[HN Gopher] Children and Helical Time
___________________________________________________________________
Children and Helical Time
Author : moultano
Score : 145 points
Date : 2026-01-01 09:53 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (moultano.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (moultano.wordpress.com)
| rwnspace wrote:
| I think time perception is contingent on cultural and lifestyle
| factors, I don't recognise it in my own life. My twenties
| (chaotic) lasted forever, now in my 30s, this last year in
| particular felt incredibly long (it was eventful and full of
| change).
|
| I rarely find myself on "autopilot". Is that why?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| right things that are eventful and full of change take a long
| time, childhood is generally eventful and full of change. If
| having an eventful and changing life increases the amount of
| subjective life we experience how should we live.
| barrkel wrote:
| My childhood had less change than my adulthood. I've lived in
| different countries as an adult; I spent my childhood in one
| village near a town. The events I value most and recall most
| strongly all happened as an adult. I struggle to remember
| really significant childhood events. There were a few, like
| finally grokking a for loop in BASIC, or my first machine
| code execution, but the more common remembering is of
| undifferentiated days in school, reading, warm summer days.
|
| But as an adult, learning how to ride motorcycles, touring;
| fine dining and discovering a love for fine wine; travel
| generally; the perspective that living in multiple countries
| gives you; the birth of my son, and how it changed my
| perception of my parents; these things were more significant
| and still more salient to me now. I am a very different man
| to the one I was at 20, and I feel I changed more between 25
| and 35 than I did between 10 and 20.
| t0lo wrote:
| Autopilot is a choice- most people are on it, some aren't.
| Society has always been like this. Society is attacking self
| aware and fully conscious people more than ever now though :(
| moffkalast wrote:
| Everybody, looks like we got one. Attack!
| nradov wrote:
| Paranoid people sometimes perceive normal levels of apathy
| and friction in society as intentional attacks.
| throw_away_623 wrote:
| I think you are on to something.
|
| My theory is that the brain is good at compressing memories, so
| if you do mostly the same things every day it's not stored as a
| separate memory.
|
| I actually felt my 30s as one of the longest periods in my
| life, because of things that happened in my life
| spectralista wrote:
| I would agree with this from subjective experience. My non-IT
| based career has been highly volatile with unintended
| unemployment, companies going out of business, changing
| entire sectors and roles many times. Huge volatility in
| relationships and partners also.
|
| Much downside to this but the upside is my life feels
| incredibly long and I haven't even reached 50 yet. I have
| already lived numerous lives compared to the self that would
| have had a very stable life the last 25 years. My working
| life feels vastly longer than my very stable childhood. That
| came and went in the blink of an eye from this perspective.
| lm28469 wrote:
| It seems so obvious to me. It's all about what you do with
| your time, if you're stuck in a boring routine of commute,
| repetitive work, and a few soulless vacations here and there
| you'll build virtually no memorable moments and it will all
| feel like a blur
|
| Move to a new city, get a radically different job, get a kid,
| switch up your routine, pick up unusual hobbies/interests and
| every year will feel like a new life. Childhood feels very
| long because you have to go through mandatory checkpoints
| imposed from the outside, add that to your adult life and
| it'll feel the same. Why don't you go get a parachute intro
| course next weekend? Or rent a car on a race track? Go ice
| climbing next winter? Join a yoga club, a music class, a
| reading group, a dance class, &c. try things you don't
| necessarily want to do and you'll open many doors.
|
| Most humans have a tendency to go the path of least
| resistance, and in today's world of working from home and
| unlimited screen based entertainment you can very easily
| waste decades your life
| etyhhgfff wrote:
| .
| mentalgear wrote:
| I have been reading the comment by Jim Grey on the bottom of the
| article, and I was thinking, is that mostly what we are - and why
| people like novelty (especially in tech) so much - because it
| makes us feel young ? Or maybe not young, but teaches us
| something new, learning something active - worth remembering.
|
| > We also think that novelty rivets our attention and makes time
| seem to slow down. Childhood is full of novel experiences that,
| as they repeat, become less so. True novelty becomes unusual when
| you're pushing 60 as I am now. The brain says, "Oh, that again,"
| and glosses past it.
| smokel wrote:
| _> This is a depressing thought to consider in (linear) middle
| age, but it is hard to escape the feeling that it is essentially
| true. Childhood memories have an intensity and a vibrancy that it
| is difficult for the rest of life to match._
|
| Could anyone who is extremely fortunate and never had to work for
| money share their experience on this?
|
| I find that the years that I spent on art (playing around,
| learning new things, not taking other peoples' orders) lasted
| longer than the ones I spent doing software development for
| money. Both were fun, but the remaining memories differ by
| intensity.
|
| I personally don't find the logarithmic experience theory
| convincing. Why are the first three or so years excluded from
| this? It seems more likely that _new_ experiences make more
| impact, or that repeated memories make them more intense. Or
| dozens of other theories.
| kubb wrote:
| My best and "longest" memories are from a two year period spent
| in the university when I had earned some money in internships
| and could live with few obligations.
|
| That was the happiest I've ever been.
|
| Childhood is mostly blocked out (abusive parents, poverty), and
| adulthood is mostly work.
|
| Maybe we just remember the periods when we've been happy. It
| would make sense evolutionarily.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| My family was not wealthy but I got the luck being born in the
| EU in a country where edu and Healthcare were basically free
| and you really cannot end up under a bridge unless extreme
| mental (and drugs issues that follow that) problems. My
| parents, even though we did not have much, always taught us to
| never follow orders unless you think they make sense and follow
| our own path. I guess that is why I mostly have no difference
| in vividness; I always did my own thing, that happens to be
| writing software so I got lucky and got rich by building stuff
| I thought was nice and needed. I still do that while also doing
| art (welding sculptures and writing). 2025 was not less vibrant
| than my childhood. Of course I am the most annoying employee;
| if you tell me 'have to', I will definitely never ever do it.
| So I never been an employee; guess that is the luxury you
| mentioned.
|
| I have no clue how it would have turned out if I would have
| grown up in a country without a safety net. I hope the same as
| I never needed that net and will never need it, however I am
| not so sure; it makes taking risks very easy...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Extreme mental and drug issues are always in the picture with
| those outcomes, though. The real "safety net" when faced with
| the possibility of real homelessness is to get the hell away
| from uber-expensive places like SF and move to at least a
| semi-rural area where getting access to good shelter is going
| to be orders of magnitude easier. These are not bad places or
| areas of poverty or marginalization, people have literally
| been settled there and building functional livelihoods for
| generations.
