
Life Is Short (2016) - zuhayeer
http://paulgraham.com/vb.html
======
keiferski
_It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it.
Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to
allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is
well invested._

 _But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to
no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has
passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we
receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but
are wasteful of it._

 _Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes
into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is
entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for
him who orders it properly._

\- Seneca, _On the Shortness of Life,_ 49 AD

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_(Seneca)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_\(Seneca\))

[http://www.crtpesaro.it/Materiali/Latino/On%20the%20Shortnes...](http://www.crtpesaro.it/Materiali/Latino/On%20the%20Shortness%20of%20Life.php)

~~~
comboy
Seneca lived in different times. By the time you get "proper education" and
then secure yourself financially you are quite old in today's world. So better
enjoy the process treating it as the thing rather than the means.

Longer lifespan helps but not that much. Biologically we just tend to peak
pretty early.

One thing I may disagree with PG is that if you enjoyed doing something while
doing it, then I think the time wasn't wasted, even if later in life you think
you may have spent that time better. Otherwise logical conclusion is that you
should live with a mind of a very old man.

~~~
quickthrower2
Maybe that is the point? We are all brainwashed to think we need to secure
ourselves financially. Most of us (on HN at least) could probably do barely
any work now, and not die. But you'd have to sacrifice a lot of stuff we think
we need. Me included, it's a hard trap to escape when everyone is in it.

~~~
dstick
There's this big "Aha" moment I had while reading a book this vacation; I
realised that I wanted to be financially secure since it was the only means
available in today's society to be "set" \- secure.

If I was to live in a small community where I'd know my neighbours, everyone
did the things most valuable to the community - farm, smith, care, socialise,
guard - and I knew everyone had each other's back, this would give the same
feeling.

Alas, we live in a disconnected society, not even close to having local ties,
so we feel we have to earn a ton of money in order to survive by buying our
security.

~~~
frequentnapper
Yeah but those small communities also had rich and poor. You miss one season
of rain, and a significant number are now indebted or lose their livelihood.

~~~
quickthrower2
But what if you had community ways of living but in the modern world with
luxuries like irrigation?

~~~
sukilot
Like a homeless shelter? We have that now.

------
ransom1538
Routines.

Routines speed up your life. Time will blow by quicker if you are covered in
routines. What is worse, your days will become blurred - each day - too
similar to the next - for you brain to hold on to distinct memories. Example:
if you drive to work the same way each day - you will often not even remember
the drive by 10am. That hour will be gone forever. However, if you were to
take BART instead for the first time, that one particular day will last a
lifetime. Try moving. Move to a different town, force yourself to get new
friends, take three saxophone lessons. Your days will last.

alternative: Alarm beeps, Wake up, drive your kid to school the same way,
drive your commute the same way, work with the same people, tell the same
jokes, work on similar problems all day, watch netflix all weekend. You will
wake up at 45 when someone in your family passes.

Change things up.

~~~
wintermutestwin
I disagree.

Routines help to ensure that the more mundane aspects of life take less time
and leave room for more interesting pursuits. Routines support living a life
of integrity - I show up on time and I can keep my commitments easier when I
have a steady routine. Routines help to reduce decision fatigue so that I have
room for more important decisions.

It seems that you are arguing that following routines makes you a zombie, but
my experience is quite the opposite. I find it easier to savor the mundane
things in life when they follow a routine. I think that it may be a
personality difference where some people thrive on routine and some thrive on
extreme novelty. vive la differance?

~~~
bschne
Maybe, but I think it's important to distinguish what your routine covers and
what it doesn't. I agree with gp when whole days are all the same and
optimized to death for more productive time.

But I'd agree with you if you optimize the necessary errands, and fill the
rest of your time with more interesting/meaningful activities.

------
cammil
On this level of thinking I think we should consider the possibility that the
notion of time is highly subjective. Indeed I think we should consider the
possibility that time is an illusion.

That illusion is created by the mind, which habitually simulates the past and
the future. The thinking mind is a simulator.

