is another man's treasure", whether it's trash or treasure depends on who/what person you are. But subjectively, for the wrong person, a lot of stuff is just that.
I am certain it was clear to the author and those with perhaps a more fine tuned ability to control themselves. I have been the person who reads things like this and used it as an excuse to extract cheap joy from bad habits. It's incredible how much wisdom one can extract from a decade of stupidity.
I've been thinking a lot about this recently as my wife and I are starting to think towards retirement and having gone through the death of some close family members.
My father used to give me the advice "live life such that if you were to write your own autobiography you'd find it interesting." Yet when he was beginning the process of dying he told me about his regrets in not traveling to see more of the world. The regret was so profound that it immobilized him to the point that even though he wasn't yet sick enough to need daily care, and could have gone to one or two of the places on his bucket list, he couldn't manage it.
I was struck one-time while on vacation in Europe with a tour group, an elderly woman in a mobility chair had become very frustrated with the amount of difficulty she had with getting around to see various sites we were stopping at. She lamented that she had wasted her life waiting to retirement to come see these places and by then was in such poor physical shape she spent more time on or near the bus than seeing things. At the foot of a rather simple cobblestone incline she finally broke down in sobs because there just wasn't a reasonable way for her or her caregivers to get her up the thousands of uneven stones in the street.
Yet I also know people who gravitate and prioritize immediately emotionally satisfying experiences and choices over long-term planning. They all have money problems, unstable housing situations, and nothing saved for when they can no longer work. Yet the moment the next emotionally satisfying opportunity arises they leap at it even if it again causes them to fall back into the steep pit of daily and long-term struggles they can't escape from.
I'm happy where I've arrived and the balance I've struck. But I know that it also wouldn't make other people satisfied as they have a different way of optimizing this problem. For me? Take care of the short, medium and long-term problems, live below my means, use the excess to buy experiences not things, and check that bucket list off while I'm young enough to enjoy it. That way, while I sit old and secure in my retirement I can be satisfied that I did what I wished, but still ended up well enough to take care of what I needed to do.
I don't think there is any advice as such to be taken from these sort of articles, but that is balanced by the fact that most people operate without any particular regard for the eventual certainty of death and if they reflect on it maybe they'll do something differently. Strategies and goals that make sense when rolled out to infinity do not always do so well over 100 years. Seeing what people value on their deathbed can be a source of inspiration for what did and didn't seem to work.
Although, in my view, there is no reason to perceive a dying person as having special insight. If insight matters it can be achieved at any age. Literally the best strategy I've seen in the face of death is just to relax, go with it and try not to get too attached to life. And that mindset offers no guidance at all on what is good to do with the time we have.
> There is no reason to perceive a dying person as having special insight
Have you ever had a near-death experience? Those often seem to be followed by a sense of clarity that inspires some people to live better. They seem to cut through the crud and reveal the unimportance of certain things, and highlight the value of other things
Does your insight now have more relevance than when you were 11? I think so as you have a better view of what it means to exist as a human.
We should all take our elders view with a little bit kore attention. Whether they are right or wrong, happy or sad, etc…
I've (so far) concluded that the way to frame it is "If I were to go today, would I be — on balance — happy that I've done what I could with what I had?".
Life is a partial knowledge game.
Everything is a bet on some future outcome, whether it is "will I enjoy this menu choice in 5 minutes?" or "will this education/career choice make me healthier/wealthier/sizer in three decades?"
We live in times where we can more reliably live 8-10 decades and have a plausible chance of living long enough to see substantial healthspan extension science to indefinite lifespans, yet we could also not see the next sunrise...
So, it's just as valid a bet to go all-in on the Hedonic treadmill or organize every hour around life extension, or anything in between. Enjoy it all now and be hated by your future self (unless you're lucky like Keith Richards, still rockin' at 79), or spend less-enjoyable effort now and enjoy being in shape later, etc., etc., etc.
It is all place your bets, take your chances... (& we can often change course later as we learn about life and ourselves).
I first saw tacked to a door in a rock climbing school, one of my favorite aphorisms:
I think you are misinterpreting the article. By "eating cake today" the author clearly meant they are appreciating each person and each moment of life, as life is precious. It was not a call to hedonism.
sometimes people quite literally settle for something worse or just 'mediocre', when they could have something good, something better, something they actually wanted and desired. but nope, people settle for something middling 'for the time being'. and then never get that good, great thing. sometimes that never becomes quite literal. and then, the things that get put off, become irrelevant, truly and on many levels - they're irrelevant in death, and irrelevant to anyone else living who doesn't care for it even a bit.
it doesn't have to be a cake, but ffs, stop refusing yourself what's better when that option is literally just there. and sometimes those options are free.