| judahmeek wrote:
| You say "move", but you must mean "get moved" since
| homeless people aren't known to have the finances required
| to travel to another city
| bdangubic wrote:
| I was homeless in my 20's and moving, while of course not
| as straight-forward as buying a bus/train/... ticket,
| isn't _that_ difficult. e.g. many truckers are amazing
| folk who will help a person in need (as long as you are
| not an addict etc)
| 113 wrote:
| This doesn't make any kind of sense. There's plenty of
| homeless people outside of expensive cities.
| JacWpthrowaway wrote:
| Never been rich but .. who's richer, the one who has more stuff
| / buying power or the one who has less material needs? Anyway,
| I was always pretty frugal and lucked out on passive income 6
| years ago but even before that I never had full time jobs and
| all my life I basically worked just enough to get by, never
| cared much about saving.
|
| From my experience childhood felt like grinding my way to max
| level in an MMO. Had to be done to start playing the game but
| didn't really care for it. I had more freedom since I was 18
| than before so I cherish those memories more.
| bombcar wrote:
| The MMO is a really great example because "working life" is
| often compared to raiding end-game dungeons (or vice versa).
|
| Some _really_ enjoy that, but the journey to max level was
| always more interesting to me.
|
| There is a way to reroll; at least vicariously.
| nchmy wrote:
| I, of course, have plenty of vivid memories from childhood. But
| I've also been fortunate to be able to travel in all senses -
| quick tourist vacation, a few months backpacking, and multi-
| year slow travel where I mostly just lived in different places
| (different nature settings, towns, cities etc).
|
| Tourism is generally forgettable and I don't recommend it to
| anyone - save the money and do something where you live.
|
| Backpacking feels meaningful in the moment, but is also largely
| forgettable. I truly have almost no meaningful memories from 2
| separate 2 month trips in Europe and southeast Asia.
|
| The slow travel is most recent, was the most "boring" but also,
| I think, most meaningful as I was explicitly focused on self-
| reflection and discovery of a more meaningful way to live after
| many years (or a lifetime, really) of aiming to be a better cog
| in the machine. I don't have a lot of "memories" - highlights
| that I reminisce about - from it, but rather various phase
| shifts/epiphanies in my understanding of myself, life, the
| world etc...
|
| I now live in relative poverty in a poor country where I have
| been working for 7+ years to develop a project for the benefit
| of the multitudes who can't even conceive of being able to do
| anything that I've just describe. And for whom even childhood
| is rather joy and wonder-less, because of how hard life is. I'm
| mostly glued to my computer again, but it's not soul sucking in
| the way it was in a cubicle with spreadsheets - because the
| purpose is meaningful.
|
| I do miss the slow travel days - they were absolutely the most
| enjoyable period of my life. But I've also met people who have
| done that for decades and they're profoundly sad people - they
| have no roots or connections anywhere, no meaningful vocation,
| etc.
|
| A meaningful life is to be actively involved in the sorrows of
| the world, with joy.
|
| Still, I really ought to get a bit more play and exploration
| back into my life.
|
| In the past year, I've been coaching teen soccer/football and
| that has been wonderful. Both to help me fix my desk-broken
| body, as well as to help them, principally, become better
| humans. To succeed on the field they need to develop the same
| characteristics needed to succeed in life - discipline,
| determination, cooperation, empathy, solidarity, creativity,
| perspective, vision, patience, and more. The world around them
| is largely bereft of such things, so it has been challenging.
|
| But they're _vastly_ better at playing now than a year ago, and
| I 've heard they generally behave better at home as well. The
| difference between this and the article's version of living
| through your kids is a) they're not my kids and b) I'm focused
| on helping them become proper adults via play, whereas the
| article is largely about recreating Neverland where everything
| is childish. I expect it'll be unlikely that I'll instill much
| community spirit in them - though, perhaps we'll incorporate
| some community service into the training at some point. But it
| all does seem meaningful.
|
| Still, the real focus and crux of my life is the overarching
| project to help people everywhere become more self-sufficient.
| Hopefully I'll be finally ready in the next year or so to "go
| public" with it, and that people will be receptive to using it,
| collaborating, helping etc...
| srean wrote:
| > Backpacking feels meaningful in the moment, but is also
| largely forgettable.
|
| Was your schedule oversubscribed in these ? I ask because my
| experience of pleasure travel is very different. More so when
| there were (i) very little schedule to speak of, other than
| start and end dates, (ii) had a partner to share the
| experience of _unplanned discovery_ to share with.
|
| Both, I think, make a significant difference to the
| experience.
|
| The other biggie are photographs and writing about it.
| nchmy wrote:
| > Was your schedule oversubscribed in these ?
|
| I dont have any idea what this means. Could you try again
| in plain english?
|
| Yes, not having a schedule makes for better travel, as I
| described in my later multi-year experience. I think most
| things could probably be made better by having a genuine
| life partner to share it with. But doing things solo
| absolutely does not preclude you from meaning. (moreover, I
| wouldnt describe most romantic relationships as anything
| resembling a genuine life partner).
|
| Photos and writing are also not inherently meaningful. I
| did plenty of both and, again, I _thought it was all
| meaningful in the moment_ , but since realized it was all
| largely misguided.
|
| If someone were to travel in a genuine manner - where you
| integrate with local communities, get involved with their
| traditions, problems etc, then that's an entirely other
| thing. But just roaming (let alone an itinerary) is largely
| not actually useful, unless you put it towards something
| meaningful (eg genuine reflection and improvement, which
| would largely lead you to realizing that travels themselves
| are not necessary or even important).
| carlmr wrote:
| >I find that the years that I spent on art (playing around,
| learning new things, not taking other peoples' orders) lasted
| longer than the ones I spent doing software development for
| money.
|
| >I personally don't find the logarithmic experience theory
| convincing.
|
| I think this tracks though. When you do art or other things you
| can explore different things. Doing the same thing for 40-60h
| per week is just not such a varied experience.
