this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
737 points (96.4% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35914 readers
1397 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

In the last year or so I started to see so many people of my age that have done truly incredible things and still doing more.
For the vast majority of my life my only goals were gettimg academic satisfaction and doing unproductive stuff in the free time to get temporary pleasure. No end goal whatsoever.
I kind of don't know what I've been doing in the last 17 years while someone gets a patent on solar systems, other invents a new recyclable plastic, and another found a successful startup. I mean, they all find what they're supposed to be doing with their lives and excel in them.
I feel overwhelmed for trying to pace up with these kind of people. Yet I don't like the way the things are and I can't do anything but envy those people.
Anyone with experience in this regard? How did you deal with this? Did you eventually "pace up" with these people or was it too late or an unattainable goal?
Edit: Whoops, I didn't expect so many replies! Thanks, I'll look into them all

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] netvor 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

My example explicitly assumes them equal because it's trying to isolate and illustrate the factor of memory context.

In real life, options are never really equal, but you also never have enough information to sort or compare them properly. Whatever path you choose is eventually judgment call.

I like to imagine that decision process, and every decision process like this: Inside of my mind there's a painter, painting a picture for me. My cognitive skills are his painting skills. Health of my mind is health of his hands and his eyes. The information that I have is colors and shapes that he can use. He paints a picture, then I look at it and decide, entirely on gut feeling that I get from the picture.

Any decision that I make, and any action that I do, can only ever activated using feelings. Rationality is essential and possible, but rationality is for the painting. The action must come from the feeling.

Pictures are painted over pictures every second, and by the time we reach adult age, there are thousands if not millions of pictures painted over and over. However, some pictures are bigger than others so they rarely, or never get painted over. They can stay there for years on end. Often, pictures painted by much younger painter with far less skills and information will stay. Some of them are happy and fascinated with the beauty of the world, sometimes, some of the old pictures will be unsettling, like the kinds of pictures abused children would draw. They can stay there, lurking in the background, making us feeling like we're watched, like we owe them something.

It's these old pictures that can alter our feelings in a way that does not seem rational--why do I feel my time is 99% wasted could be example of that--you feel it because it's the feeling you get from some of the many old pictures in the corners of the canvas. There's nothing wrong with you: the feeling is true to the picture--any of us would feel the same from the same canvas. There's no reason to blame yourself.

There's also nothing wrong with the pictures, and nothing wrong with the little painter that painted them years ago. These were his shapes, colors and his skills. So there's also no reason to blame the painter. After all, he's frozen in time, there's no point in blaming a memory, memories cannot change.

You can, in some meaning, however, connect to with younger painter in terms of understanding him and his situation a bit better and seeing which pictures are still relevant to you. Some of them will, for some of them you will already know better. Then, maybe you can work with the current painter and get him to re-paint some of the old pictures or at least mark them as the historical artifacts that they are. It's all hard work but you're not alone.

To some extent, maintaining the paintings and teaching the painter is the point of life. We were never meant to be alone in that.

[–] required 2 points 1 year ago

Sorry for the short reply, I think what you're pointing out is very well described but I'm not equipped to deal with it

[–] required 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I hate the painter with a passion. He was incredibly dumb and even he knew it. And it's not just "memory", it was precious youth time that is lost. I'll never be a highschooler again. I'm angry. I'd be happier if my past didn't exist

[–] netvor 1 points 1 year ago

Well the past does not exist in any meaningful way, does it? Maybe the past painter was "stupid" (I would not express it in that way) but doesn't it mean that the present one is smarter?

I am not a doctor, professional psychologist or anything even remotely close. As far as I know, having strong (especially negative, such as shame or hate) feelings towards your (past) self can be a residue of a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances, otherwise known as psychological trauma.

It's worth knowing that psychological trauma is really common. When I say "common", I don't mean to diminish it -- quite opposite, psychological trauma can be pretty debilitating. What I mean is that many aspects of psychological trauma have been known and studied for a long time, and lot of methods have been developed to explore it and help people deal with it -- or even heal it. I suggest you try and find someone safe to talk to.

Trained therapists are excellent for this, because, well, they know lot of effective methods on how to help people speak, and second, they are normally from outside of our close circles, which is a surprisingly huge advantage. I've experienced this myself: as soon as I sat into that comfy chair, I've realized that this nice person was not ever going to judge me (she's probably heard sh*t i can't even imagine). Within first five minutes of conversation I've already noticed myself, how I put away a mask I didn't even know I was wearing. If only for this single realization, it was worth it.