(and hey, if 'better' is actually 'not having cake' - maybe it is just that for you. sometimes that death recontextualization makes things seem irrelevant in that way - why do something at all when it literally will not matter, and doesn't matter on any scale of the days really)
The extreme of living for today only or living for tomorrow only will mean you are under serving your present or future self. Time is short so it’s wise to give to your present day self. Also you don’t want to rob your future self, so investing in your future is also important. Extremes are easier to manage. With balance you’ll have the choice and its burden to decide between today and tomorrow.
I agree, but I tend to lose my perspective and skew heavily to living in the future. I loved reading this article because it helped me to reprioritize some things, like that family vacation I've been putting off. Or even just playing that board game with my kids that I promised them.
you'll also get some sort of mental and spiritual diabetes from such an approach to life. my impression is that people who die don't have a better idea about living healthy and happy than those who are blessed with health. those recommendations from the death bed seem to be rather reflecting regret regarding what ever area of life that person used to neglect.
It could be middle age tainting my perspective... but sometimes I feel this sort of... not visceral, but very close and undeniable... experience with death is easier for people who are young.
Death isn't real for most people at 17, no matter how much they have seen, many see the death of a grandparent, or two, or perhaps even four, before reaching 17, but most still enter their late teens, feeling invincible and like death is a whole lifetime away... because on a sort of undeniable personal narrative level is is... it is a lifetime away... and things that feel a lifetime away are much easier to think about than things that feel like they get closer every year. In middle age you know your to some statistical average "about half way there"... and that's a very different place from which to begin having this kind of life experience.
As someone of the same age I feel the same. Sometimes I'm enjoying myself or finding it especially easy to be stoical about mortality. But sometimes it makes me breathless with dread for a few minutes.
The realisation I was probably born a bit too early for technology to give me immortality saddens me; I only have so many weekends left to do hobbies and even fewer blocks of a few thousand hours to master something new... So I have to prioritise which is annoying.
I was afflicted with an awareness of existence from an early age and struggled with it till around 40. Having kids obviously enhanced that but also changed me so profoundly and I realized we are just human sized atoms flying through the universe.
I’d simply advise to get on getting on. It is. You are you so see what you can do with it in the way you feel you can.
There are countless people who have died before you that were born too early for things like penicillin.
You can always find a reason to be grateful (just as, I suppose, we can always find a reason to be saddened ... and probably our future counterparts will as well.)
I think for many people, myself included, the worry isn’t “the switch flipped” it’s losing everything and everyone you’ve ever cared about. Life is pretty awesome. Don’t want to give that up for any reason.
I don't worry much about it being unpleasant, hurting, whatever -- I too have had the experience of general anesthetic. That's never been the part that bothered me about dying. It is the permanence. You get your shot, then you're done, forever. There are going to be fascinating discoveries and developments in the future that I'd like to see play out. Ah well.
But it's definitely true, worrying about death is a privilege granted only to the living.
I find it comforting, somehow, and it helps me to keep a healthy perspective, to think about how, Right now, I don't exist on the top of Mount Everest, or the bottom of the Marianas Trench, or on the Sun, Moon, Mars, or any other potentially infinite places. And it's not a problem.
I also don't worry about not existing almost every place and at every time that I could have existed. There is no direct pain or suffering associated with it.
I don't fear death, I fear pain and torment. Which is pretty common in the old age and can hit you at any time, even in the young age.
That's why my mental bandage for the very likely torture at the end of the line is medically assisted suicide. I don't delude myself that I will never need that, in fact I'm almost certain I'll get to a point where it will be the humane option. Everyone I got to know in my family died agonizing deaths after oftentimes long period of illnesses.
Of course in my country, Retardia, this medical euthanasia isn't an option but as an EU citizen with enough money I will get it in Netherlands or Switzerland if and when I'll need it.
Aren't there plenty good open source alternatives to achieve this without aid from the government? Like something as simple as CO poisoning would do the job convincingly and cheaply.