| tristramb wrote:
| I recently came to realise that my memories of my experiences
| of early childhood are probably greatly affected by seeing my
| younger siblings going through those same experiences a few
| years later. At age five or six I would see my mother reading
| to them on the sofa and they would be lying with their heads on
| her tummy feeling her warmth and listening to her heartbeat and
| stomach gurgles. Seeing this would remind me of when I used to
| do that, thus reinforcing those memories and probably somewhat
| distorting them. One of the distortions is that this memory is
| set in the house we moved to when I was four, and most of my
| own relevant experiences would have been set in our previous
| house. I think the accumulation of memories is a bit like
| training an LLM on a combination of new data and its own data.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Last few years I've been my own boss mostly doing whatever I
| feel like with several years funds comfortable and no real
| pressure to do or die. Time hasn't really slowed down. I also
| took a year completely off work in 2016, that one also passed
| very quickly.
|
| If anything, having new experiences is what seems to slow down
| time in my experience. Visiting new locations, doing and
| learning new things. I suppose more things will be new to the
| young than the old, so it would make sense as an alternative
| hypothesis.
|
| I've also had a bad tooth ache since the day before Christmas I
| haven't been able to get dealt with since all the local
| dentists are off, and it feels like it's been the longest week
| in my life. Dunno if I'd recommend it as a way of prolonging
| the subjective experience of time though.
|
| Another anecdote is that last year I quit coffee cold turkey,
| and a side effect was that time seemed to slow down
| significantly. A lot of people seem to be reporting this. Make
| of it what you want. Quitting coffee also sucks quite a lot,
| though not as bad as week of severe tooth ache.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Oh, my dear, thats hell! > I've also had a bad tooth ache
| since the day before Christmas <
|
| Wasnt there any emergency dentist available? In my location,
| there are those for these reasons.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| So, short story long: Things weren't _that_ bad before and
| during Christmas, but started getting bad last Friday. So
| last Saturday I paid a visit to an emergency dentist, who
| basically shrugged and said come back on Monday when we
| have more staff. Sunday sucked I was just in pain all day.
|
| But said and done, I came back on Monday, they looked at it
| again, said it was probably an old filling that was maybe
| acting up, basically just drilled a bit and filled it back
| up again. This made it hurt a bit less for about a day
| (specially during the procedure, even with them drilling
| into the tooth, local anaesthetic made this the least
| discomfort I'd been in for almost a week), but since then
| it's been aching again. It's not _as_ bad as before, but
| still barely manageable with OTC painkillers.
|
| So tomorrow I'm hitting them up again, hopefully I'm able
| to convince them to pull the tooth, since it's way back in
| the mouth and has been nothing but causing me grief since I
| got the original filling, food getting stuck and causing
| inflammation, that sort of stuff. The alternative would
| probably be a root canal, but since it's in a very
| inaccessible location, that's a real hassle.
| visarga wrote:
| In the present moment, time passes slow when something boring
| or painful happens, and passes fast for exciting or pleasant
| experiences.
|
| But in hindsight, time passes slow in periods where you had
| many new experiences and is almost missing in periods of
| routine.
|
| So an exciting experience might be fast in the moment and
| slow in hindsight.
| RickyLahey wrote:
| i basically never had to work (EU privilege + luck of being
| born the skill of knowing how to sell to people well) and only
| worked on stuff that i enjoyed and not a lot of hours (and that
| turned into millions fast) and my 20s/30s flew like months
| instead of years and didn't have the intensity of my teen
| years. I think it's because despite technically travelling and
| living in different countries a lot, going to a new place is
| not really a new experience after you visit 7 very different
| ones. The same with women and a lot of other experiences.
| Having kids was the only think that surprised me. Making money
| got old fast (i mean trying to get to the "next" level)
| egypturnash wrote:
| Art can turn into work too. Spending ~4-5y on a solo graphic
| novel[1] was mostly about finding that routine of making sure
| to spend a few hours of every workday working on the comic
| instead of just faffing about aimlessly.
|
| 1: http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| What gave you the idea to write a graphic novel in the first
| place? What's your workflow?
| conception wrote:
| I always took it sort of that your mind, duplicates memories,
| and in your adult life almost every day is more or less the
| same and it just compacts all those memories and time goes
| quicker because you don't remember doing the 9 to 5 thing day
| after day after day, your brain has no reason to remember that,
| in childhood significantly more items that pop up throughout
| the year that are extraordinary that your brain remembers. Also
| brain elasticity etc.
| t0lo wrote:
| The premise is that life stops being novel around 20 to suit this
| argument- but you can easily argue that that's more around 30 or
| even 40
| polotics wrote:
| Yeah sure. Here's one for the new year from a 57 years old:
|
| There is always novelty if you stay curious. Boredom in your
| life will only start once you have become boring.
|
| 6-7 !!!
|
| (who here also thinks the true meaning of 6-7 is reactive fear
| of 2026 & 2027 from the school-going crowd?)
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Isn't the general principle sound? That novel experiences
| become rarer as we get older, leading subjective life to be
| highly skewed towards youth.
| nehal3m wrote:
| That's assuming novelty is the only way to live long
| subjectively. Is that a decent assumption? Personally I find
| subjective life longer if you just take your time, no pun
| intended.
| dbacar wrote:
| Does putting a graph make a subjective feeling scientific? For me
| the past year was like 10 years, and who knows for the rest of
| the world.
|
| Time is relative no matter what age you are and probably depends
| how much has changed in your life (maybe I should put a graph
| here to make it more scientific :)) )
| moultano wrote:
| The graph is just to clearly convey the idea, not to give it
| any more connotation of rigor than the idea itself has. The
| idea has a long enough history and enough research behind it to
| be in psychology textbooks and be referenced on Wikipedia, but
| it seems to resonate for some people and not others.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#:~:text=Propor...
| huhkerrf wrote:
| > This is a depressing thought to consider in (linear) middle
| age, but it is hard to escape the feeling that it is essentially
| true. Childhood memories have an intensity and a vibrancy that it
| is difficult for the rest of life to match.
|
| This is just not my experience at all. I had a great childhood,
| but ask me about the most vibrant moments, and very few of them
| came before I was 18. The births of my children, my wedding,
| meeting my wife, lazy afternoons in college...
| bombcar wrote:
| The one thing that childhood memories usually have is
| protection from the "real world" - looking back you realize
| that exciting vacation to a national park was because your dad
| lost his job that summer and couldn't afford anything more, but
| had time. For you, it was amazing, but probably not as much for
| your parents worrying about where the next job would be.
| rixed wrote:
| Sure enough, if you model life experience as a 2d plot, you are
| going to have to simplify things quite a bit. Yes, time "felt"
| longer for a child (especially when the child has to wait or
| wants something yet to come, less so when it's time spent on
| video games), and children are particularly impatient compared to
| adults.
