Ben Hur Horse Race

this is really a big part of it. folks who have “pre-monday” dread are dreading something and I feel like we all owe it to ourselves to find a way to work that we don’t dread.

Ikigai, the Japanese philosophy, sums up a good way to try to think about this.

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OP if you’re reading this, I feel you, I’ve been thinking about beginnings/endings/time remaining since I was a little kid and its a fuckin curse, frankly.

As a few people have mentioned, mindfullness is a good thing to learn a bit about and to try to “do” basically every day if you can remember.

You dont need to sit listening to a person who’s doing the “spiritually tuned in reassuring relaxing voice” that mindfulness people make the mistake of doing.

If you stop, put your feet firmly on the ground and feel the floor under your feet (rock your weight up to your toes and back to your heels and really feel the solid quality of the ground for just a sec) thats called ‘grounding’ typically, then take one slow (5 secs or so in and another 5 out) diaphagramatic breath (breathe down and into your belly, not the chest, your belly button should go out instead of your breastbone) and thats it. you’ll now remember whatever youre looking at the next day instead of just going through the motions of your weekend free time.

things end and death is coming for all of us, but not now, and thats worth checking in to

Rowling is a fucking idiot.

fair enough

thats onaa them tv’s

utter classic

it is also delicious

I mean I dont disagree with anything youre saying. Wait, I actually disagree that human suffering is worse than a global extinction event. I often play druids when I play d&d though, so there you go

thats all fair. just to say, my wife doesnt enjoy the flexibility that I do, I just shoot off for 5 days at a time. not having kids to co-parent makes it not be a big deal

When you say that’s “not good” do you mean economically or environmentally? I am concerned about biodiversity die-off, deforestation, ocean acidification etc etc… I am not concerned about economics. I know the latter can effect the former, but nothing will effect it like levelling the amazonian rainforest so every person gets to eat the beef they believe they’re entitled to

Thats all fair. I wrote what I wrote for OP, though, and I’m truly confident my wife and I made the right choice for us. I’ve also never felt babies or toddlers were cute. Yesterday, I went shopping for dress shoes, and there was a family there with a kid who was maybe 7, and he flopped down on a bench and shouted “PHONE” and his father handed him his iphone so the kid could watch youtube videos.

We’re going to Tenerife for 10 days in a week or so, and we’re looking at a 2 berth campervan to shoot off around Ireland in as well. l also just booked 5 days going to Valencia, Spain and then up to Barcelona by train to see my favorite band, Bad Religion play a show in both of those cities. I have a full time(ish) job that I actually like and also have time to try to make money doing my creative things, which is actually growing year on year.

I am also very aware of overpopulation. The planet has twice as many people now as it did in the 70s. It cannot endure continued human expansion when everyone wants their own house and car and swimming pools.

While you can point to neurological changes to signal “adulthood”, in my experience, a true shift to what is identifiable as adulthood occurs somewhere between 28-32 years of age.

So my wife and I are child-free by choice. I’m in a rare position that I wind up speaking to many people in-depth about their lives, and the folks who have children talk about raising their kids all the time.

If I’m honest, many, many days I think “the moral of the story here is do not have kids, foks”.

That’s not to say that it’s all bad for everyone, but it is very bad for a lot of people. Essentially, their lives become exclusively about managing their children’s problems. Everyone thinks their children will be well mannered, sweet and thoughtful little guys who will fill their hearts with joy and purpose. The reality is many children are little nightmares with behavior problems that don’t seem to improve no matter how much work they put into seeing child psychologists and play therapists- every single day they spend 3-4 hours trying to calm their kid down as they fly into an uncontrollable rage, overturning tables and swinging their arms as hard as they can at the care givers and their parents. They want to help their kids learn how to control their feelings but they can’t. It’s really sad. The parents live in hell a little, every hour of the day is spent trying to manage their screaming, raging child.

I will also tell you that many people have tried to convince me over the years that we should have children. Family members, neighbors, co-workers… I also once had a neighbor (who’s kids were little terrors, I once saw one take a swing at his face because he was being punished, and they also once threw BIG rocks over the wall separating our properties without seeing where they’d land) say to me: “You just get to do whatever you want, don’t you?” when I was getting in the car to leave to go work remotely out in the countryside for a week.

My point is people don’t often tell you how hard it can be, most people lie and say that it’s great. At least half a dozen times I’ve had parents say “now I don’t wish that my child was gone or would never have been born as such, but I do often long for a life where I didn’t have to take care of them all the time”. Like they DO wish they never had kids, but they have to be careful to say they don’t want their child to disappear because its too dark of a thing to say.

i mean i know you were being sarcastic, but i thought you were implying i actually wanted the reddit karma system… anyway all good take easy

calm the fuck down, Im not saying I want internet points, Im saying I only barely understood why posters would just spam crap on reddit- here without karma I truly cannot conceive of a reason to make multiple posts of essentially the same meem

i dont get it. there’s no benefit to having upvoted content on lemmy since there’s no karma

you’re funny. go have a look.