I've heard of meditation as a form of preparation for death. As a way to approach and contemplate it, and as a way to maintain equanimity while facing it.
I'm still in my 20s, so maybe I still have some youthful arrogance and distance rattling about up in my noggin that makes this an easy and useless thing to say. I have witnessed the death of my father, and a couple of my friends from childhood are already dead. But I come from suicidal stock, so maybe that's part of it too.
I think at this point I fear more the nature of getting older, having seen some of the early, innocuous signs of it in myself. Still at the age where in another life I could die in some glorious way, valorizing youth. But I'm set up for the long haul in this life, even as I want to do something reckless.
As I grow older, I realize that I what is important is to have a “good taste in your mouth” after any interaction, I will not say anything like “see only the positives” etc. but for sure don’t only see the negatives. At the end of the day, try to figure out what works for you before your death bed
we've had nightly air raid alerts for the last two years.
Now there are less of them, but I don't know what the future
will bring. I think russia is preparing their winter campaign
of terror again, so we will see.
When it is 3 in the morning and you hear explosions and you
are really really fcking happy that it didn't hit you.
You can also have no electricity and heat in the middle of
the winter, but it sort of sortable if you go somewhere public
where business have electricity generators.
At first you get used to living like this, but after some time
your natural resilience start to break and it can become quite
difficult to live.
So I've got a lot of time to think about life and death sort of
things in this setting.
I've got to understand one really simple thing. I should live my
life in such a way that when it really hits me, there be no regrets
for my time in this world.
I need a bazzilion friends and experience love, I need
that people think of sunshine when they remember me. Because
I am love for every living thing. Everything will be the best
way it could possibly be, every hard thing in life is there for
a reason.
That what lead to gender transition, but that the whole another story,
lol
Notes to myself -
"Sometimes, the people who have everything in life have nothing in death. But sometimes the people who have nothing in life have everything that they could ever want in their final hours."
"I never go to bed angry."
"I choose my words wisely with both friend and foe."
"when people are lying in their deathbeds, they remember their parents and siblings and spouses and children and pets — not their high school geometry assignment or that one bad day at work 30 years ago."
At 52 I found this article thoughtful. We shouldn't walk around fearing death but an awareness of our mortality should shape our decision making. For example, I am at an airport returning from another short break.I have decided not to wait until retirement to travel. I may not be here or up for it.
Just moved from a big house in the countryside on a few acres to a rowhouse in the city and I am so, so much happier here. I had a lot of suicidal ideation when I lived in the middle of nowhere. I see friendly people every day.
I can relate. I haven't ever had suicidal ideation because of this but I can tell you I am shocked at how much I enjoy living in a city (1800sqft house on an 8000sqft lot) in a real, social neighborhood compared to either our previous suburban house (4500sqft house on 1/3ac lot) or the rural house I grew up in (2000sqft on 4ac in rural outskirts of a small city). I'm sure this doesn't apply universally, but for my family it turned out that having friends and acquaintances within walking distance is great for mental health!
Is it really profound, though? Or is it up there with live, laugh, love and life is a journey?
If a concept like this is widely held to be profound on HN, then perhaps -- and I mean this as gently as possible -- that could be a sign that the average engineer's career is a little too much of a treadmill, and would benefit from a little more downtime.
Well, I think it's valuable inasmuch as it's easy to look at big, beautiful houses as an aspiration, when they won't do much to improve your relationships with other people, which tend to be at the core of happiness.
Servants or assistants might not provide you with the kind of connection that you long.
Or they could, if they care about you, respectfully attend to your needs and listen to you.
>Loneliness is the state of distress or discomfort that results when one perceives a gap between one’s desires for social connection and actual experiences of it. Even some people who are surrounded by others throughout the day—or are in a long-lasting marriage—still experience a deep and pervasive loneliness.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/loneliness
Readit News
If I knew I'll die next week, would I try crack? Well, maybe - there's nothing to lose and they say the highs are pretty high. But if I found myself in a hospice tomorrow, would I regret all the crack I didn't try? No - the pluses I got from living a not-crack-addicted life seem pretty solid from where I stand.
For a less dramatic example: I think that, when the time comes, I won't regret most of the time I spent programming. By being aware of how often people regret the time they spent on a dead-end job I've made the kind of choices that gave me a good life-work balance while keeping me working on interesting stuff. Of course I'm also severely underpaid, but middle class and happy seems better than rich and miserable.