This is why the past can be changed, because the past is a thought. It is also
possible to suspend this simulating, and you can experience timelessness. You
might have experienced something similar in "flow states".

A practical mnemonic I use is to consider not filling time with your actions,
but rather filling your actions with time. This means slowing down, observing
in as much detail as possible, and appreciating every possible moment within
each action.

Hope someone finds this useful!

~~~
alexpetralia
This is wonderful.

I feel like there is more here however. If our perception of time is
manipulable (e.g. flow states, psychedelics, confabulation), how do we use
that knowledge to perceive having lived a more enjoyable life?

Is it mastery over self-delusion? Does undivided attention on the passage of
time contribute to well-being? What resources would you recommend to learn
more (e.g. science? Eastern philosophy? etc.)

~~~
cammil
> how do we use that knowledge to perceive having lived a more enjoyable life?

I think this is also a construct of the simulating mind. It is simply a
thought (or series of thoughts) that leads you to "perceive" that your past
was enjoyable. This thought passes and once it has, there is no concept of
your past. Of course this thought might come back again.

I would suggest rather than hoping you can live a life in which you regularly
perceive your past as enjoyable, simply observe the fact that you are thinking
this thought.

> Is it mastery over self-delusion?

I am not sure what you mean by this.

> Does undivided attention on the passage of time contribute to well-being?

In my experience, definitely yes.

> What resources would you recommend to learn more (e.g. science? Eastern
> philosophy? etc.)

This is a hard one to answer I think. (Good) Science I think won't lead you
astray. Eastern philosophy has so much to offer I think, but there is also a
lot of nonsense that you probably should be careful to avoid. I think you have
to use your common sense when judging. Does it make sense to you? Does it
correspond with your experience, or is someone simply asking you to believe
something? (This of course is the scientific process.) BTW, these ideas are
not confined to Eastern philosophy, similar ideas were philosophised in the
West.

There is so much written about these ideas so I couldn't give you the
canonical source of it all. One thing that I probably should mention is
meditation. It seems to be the one common denominator. The way I see it, is
it's the exercise that _practically_ helps change the way you see, think and
act.

If you want some concrete recommendations I am happy to suggest some, but I
find it's often more helpful for people to discover what resonates with them.

------
vecter
> One heuristic for distinguishing stuff that matters is to ask yourself
> whether you'll care about it in the future. Fake stuff that matters usually
> has a sharp peak of seeming to matter. That's how it tricks you. The area
> under the curve is small, but its shape jabs into your consciousness like a
> pin.

This is so concisely and beautifully put. It's a good mental model and test
for me to apply to things in my life to see whether or not I should spend time
on them.

~~~
Waterluvian
“Oh my god he’s just shitting all over my code with his different linting
settings”

I started too many fights caring about the dumbest stuff.

It absolutely was a sudden spike of mattering. But ultimately matters almost
not at all: the area under the spike is nada.

Another thing I do is rubber duck it with my wife. I explain what’s bothering
me in terms she (A non coder) understands. And usually by the end I already
have my answer.

------
imranq
One trick I learned to slow down time is to keep a journal and write both
about the future (either as a narrative or plan a schedule) and about the past
(either as a journal entry or an audit).

This could be about anything, any minute detail you encountered throughout the
day or goal you are planning - the number of clouds outside or an application
to graduate school you're thinking about or seeing someone interesting on the
street.

Do this regularly, each day for 30 minutes, for 2-3 months and you will find
that your memory improves by 10x and your days feel much more fulfilling and
purpose driven.

The reason I think this works, is that by both explicitly planning and
examining, your brain will create its own BS filter and guide you to things
that are naturally fulfilling and worth your time.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Tell us more. I went on and off with journaling for most of my life, but I
wouldn't consider the effort successful.

Just right now, and for the next two weeks, I am trying to journal every day,
as a little experiment.

Again, tell us more. Keen to hear.