|
| But is that experiencing life, though? How many strong memories
| from that "logarithmic first half" of my life do I have? Actually
| very few compared to what came later, and they are not
| particularly compelling either.
|
| My guess is that the author just hit mid-life crisis after having
| spent one or two decades in an office. Boring mindless job is
| what makes life experience to plateau, not adulthood. If I think
| of the most accomplished persons that I know, who've done many
| things with their life, I can't imagine them saying that their
| childhood was half of their life. They would probably laugh at
| the idea.
|
| Or maybe he hasn't reached that crisis yet, since he finds solace
| in the idea that his child is doing the living for him. Wait
| until the kids leave home, for the log to turn into a exponential
| panic.
| nchmy wrote:
| I think you nailed it. This person is not living, and may never
| live. When their birds fly the coop and, worse, when they
| themselves retire, they're in for a whole world of emptiness.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is something more dangerous that people realize,
| especially those "working for retirement" - if you only live
| to work, and then retire, you may find you retire from
| living, too.
|
| Seen it a few too many times. Live life today, people!
|
| " So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring
| worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today."
|
| " And don't worry 'bout tomorrow, hey Sha-la-la-la-la-la,
| live for today"
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That's fine, but the incongruence comes when one expects
| unlimited supply of healthcare and a cash payment for
| decades in old age. Especially if one didn't raise enough
| productive kids to pay for it, so then the question becomes
| if you're not planning for tomorrow, why are others who are
| planning for tomorrow paying for your tomorrow?
| nchmy wrote:
| nice try ron paul
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Puzzling reply (assuming ron paul is being used as a
| pejorative), considering your adjacent comment seems to
| agree with my sentiment.
| nchmy wrote:
| I was absolutely not advocating for not having any thought
| for the future, nor for "living in the moment".
|
| I was saying that you must do both - dont just slave away
| and expect that you'll live when you're retired (a
| lifestyle which makes it less likely that you would even
| live until retirement age, let alone be physically or even
| mentally capable of enjoying retirement).
|
| Instead, live in a way such that there it is meaningful
| while you do it, and it also prepares you for the future.
| Again, this would also have the benefit of showing your
| kids and others how to do this themselves.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| Every assertion in this article is completely alien to me to the
| point that I can not even comprehend that people live like that,
| it seems untenable to life to me. A year did not feel like a
| fifth of my life when I was 5, I could not even comprehend a year
| in that sense and very much lived in the present. Now in my 40s I
| don't see a year as just another year and still don't think of it
| as one 45th of my life. When I was 5 I saw where I was, now I see
| how far I have come and how far I have to go; all that has really
| changed is that I have come to understand how the past and the
| future define the present instead of just accepting that this is
| what I am currently experiencing, I understand cause and effect,
| consequence.
|
| Does this article seem accurate to your perception of life? It
| would explain some things regarding my interactions with most
| people if I am so completely missing something so fundemental
| about their existence.
|
| Edit: Why does conveying my experience and desiring to understand
| the experience of others get a downvote? Genuinely curious.
|
| Edit the second: I just started to wonder if this article is
| going to affect my birthday in a couple weeks. Part of me feels
| like I am going to think "well that is 1/46th of my life gone"
| and have a midlife crisis. The other part of me remembers Zeno
| and his paradox and giggles.
| barishnamazov wrote:
| I'm 22 and since late college things don't excite me the way they
| used to, even when I enjoy them. I sometimes wonder if this is
| what happens when people get older and happened to me early, or
| if it's just a personality trait.
|
| The 'vicarious firsts' framing doesn't quite land for me because
| of that, but the 'urgency that won't let you drift' observation
| resonates. Maybe what matters isn't renewed wonder but having
| something -- family, friends, caring about the world -- that
| demands presence. The forcing function matters more than the
| feelings themselves.
|
| My dad always says something related in nature: caring about and
| loving your family makes you a better person more than it helps
| your family.
| throw_away_623 wrote:
| > I sometimes wonder if this is what happens when people get
| older and happened to me early, or if it's just a personality
| trait.
|
| It's a cliche but I (almost 50 years old) have found that when
| you get older, you notice patterns, Something "new" is often
| just an incremental improvement or two existing things
| combined.
|
| Rust doesn't excite me much, and Go seems too boring to use for
| my side projects. Elixir + Phoenix LiveView is the only "new"
| thing that has excited me in the past decade, but I can't stand
| the Elixir syntax. Maybe it's because I have seen so much
| change during the years? If someone started out with React, a
| new version seems like a big deal, but to me it is just an
| incremental improvement.
|
| When I was a kid, a new CPU or GPU had an extreme impact
| compared to the previous generations. We went from crappy
| Wolfenstein graphics to Quake in a few years. I have stopped
| following new releases now, because they don't really do much.
|
| The same applies to mobile phones. The next iphone / samsung
| model doesn't really motivate me to replace my existing phone.
| barishnamazov wrote:
| Thanks for sharing insight. I also feel like a couple decades
| ago, technology was also reasonably simple and
| understandable. Right now, everything is obfuscated and
| complex. Maybe that's natural, but makes it harder to get
| excited about seeing new things.
|
| Similar to you, I don't care about mobile phones anymore.
| Instead of fancy hardware or features what I care is simple,
| secure, and private phone (open-source OS). I used to get
| excited on new models.
|
| Recently a couple of my friends were talking about "Telegram
| vs Whatsapp." One is better because it has this feature, etc.
| They asked my opinion too. I don't care which is better, I
| only use them because I have to use them for contacting
| family and some friends. I just need the send text and image
| functionality (and I don't use it for private / secure
| texting).
| bombcar wrote:
| There's a term "geek out" or similar for getting deep into
| the details of something; especially technology. But it's
| rare and not really needed for the use of it - there are
| people who geek out over phones or model trains or LEGO,
| etc.
|
| But for most of things in life you just need to _use_ them.
|
| The hard part is finding something to geek out on that
| doesn't turn you into a curmudgeon insisting everyone is
| "doing it wrong".
| neutronicus wrote:
| Well.
|
| I, personally feel like having lived is a net win, joy-wise,
| mostly on the strength of my childhood. So I'm trying to give
| that to my sons as well.
| nchmy wrote:
| This was a both a nice, and extremely depressing, read.
|
| It sounds like the author has had a good childhood and is a good
| parent to their kids. Wonderful.