Dead Comment
In every moment of my life there has been some "cake" I could have "eaten" that would have been more enjoyable than all the hours I spent up in the middle of the night with screaming babies. But on my deathbed I'm certain it will be my investment of time in my children that I'm glad of, not the foregone "cake" I'm regretting.
I suspect their intent is more along the traditional lines of encouraging readers to not put off something into the “long term goal” category that would just as easily fit in the “short term goal” category.
If anything, I see it as complimentary to your thoughts because many folks will use momentary pleasures as a way to put off a highly rewarding yet difficult life challenge.
A lot of the treadmills that society places upon us are just bullshit. It's packaged as "long term goals" to make it sound more plausible (you'll either forget you were conned or get used to it in some kind of Stockholm syndrome). But in those cases there's actually no trading short for long, it's just purely bullshit. Like, the high school geometry assignment for the author. It is literally wasting her time if she didn't enjoy learning it.
I guess "bullshit" might be objectively too strong a word -- given that "one man's trash is another man's treasure", whether it's trash or treasure depends on who/what person you are. But subjectively, for the wrong person, a lot of stuff is just that.
My father used to give me the advice "live life such that if you were to write your own autobiography you'd find it interesting." Yet when he was beginning the process of dying he told me about his regrets in not traveling to see more of the world. The regret was so profound that it immobilized him to the point that even though he wasn't yet sick enough to need daily care, and could have gone to one or two of the places on his bucket list, he couldn't manage it.
I was struck one-time while on vacation in Europe with a tour group, an elderly woman in a mobility chair had become very frustrated with the amount of difficulty she had with getting around to see various sites we were stopping at. She lamented that she had wasted her life waiting to retirement to come see these places and by then was in such poor physical shape she spent more time on or near the bus than seeing things. At the foot of a rather simple cobblestone incline she finally broke down in sobs because there just wasn't a reasonable way for her or her caregivers to get her up the thousands of uneven stones in the street.
Yet I also know people who gravitate and prioritize immediately emotionally satisfying experiences and choices over long-term planning. They all have money problems, unstable housing situations, and nothing saved for when they can no longer work. Yet the moment the next emotionally satisfying opportunity arises they leap at it even if it again causes them to fall back into the steep pit of daily and long-term struggles they can't escape from.
I'm happy where I've arrived and the balance I've struck. But I know that it also wouldn't make other people satisfied as they have a different way of optimizing this problem. For me? Take care of the short, medium and long-term problems, live below my means, use the excess to buy experiences not things, and check that bucket list off while I'm young enough to enjoy it. That way, while I sit old and secure in my retirement I can be satisfied that I did what I wished, but still ended up well enough to take care of what I needed to do.
Although, in my view, there is no reason to perceive a dying person as having special insight. If insight matters it can be achieved at any age. Literally the best strategy I've seen in the face of death is just to relax, go with it and try not to get too attached to life. And that mindset offers no guidance at all on what is good to do with the time we have.
Have you ever had a near-death experience? Those often seem to be followed by a sense of clarity that inspires some people to live better. They seem to cut through the crud and reveal the unimportance of certain things, and highlight the value of other things
> 1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
> 2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
> 3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
> 4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
> 5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
I've (so far) concluded that the way to frame it is "If I were to go today, would I be — on balance — happy that I've done what I could with what I had?".
Life is a partial knowledge game.
Everything is a bet on some future outcome, whether it is "will I enjoy this menu choice in 5 minutes?" or "will this education/career choice make me healthier/wealthier/sizer in three decades?"
We live in times where we can more reliably live 8-10 decades and have a plausible chance of living long enough to see substantial healthspan extension science to indefinite lifespans, yet we could also not see the next sunrise...
So, it's just as valid a bet to go all-in on the Hedonic treadmill or organize every hour around life extension, or anything in between. Enjoy it all now and be hated by your future self (unless you're lucky like Keith Richards, still rockin' at 79), or spend less-enjoyable effort now and enjoy being in shape later, etc., etc., etc.
It is all place your bets, take your chances... (& we can often change course later as we learn about life and ourselves).
I first saw tacked to a door in a rock climbing school, one of my favorite aphorisms:
Good judgement comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgement.
it doesn't have to be a cake, but ffs, stop refusing yourself what's better when that option is literally just there. and sometimes those options are free.