~~~
imranq
Of course. Just expanding on the idea behind journaling is that it is a
scaffolding for your mind. For me, without journaling, my mind will wander and
probably resemble a random walk. Instead, I found that by organizing my days
into "packets" which have a forward-looking journaling session in the
beginning and a backward-looking journaling session at the end was a
tremendous boost to how structured my thinking is and how I spend my time.

For me, each "packet" is 2-3 day period and each journaling session is about
30 minutes. So two journaling sessions is a 1 hour investment to get better
results over 48 hours (~2%) doesn't seem too bad.

More practically, I just keep two composition notebooks for these journals,
and try to keep to a zettelkasten style[1] in Evernote.

[1] [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-
zettel...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettelkasten-
method-1)

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Thanks a lot for the extra details!

------
closeparen
This is one of those things that everyone “knows” but no one really gets until
they experience it. In my case it’s the realization that the deadline to
establish the relationships for this chapter of life passed in March. The
social network may open up again in a few years, but my peer group is going to
be a bunch of newlyweds and new parents by then.

~~~
rrishi
I am 27 with a lot of people around me already married or getting closer to
getting married. Whereas I am probably not going to be at that place for maybe
the next 5-7 years. I fear the next 5-7 years are going to be very lonely,
maybe I will get another chance to socialize once I am married myself. But
till then, maybe I'll have to contend myself with my own company.

The sad bit is that its only now that I have finally started to grasp social
interactions. Lived a majority of my life in a very depressive state and only
been able to get out of all that recently.

~~~
RobPfeifer
You’ll be good - you’ve done the hard part :). Just reach out if you fall back
into it!

Also, every interaction Is social - keep up the new skill when you shop, chat
online, get gas, etc.

Most people like people (I know, I don’t get it either a lot of the time) so
just keep putting yourself out there!

------
submeta
> When I was a kid I used to wonder about this. Is life actually short, or are
> we really complaining about its finiteness? Would we be just as likely to
> feel life was short if we lived 10 times as long.

This reminds me of Parkinson‘s Law: „work expands so as to fill the time
available for its completion“. So if we know we will be travelling in three
days, we need tree days to pack our stuff. And if we get a message from our
boss telling us we need to travel this noon, we‘ll quickly pack a few things
and get a toothbrush at the airport.

If we had 10 times more time to live, we wouldn‘t necessarily be getting ten
times more out of it. We would just - my hypothesis - need that much more time
to accomplish our milestones.

I read somewhere about putting Parkinson‘s Law in reverse: Committing to
return the assignment in a week. That way we have a limited time budget, a
boundary. That pushes us to move quickly.

~~~
Viliam1234
> If we had 10 times more time to live, we wouldn‘t necessarily be getting ten
> times more out of it.

We would probably need to work 10 times longer, because everything would be
more expensive. We compete for scarce resources with other people, and if we
have more time and they have too, the extra time will be burned in the zero-
sum competitions.

~~~
adventured
That and the human population would rapidly saturate the planet within this
century. That of course may happen anyway, however as is we at least have a
fighting shot at managing it. Life expectancy expansion has to be gradual so
we can adjust to it (in numerous ways), otherwise it'd likely prompt a
cataclysmic humanity crash (bubble then crash). Beyond things getting more
expensive, we'd probably just have a plain resource-driven civilization crash
in much of the world.

Annual births more or less peaked in 1988 at around 139/140 million, which is
close to the level we're still at today [1]. Annual deaths however keep
climbing, from roughly 48m in 1988 to 60m or so today. Births are set to
decline while deaths keep climbing throughout the century.

Clear most of the natural deaths for just the next 80 years, and it's the
difference between then having 18-20 billion (or more) people in the year 2100
versus the present common projections of around 11'ish billion. Would have to
resolve in the fantasy age extension scenario whether people can keep having
children for hundreds of years, as that would change projections radically.
Governments would likely aggressively regulate population expansion if so,
rather than hoping for self-restriction (eg if it took a natural form of
tapering via per capita births dropping to match the changes). Does raising a
child become a 100 year responsibility? Does our pre-adult immaturity /
adolescence time expand to fill the allotted life expectancy? Lots of
questions in the fantasy premise.