|
| But the whole article is appropriately summarized by their final
| sentences
|
| > You recreate your memories in them. They recreate childishness
| in you. Life folds back on itself, but not quite the same. It
| loops, but continues. A helix. > > Life, then, is the creation of
| childhoods. You have yours, and then you get to create childhoods
| for others. The time is yours, and theirs
|
| They have completely given up on their own life, and the
| possibility that they, too, could live in a child-like way, where
| they have their own wonder, joy etc.
|
| Eg
|
| > Children make you childlike. Skipping through the park as an
| adult man raises eyebrows (deservedly or not.) Skipping through
| the park as an adult man with your son or daughter skipping next
| to you on your arm is one of life's greatest joys, both for you
| and for anyone who sees you.
|
| Why do you care about people's eyebrows? Go skip, play, dance, be
| curious, be creative - whether just for the sake of it, or also
| in your "work".
|
| Your kids need to see you _actually living_ so that they, too,
| might be able to actually live once they 've moved into
| adulthood.
|
| > Your Christmas trees get smaller, your lights less ambitious.
| Some find all of these fun for their own sake, but if you are not
| the type of person who finds ritual appealing you will likely
| find yourself slowly disconnecting from holidays. You will find
| yourself asking what all the hustle bustle is for. > > Kids.
| That's who it's for. Of all the experiences that children renew,
| traditions are renewed the most. When you put up a Christmas
| tree, it's for kids. When you decorate for Halloween, it's for
| kids. All of these holidays are in essence a celebration of
| childhood, and children let you see them all for the first time
| again. If you remember the excitement of galumphing
|
| Christmas, and other traditions, are NOT about trees and lights
| and presents. Thanksgiving is not about waiting to stampede a
| Walmart to buy crap. It's about genuine communion with family,
| friends, or - if you're particularly clued in - even strangers
| who don't have such traditions available to them.
|
| And so on.
|
| They talk about the joy of showing kids Saturn in a telescope. I
| won't argue with that. But that doesn't mean an adult can't have
| joy in discovering new things in the cosmos - be it through a
| career or hobby in telescopes, or exploring all parts of nature,
| from microbes to volcanoes. Whether as a hobby or a career.
|
| This person is missing the point _of everything_.
|
| We must do as nietzsche described and progress from a camel, to a
| lion, to a child again. Joseph Campbell - a wonderful interpreter
| and guide of all of these things - explains it all well, a quote
| of which is at this page https://centeroflighttulsa.org/three-
| transformations-spirit/
| wolvesechoes wrote:
| > We must do as nietzsche described and progress from a camel,
| to a lion, to a child again
|
| Nietzsche's ideas where not for producing self-help advice on
| having hobbies.
| nchmy wrote:
| nor was what I wrote... Try reading it all, and him, again
| wolvesechoes wrote:
| The metaphors of camel, lion and child have nothing to do
| with finding joy, experiencing life, or whatever that could
| matter in the context of this posting, and Joseph Campbell
| is pretty weak resource on Nietzsche.
| rendall wrote:
| I have a pet theory that everybody gets one lifetime, and no
| matter how long that life is, it always subjectively feels like
| one lifetime. Whether you live three days or a hundred years, it
| will always feel about the same amount of time, both interminable
| and too short.
| lovich wrote:
| Maybe by realizing that this is a crazy idea?
|
| Half of your life is childhood because you weighed subjective
| experiences differently when you had no knowledge or life
| experiences so you should change your life based on that
| situation where you were in Plato's cave?
|
| Actually fuck even this title is bad. If life is subjective,
| don't ask how "we" should live. Subjectiveness means that's a
| "you" question.
| youoy wrote:
| I quote for context:
|
| > But what about those of us who are well into the flattening
| part of the curve, what can we do for ourselves? You can seek new
| experiences perhaps. If time goes faster because your life has
| fewer firsts and more routine, then it can be extended by adding
| firsts. You can learn new things, travel, take up hobbies, or new
| careers.
|
| > This works, to a point, but there are only so many firsts for
| you, and chasing this exclusively seems to lead to resentment.
| You remember the things you had as a kid. You remember the
| excitement and warmth of that world, how immediate and raw
| everything felt, and you want to go back. You start to regret
| that the world has changed, even though what changed the most is
| you.
|
| I like to think that life slows down once you form a stable image
| and story of yourself. The more you convince yourself that that
| image is fixed, the faster time will go by. That might justify
| why childhood seems longer, since that image seems to form around
| adolescence.
|
| Experiencing new "firsts" but keeping that image of yourselfe
| fixed just works for a while. That is why it may lead to
| resentment, as the article says.
|
| So dont fool yourself: some image of who you are gives you some
| stability, but just use it for that, so that you dont run crazy
| with options.
|
| If you treat every event as something that might reshape your
| ego, then suddenly a big number of experiences are new, and time
| suddenly slows dont. It may even appear to dissapear from time to
| time.
| elias_t wrote:
| > We feel time differently over our lives. As a toddler, an
| afternoon feels like an eternity. In middle age, "no matter how I
| try, those years just flow by, like a broken down dam." For a 5
| year old, a year was a fifth of their life, and feels like it.
| For a 40 year old, it is just another year.
|
| I think this explanation is true but incomplete. I believe it's
| also related to Critical Flicker Fusion Frequency [0], the way I
| see it, if an organism is smaller it has a higher frequency, it
| sees more image per second, therefore perception of time is
| slower. (E.g. a fly sees you moving really slowly). Maybe it's
| related to the processing time of images, with smaller brains
| insect can process more of them per second.
|
| Maybe humans process more images as children, therefore see the
| time time going slower.
|
| It's been a while I didn't think about this, maybe some studies
| have been made in the past years.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold
| nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote:
| That would.im theory make kids the best at certain sports like
| table tennis say. Is there an objective test?
| nostrademons wrote:
| That is largely true across a variety of sports. eSports like
| Starcraft typically peak between 18-22, and it's possible the
| real age is younger but minors are usually excluded from pro
| leagues because they can't sign contracts. Gymnastics seems
| to peak between age 13-16; it was enough of a problem that
| the FIG set an age limit of 16 so the sport wasn't dominated
| by prepubescent girls age 13-14 (18 for men because the
| events tend to be more strength-based than coordination-
| based). Top table tennis players usually tend to start
| between 4-6 [1] and win their championships around their
| early 20s. [2]
|
| There's some lag between starting and being world-class
| simply because continued practice makes you better. Plus, you
| get much better at sustained focus and being able to connect
| disparate training experiences together as your consciousness
| develops in the teens.