(and hey, if 'better' is actually 'not having cake' - maybe it is just that for you. sometimes that death recontextualization makes things seem irrelevant in that way - why do something at all when it literally will not matter, and doesn't matter on any scale of the days really)
The extreme of living for today only or living for tomorrow only will mean you are under serving your present or future self. Time is short so it’s wise to give to your present day self. Also you don’t want to rob your future self, so investing in your future is also important. Extremes are easier to manage. With balance you’ll have the choice and its burden to decide between today and tomorrow.
Deleted Comment
It could be middle age tainting my perspective... but sometimes I feel this sort of... not visceral, but very close and undeniable... experience with death is easier for people who are young.
Death isn't real for most people at 17, no matter how much they have seen, many see the death of a grandparent, or two, or perhaps even four, before reaching 17, but most still enter their late teens, feeling invincible and like death is a whole lifetime away... because on a sort of undeniable personal narrative level is is... it is a lifetime away... and things that feel a lifetime away are much easier to think about than things that feel like they get closer every year. In middle age you know your to some statistical average "about half way there"... and that's a very different place from which to begin having this kind of life experience.
The realisation I was probably born a bit too early for technology to give me immortality saddens me; I only have so many weekends left to do hobbies and even fewer blocks of a few thousand hours to master something new... So I have to prioritise which is annoying.
I’d simply advise to get on getting on. It is. You are you so see what you can do with it in the way you feel you can.
You can always find a reason to be grateful (just as, I suppose, we can always find a reason to be saddened ... and probably our future counterparts will as well.)
Enjoy rather current times, we have it easy and pretty compared to whats coming
I then realized what death is: a switch is flipped off and you are done. No memories, nothing. You just stop to exist.
From then on I do not worry anymore and stopped wondering about death altogether.
But it's definitely true, worrying about death is a privilege granted only to the living.
I also don't worry about not existing almost every place and at every time that I could have existed. There is no direct pain or suffering associated with it.
That's why my mental bandage for the very likely torture at the end of the line is medically assisted suicide. I don't delude myself that I will never need that, in fact I'm almost certain I'll get to a point where it will be the humane option. Everyone I got to know in my family died agonizing deaths after oftentimes long period of illnesses.
Of course in my country, Retardia, this medical euthanasia isn't an option but as an EU citizen with enough money I will get it in Netherlands or Switzerland if and when I'll need it.
Aren't there plenty good open source alternatives to achieve this without aid from the government? Like something as simple as CO poisoning would do the job convincingly and cheaply.
I'm still in my 20s, so maybe I still have some youthful arrogance and distance rattling about up in my noggin that makes this an easy and useless thing to say. I have witnessed the death of my father, and a couple of my friends from childhood are already dead. But I come from suicidal stock, so maybe that's part of it too.
I think at this point I fear more the nature of getting older, having seen some of the early, innocuous signs of it in myself. Still at the age where in another life I could die in some glorious way, valorizing youth. But I'm set up for the long haul in this life, even as I want to do something reckless.
Pick how you wanna live it.
Now there are less of them, but I don't know what the future will bring. I think russia is preparing their winter campaign of terror again, so we will see.
When it is 3 in the morning and you hear explosions and you are really really fcking happy that it didn't hit you.
You can also have no electricity and heat in the middle of the winter, but it sort of sortable if you go somewhere public where business have electricity generators.
At first you get used to living like this, but after some time your natural resilience start to break and it can become quite difficult to live.
So I've got a lot of time to think about life and death sort of things in this setting.
I've got to understand one really simple thing. I should live my life in such a way that when it really hits me, there be no regrets for my time in this world.
I need a bazzilion friends and experience love, I need that people think of sunshine when they remember me. Because I am love for every living thing. Everything will be the best way it could possibly be, every hard thing in life is there for a reason.
That what lead to gender transition, but that the whole another story, lol
Deleted Comment
If a concept like this is widely held to be profound on HN, then perhaps -- and I mean this as gently as possible -- that could be a sign that the average engineer's career is a little too much of a treadmill, and would benefit from a little more downtime.
Or they could, if they care about you, respectfully attend to your needs and listen to you.
>Loneliness is the state of distress or discomfort that results when one perceives a gap between one’s desires for social connection and actual experiences of it. Even some people who are surrounded by others throughout the day—or are in a long-lasting marriage—still experience a deep and pervasive loneliness. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/loneliness