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/8buRWJS.png](https://i.imgur.com/8buRWJS.png)

------
dang
If curious see also

2018
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729555](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729555)

Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10917446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10917446)

~~~
wtvanhest
I read this essay in 2016, and was fortunate to have a child in late 2018.

This essay had a profound impact on me, and by extension a profound impact on
our son's upbringing. There are very few weekends that go by that I don't
think of it.

I am sure PG isn't wasting his time on HN anymore, but if he does happen to
read this, I just want to say thanks.

------
austincheney
When ever this subject comes up I think of the song Time from Pink Floyd. I
included the lyrics below.

If a typical person has 72 years of life that is:

* 26,298 days (includes 18 leap days)

* 631,152 hours, 37,869,120 minutes, 2,272,147,200 seconds (not counting leap seconds)

That sounds like an enormous amount of time. Time is like money. For some
people it always seems to slip away. For other people its a multiplicative
empowering factor that builds on itself like a compound interest. For others
still there is plenty of time meaningfully spent performing intentional tasks.

\------------

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.

Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town

Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

\---

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

\---

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking

Racing around to come up behind you again.

The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

\---

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.

Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines

Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way

The time is gone, the song is over,

Thought I'd something more to say.

\---

Home

Home again

I like to be here

When I can

\---

When I come home

Cold and tired

It's good to warm my bones

Beside the fire

\---

Far away

Across the field

Tolling on the iron bell

Calls the faithful to their knees

To hear the softly spoken magic spell

------
jacobr
Some people seem to be able to shrug off bullshit at work, just go home and
think about things that “matter”. If I see bullshit, things that are wrong, or
just legitimately hard problems I have a very hard time not working hard to
fix it even though I would not really care about the outcome in 10 years.

The dilemma is the balance between doing work that matters, maybe finding
something where I care more about the outcome, or learn to brush things off
and focus on other things in life that matters.

------
serniebanders
Life is short when you want more than what is available around you. I just
chill, tend to the nature around me, do my best, and try to make people around
me happy. Simple life, just the right amount of time.

~~~
082349872349872
Sometime I need to read _The View from 80_ , but an excerpt my father sent me
was to the effect that, being in his eighties, the author can now view with
amusement all the young people around him so busy white-rabbitly _striving_.

~~~
pmoriarty
Ok, but we have to remember that not all 80-year-olds have the same outlook on
life.

Some people remain very active and ambitious well in to advanced age, as long
as their body and mind can hold out, which is something that will differ from
person to person.

Here's a telling example: [1] In his 60's, Robert Owens was running marathons
and undergoing Navy SEAL tests that would regularly crush 18-year-olds, and
everyone he knew was trying to dissuade him from because they thought it would
kill him. He still did it, and though he wasn't quite 80 at the time of the
video and his body was starting to give out, he was insanely ambitious and
accomplished at an advanced age, well past the point where most people would
have thrown in the towel.

I've seen artists who are very active in to their 90's, and have heard of
people running marathons in their 90's. On the other end of the spectrum, the
rate of suicide, depression, and loneliness among the elderly is very high.
That's not to mention the devastation of dementia and other mental and
physical afflictions.

People deal with aging very differently depending on their body, mind, socio-
economic circumstances, support networks, how they were brought up and their
outlook on life, all of which vary greatly.

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg9kJeule7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg9kJeule7Q)

------
amadeuspagel
> And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous
> quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8
> peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely
> seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was.

If you had 8 cars to choose from, it wouldn't seem so limited, would it? The
idea that you can take a number, and in absolute sense say that it's "not a
lot" is bizarre. Even 8 books might seem like a lot in a different situation,
like if someone packed that many books in his suitcase for a weekend trip.

~~~
quickthrower2
Plus only 8 christmas but with 2 kids you'd have 16 birthdays, plus maybe 100
or so friends birhdays, 2 first days at school, etc. etc. lots of moments.