|
| [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/tabletennis/comments/1i085sr/a_c
| oll...
|
| [2] https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/what-is-
| the-pe...
| bombcar wrote:
| Part of the gymnastics thing is flexibility of the young;
| if toddlers could be coordinated and strong enough they'd
| likely dominate as they can contort their bodies into
| positions impossible for adults.
| elias_t wrote:
| IMO there is also muscle memory, strategy ect. Being able to
| process more information doesn't mean it's processed better,
| the contrary actually if you think about processing times
| rr808 wrote:
| My kids go to a stem focused magnet school. I realize different
| cultures value different things but its depressing to me how many
| kids are pushed to dedicate their whole childhood to get into top
| Universities. We'd go to the beach and their friends couldn't
| come because they were doing extra APs or science fair or Math
| Olympics or similar. These kids got good grades but never went on
| a date, couldn't drive or go anywhere by themselves.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I was partially (largely?) one of those other kids. Honestly, I
| loved it and, though it wasn't perfect, I definitely wouldn't
| re-roll my childhood if given the chance.
|
| Later in life, I managed to catch up in dating and other
| aspects, but kept a good streak of nerd pride and am totally
| happy about that.
|
| If you were to have observed my childhood and got depressed
| about it, that interpretation would have been misguided.
| zkmon wrote:
| Best way is, don't make up new rules, don't come up with some new
| analysis and new ways of living etc. None of that is needed.
| Human life hasn't started just yesterday. Just live the way your
| ancestors lived. Don't give too much importance to children.
| Don't spend too much attention on them. Mind your work and let
| children mind their observation of the world around them.
| rendx wrote:
| _" The basic stratum of the personality and the associated
| underlying belief systems that hold it in place derive from a
| number of factors: the shadow aspects of parents; the same
| unresolved elements in the lives of grandparents (the ovum from
| which the mother sprang was already formed at eleven weeks
| gestation in the maternal grandmother); a commensurate and
| immeasurable twine of psychogenetic ancestral memories; the
| prenate's own "baggage" from pre-conception; the experience of
| the conception itself; the phenomenology of implantation; and the
| whole duration of the gestation period; all together form layers
| of affect in this self-forging process."_
|
| William R. Emerson, Ph.D. https://emersonbirthrx.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/04/Journa...
| iammjm wrote:
| A typical person in the western world spends like 4 hours on
| their phone each day. They also spend 8 hours at work, doing
| mostly the same-ish thing over and over again. Then there's
| commute along the same routes, and our habits and ways of life we
| calcify into. The brief moments of mental freedom are often
| terrorized by the anxiety induced by what we consumed during our
| phone binges. Let's add some degree of sleep deprivation into the
| mix. Might all of that have something to do with how we perceive
| life and how fast and meaninglessly it goes by?
| canpan wrote:
| Regarding the perception of time, I have a complete opposite
| perception of the author. He mentions 20 as a middle point. I was
| after that, in my 20s when I first took _real_ full control. I
| can remember the times before that. But I did _so_ many "firsts"
| after that! My childhood years feel very short and boring to me;
| while the time after that feels gigantic and exciting.
|
| There is so much in the world and so precious little time, I
| cannot really imagine running out of new "firsts" to do. Just I
| think many people never take control.
|
| (The article itself seems to be more about raising children,
| being dad and fulfillment than the comments and title suggest)
| tetris11 wrote:
| Whilst I did more new things in my 20s, I do recall my
| perception of days as a child being much much longer. I have
| distinct recollection of feeling almost clinical depression
| when I was about 8 after being told that we would be going to
| the seaside _tomorrow_ and not _today_. To a childs perception
| of time, it was an agonizing eternity.
| bombcar wrote:
| Children run on "sleeps" and eventually weeks - a single day
| is such a large percentage of their life, after all!
|
| And each year is new, even if just teachers changing; but
| most have new things you can _do_.
| Qem wrote:
| > To a childs perception of time, it was an agonizing
| eternity.
|
| For me as a child, even getting a haircut was a dreary
| experience. It felt as an eternity I had to sit mostly
| immobile, while somebody else maneuvered sharp blades around
| my head. Nowadays it feels like I barely accomodated in the
| chair, it's already over.
| arichard123 wrote:
| We were discussing this last night. The solution seems to be we
| need to do very boring things each day, like stare at paint,
| watch grapes grow, etc, but then do that with different people in
| different places. In this way, each day seems very long, and
| retrospectively the changing of place and boring thing means
| there's a lot to remember.
|
| I think it does mean though that optimising for this is probably
| not the thing to do.
| ronitize wrote:
| beautiful read
| lordnacho wrote:
| I think there's something to this idea in the article. I remember
| my childhood well, perhaps because the cast is still somewhat
| intact, and we all had a good time. The time after finishing
| school is more blocky: a few years working in certain places,
| meeting my wife and having kids. My adult life takes up more
| calendar time, but less "experienced time". My cousin was on a
| chat last night, explaining that his day is taken up by taking
| three kids to different schools, then picking them up again. Over
| and over, but somehow it is one experience. Plenty of people will
| tell you the same about going to work.
|
| By contrast, you remember things in your youth that happened only
| once, like spraining my ankle at a crossing with a train oncoming
| (it was less dramatic that it sounds lol), or going to a music
| festival, or finishing high school.
|
| One thing that maybe needs to be talked about is that you can
| simply relive your life. This works best if you had a good time.
| So the answer to the question is not just that you should look
| for new firsts, you can replay some old tapes.
|
| I'm lucky enough that I know people from every time in my life. I
| have a chat group with three other guys that I met when we were 4
| years old, over 40 years ago. They sent messages last night. I
| got a message from my first grade teacher, and my high school
| English teacher. I have a chat with all my buddies from school,
| where we exchange messages that are about as mature as when we
| were teenagers. People I worked with, I keep in touch with.
|
| I have an online photo album that is basically the only data I
| care to have a backup of. Now and again, I flip through it, and I
| see what I was up to, and have nice thoughts about that.
|
| It might sound a bit weird for a mid-40s guy to be so resigned to
| being old. But I was talking to one of the mentioned buddies from
| nursery, and I turns out the big milestones have happened
| already. We already finished school, got jobs, had kids. There's
| a lot of little things to tick off, but they are little things:
| visiting various interesting sites, going to some concert, and so
| on.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Is there a citation or source for this? Or is this just the
| authors idea?
| codingdave wrote:
| > If you take this model literally, that your experience of an
| interval reflects what fraction of your life the interval is
|
| I don't accept that premise. I'm in my mid-fifties now, and a
| year is still a long time. They years get short if you fall into
| a routine and never do anything new, but it is easy enough not to
| fall into that trap. And I say that as someone who thrives in
| doing the same routine every day. I get my variety in the
| details, doing different projects, having different
| conversations, trying new foods, exploring new places.
|
| > Childhood memories have an intensity and a vibrancy that it is
| difficult for the rest of life to match.
|
| I've found that we all have different memories. I know people who
| cannot remember their childhood at all, and I've known people who
| remember it well. But not having vibrant memories of your adult
| life? That feels a little depressing. Adulthood is when you step
| up and become your own self, directing your own life. It is when
| I climbed mountains, explored the world, met new people, tried
| different careers, moved to new towns, had long-term
| relationships including children, created art, studied subjects
| beyond the standard high school education. Childhood was OK, but
| was fairly anxiety-filled, at least for me. The truly amazing
| experiences in life were as an adult.
|
| The author addresses this, of course. But he does so in a really
| odd way:
|
| > This works, to a point, but there are only so many firsts for
| you, and chasing this exclusively seems to lead to resentment.
| You remember the things you had as a kid. You remember the
| excitement and warmth of that world, how immediate and raw
| everything felt, and you want to go back.
|
| This is where my reaction was: "Dude, wat??" If adult experiences
| make you resentful, something is really off. If a good experience
| makes you wish you could go back to being a child, I'd be
| recommending therapy because that is _not_ the reaction most
| adults have to new experiences. I don 't say that to be mean,
| either - if your childhood memories are that much stronger than
| adult ones, that is not the typical human experience, and I would
| sincerely be asking for medical and psych support to figure out
| if something is wrong.
| lm2s wrote:
| Beautifully written. Thank you for this.
| JDEW wrote:
| > The motivation for making school more rewarding and less
| stultifying should not primarily be its effect on outcomes later
| in life, but rather that childhood is itself part of life, a very
| important part.
|
| Almost makes me tear up. 1000 times this.
| cnees wrote:
| This is the paragraph that grabbed my attention. I wasn't
| expecting to find something so human.
|
| I remember coming to the realization during my more challenging
| school years that waiting all week for Saturday to come was
| literally wishing my life away. I didn't know what burnout was
| at the time, but an angel of a friend recognized it and helped
| me understand.
| pixelmonkey wrote:
| As someone who thinks a lot about how best to use one's limited
| time; is child-free by choice; and, who is also interested in the
| societal value of good parenting... this article drew me in on a
| number of counts.
|
| The concept of time dilation explored in the article is
| fascinating. But I think it's possible the author has some
| wishful thinking about how experience and memory works. Or
| perhaps is using a plausible formulation as a reverse
| justification for his own life choices.
|
| Here is how my childhood memories feel to me. Ages 0-14 are like
| an opaque tunnel, through which my brain and developing body was
| shot, like a cannonball, in an instant. I have some fragmentary
| memories of having gone through that tunnel, but they are mere
| fragment. My 14 year old self, somehow and miraculously, ended up
| on the other side of that tunnel healthy and of sound mind.
|
| Age 14 is around where something resembling "the recorded video
| of my early memory" begins. I have clear memory of various
| episodes from ages 14-18, and this was also a period of intense
| individual development for me. This was where all my
| inclinations, passions, and life goals started to come into
| focus. That turned into full-blown adult individuation in
| college, where my goal was to pull away entirely from
| societal/parental expectations and live my own life. In other
| words: pretty much everything I associate with my adult character
| had its seed-like start in my age 14-18 period, exactly the
| period where I was pulling away from my developmental dependence
| on my parents.
|
| My childhood before then is a blur. That might be a depressing
| thought for parents -- that this kind of blurred and fragmentary
| memory of childhood is possible, given that parents often
| describe this period as one where they are "making family
| memories" -- but I don't think I'm the only one. Importantly:
| this doesn't make early parenting meaningless. Good parenting is
| ethically and developmentally important even when it doesn't
| leave the child with later-retrievable episodic memories. But I
| don't think the point of parenting is to create said memories.
| It's to create a healthy child who can develop and individuate on
| their own in adulthood.
|
| The article talks a lot about childlike wonder, and seeking that
| in adulthood. I'm all for that. But what's strange is that OP
| seems to believe the only place to find that childlike wonder is
| in parenting of your own children. I am sure parenting can be one
| such way to regain childlike wonder, but surely not the only one.
| People can reclaim their childlike wonder in sport, art, hobby,
| play, and travel, among other things. What's more, I know many
| parents who haven't the slightest bit of childlike wonder when
| they interact with their children. Or any other children in their
| family. So I'm not sure it comes as naturally to everyone as OP
| seems to think it does.
|
| Two adult thinkers on how adult humans spend their time that have
| interesting thoughts on childlike play are John Cleese and Alan
| Watts. Cleese discusses it in the context of creativity in his
| wonderful lecture, summarized here:
|
| https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/04/12/john-cleese-on-cre...
|
| And Watts had this to say about it: "... if you don't have a room
| in your life for the playful, life's not worth living. 'All work
| and no play makes Jack a dull boy.' But if the only reason for
| which Jack plays is that he can work better afterwards, he's not
| really playing. He's just playing because it's good for him!
| Well, he's not playing at all! You have to be able to cultivate
| an attitude to life where you're not trying to get anything out
| of it. You pick up a pebble on the beach and look at it:
| beautiful! Don't try and get a sermon out of it."
| WillAdams wrote:
| It's a perception thing --- a given period of time is related to
| one's total life experience/recent memory --- to a toddler, a
| week is a long time because at that age one cannot remember many
| weeks and the weeks which one remembers are full of new
| experiences each of which is vivid and fresh, while to a person
| in middle age, there are many, many weeks accumulated into many
| repeated years, and the experiences are much the same and
| repeated.
|
| The big thing which we need to change and solve is education ---
| I have memories of going to a school in Mississippi which my
| perception of was that it was quite well run, and that classes in
| it were divided between academic and social --- social classes
| were attended at one's age level, while academic classes were
| attended at one's ability level (4 grade cap up through 8th
| grade) and that students who progressed beyond high school
| courses were able to take college courses, some teachers being
| accredited as faculty at a local college, or instructors from
| that institution being brought to the school for classes at need.
|
| Maybe AP classes offer a similar facility in public school
| systems? Though one wants to cue the _Doonesbury_ cartoon of the
| college dean who after being told that his entire Freshman class
| is taking remedial 051 level _everything_ is running a glorified
| pre school.
|
| Roger Zelazny made much of college education becoming quite a
| different thing when Samuel Eliot of Harvard made the conceptual
| leap of dividing education by the college credit hour and
| allowing customization beyond the rote repetition of previous
| generations in his wonderful novel _Doorways in the Sand_ ---
| perhaps that should be extended down on some sort of skills
| basis? The school I attended after Mississippi did reading with a
| pair of boxes of Scholastic Reading Assessment (SRA) booklets,
| which, not understanding that one was supposed to do a two or
| three at each level and get approval on before moving to the next
| level, I did _all_ of in a matter of weeks, which left me with
| nothing to do for the balance of the school year but go to the
| (meager) elementary school library.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| Well that's interesting.
|
| I'm going to combine this information with another idea. The
| second idea comes from Tony Robbins, who tells us we can have
| mastery over our memories and use them to influence our psyche.
|
| You can magnify and clarify pleasing and positive memories. You
| can diminish and distance unpleasant or painful ones. This can
| change your view of the world, for better.
| Taek wrote:
| Childhood is only half of subjective life if you stagnate as an
| adult. If you keep changing your routine, you'll find each year
| has just as much subjective experience as the previous.
|
| Start a company in an industry where you have no experience. Move
| to a country where nobody speaks a language you understand. Find
| a new sport and commit to being a top 0.1% participant (for most
| sports that don't air regularly on national television, this can
| be done in a year).
|
| If subjective life is speeding up, throw yourself some curve
| balls.
| bombcar wrote:
| Amusingly enough, one of the easiest way to serve yourself
| curveballs is to have children of your own.
|
| You then are no longer in control of your house, schedule, or
| really much. And you have someone to cheer on.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| A child is from the parents perspective a lot of repetitive
| motion over a very long time, and, I think, a main
| contributor to speeding up your relative passage of time.
|
| Which you might find super rewarding! But I am fairly
| confused by the claim that children are interesting and
| wonder how people spent their pre-children time to arrive at
| that conclusion - or how much they actually are involved in
| all the parts of taking care of their kid.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In the US, unless you have a few million saved up, children
| will probably make most people more conservative.
|
| Wake up, drop kid off at school, go to job allowing one to
| afford health insurance for kids, come home, take kids to
| after school activity, eat, sleep, repeat.
| bdangubic wrote:
| risk averse as well... prior to being a Dad my answer to
| just about any question was Yes. Now mostly the answer is a
| No and not because I am older now
| bdangubic wrote:
| my best friend had kids before me and told me something
| before I had kids that changed my life forever - "I was here
| first and I have my life, the kids need to adapt to my life
| just as much as I have to adapt to theirs." I have followed
| this mantra for the past 12 years and I think both my life
| and my kids life is much better for it. I see too many
| parents turning their lives _upside down_ after they became
| parents, I have not much at all. I am definitely more risk
| averse which is probably the biggest personal change I made
| but otherwise I do everything I've done before I became a
| parent and my kid has experienced extreme levels of boredom
| while waiting for me to finish what I am doing
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Right its a weird take for me too. Childhood was fun sure, but
| you were stuck in a time/place not of your choosing, with
| others making many/most decisions for you.
|
| As an adult, especially a well paid SWE like many on HN.. you
| can create the life, make the decisions and have the
| experiences that you want. Your life is as vibrant as you
| choose it to be.
|
| Much of the stuff I used to read about or watch on TV as a
| precocious child.. I can just go buy/see/do with the agency &
| money I have as an adult.
|
| Sure you have a 9-5 (or 8-6, or 7-7) job but you used to go to
| school and after school activities all day as a kid probably
| too. It's your choice to do something or nothing with your
| hours of free time after work and weekends.
|
| Small children in the picture adds additional time constraints,
| but should also bring additional vividness/subjective time
| experience to your life.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| I share this view. I didn't feel like my life began until I
| graduated college, got a job, and moved out on my own.
| Loughla wrote:
| You also don't have to do anything extreme. . .
|
| If life is moving too fast, then make specific choices to slow
| down. Take up hiking or camping. Do things with your family if
| that's a valid option for you. Turn your phone off. Be mindful
| of your body and emotions.
|
| Lots of small things that can help you slow down a little.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > You also don't have to do anything extreme
|
| I think most people I meet would benefit from reframing what
| they consider to be extreme.
| Nevermark wrote:
| My life has had a 5 year event horizon since I left my family
| home. I.e. every 5 years has seen major changes I could not
| have predicted.
|
| For much of that there have been critical pressures making most
| days important. Which makes them memorable.
|
| Subjectively and objectively, things have changed so much, and
| so many times, I feel like I have had several lives, so far.
|
| Right now I am in a "make" or "break" situation going three
| productive years. I solved some very difficult problems that I
| put myself in a "must solve" position. Each problem solved had
| significant life impact.
|
| The indicators for "make" are going up month-to-month now,
| making it a tough but intense and wonderful time. Feels a lot
| like my early 20's when I started a dream business (for me)
| while in school.
|
| Definitely don't experience time as indicated by those graphs.
| amelius wrote:
| Yet wealth grows exponentially, meaning that half of your life
| you have relatively little.
| buttocks wrote:
| Life with young children is actually mostly dreary and stressful;
| the fun and excitement and reliving of childhood memories is 1%
| or less of life, in my experience. By time I realize I am having
| that <1% experience it is over. I still feel as though I am
| chasing after something vanishing and never catching it.
| nradov wrote:
| I didn't find that to be true. It might depend somewhat on the
| individual children. Your individual stress level is largely
| under your own control.
| barrkel wrote:
| > _Childhood memories have an intensity and a vibrancy that it is
| difficult for the rest of life to match._
|
| Is it just me or is this just not true?
|
| I remember vibes about childhood: long days of boredom,
| especially in school; summer days in fields and by the river;
| days of learning how to code, of reading loads of books. More
| than anything else, a lot of time to fill not otherwise spoken
| for.
|
| But specific events I can recall, there are far more of them from
| adulthood. Amazing experiences, things that changed the way I
| live, they were adult events and decisions.
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