------
audiodude
I'm simultaneously in a married relationship where children are off the table
(by our choosing), and am hopelessly bored most of the time. It's interesting
to contrast these two facts.

I think life is too long, because I don't believe in any afterlife and if I
die today or 40 years from now, what's the difference? Just a bunch of pain
and boredom all the way down from now until then.

~~~
aggie
Nietzsche's writing on "eternal return" helped me with similar thoughts. It
gives life heaviness, as Kundera says in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return)

Also, learning to "imagine Sisyphus happy." Easier said than done, of course.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus)

~~~
audiodude
Thanks for the links.

I actually read the whole Sisyphus essay, but it didn't really inspire me. I
think I'm probably an Existentialist to some degree, I believe that life has
no inherent meaning or value and that we have to create for ourselves such
meaning. But most days I'm just going through the motions and I'd rather tune
out, or "drop out" as it were. Or as Weezer says "Why bother? It's gonna hurt
me."

~~~
keiferski
The "opposite" of Existentialism, if there is such a thing, might be the
Japanese idea of _shokunin_ or pure mastery of one's profession. In the West
we'd probably call this _craftsmanship:_ taking pride in the fundamentals of
one's chosen profession and aiming to master it, not simply earn a living.
It's an ideal that I've always found inspiring.

 _Once you decide on your profession, you must immerse yourself in your work._

\- Jiro Ono

[https://medium.com/@alyjuma/shokunin-and-sushi-what-jiro-
can...](https://medium.com/@alyjuma/shokunin-and-sushi-what-jiro-can-teach-us-
about-mastery-1a886f129df4)

Phrased another way, the craftsmanship model narrows the boundaries of
meaning, whereas the Existentialist one expands them to the infinite, or
destroys them entirely.

 _I have always been fascinated by all types of monomania, by persons wrapped
up in a single idea; for the stricter the limits a man sets for himself, the
more clearly he approaches the eternal._

\- Stefan Zweig

~~~
pmoriarty
_Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui. At every touch of his hand,
every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee
-- zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect
rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or
keeping time to the Ching-shou music._

 _" Ah, this is marvelous!" said Lord Wen-hui. "Imagine skill reaching such
heights!"_

 _Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, "What I care about is the Way,
which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see
was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now --
now I go at it by spirit and don't look with my eyes. Perception and
understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along
with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through
the big openings, and following things as they are. So I never touch the
smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint._

 _" A good cook changes his knife once a year -- because he cuts. A mediocre
cook changes his knife once a month -- because he hacks. I've had this knife
of mine for nineteen years and I've cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet
the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are
spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness.
If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there's plenty of
room -- more than enough for the blade to play about it. That's why after
nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came
from the grindstone._

 _" However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the
difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what
I'm doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety,
until -- flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to
the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely
satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it
away."_

 _" Excellent!" said Lord Wen-hui. "I have heard the words of Cook Ting and
learned how to care for life!"_

[http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/chuang-
tzu.htm](http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/chuang-tzu.htm)

~~~
keiferski
Thanks for the share. I was just listening to an audiobook Zhuang-zi a few
weeks ago (while biking by a farm, ironically) and remember this exact story.

------
sak5sk
I once had a dream that felt like it lasted a lifetime. In this dream, I had a
whole new life, a different wife, kids, and I lived it through to the end.
Then I woke up. It was the weirdest thing ever and I often think about it.

~~~
jpxw
There’s absolutely no way of knowing that you’re not living in a dream as we
speak right now.

~~~
sak5sk
That's the scary part! I woke up very disoriented, full of all sorts of
emotions - disappointment, sadness, total confusion. I couldn't make sense of
what just happened. It was scary. I also missed my "dream family". I couldn't
believe they were gone and it was all a dream.

I've told this to people, and they did not believe me.

It took a good 3 days to shake off all of the emotions I was feeling over a
dream. I did a fair bit of research on this and found that many people report
the same happening to them.

------
sg47
I have a different take on this. Not everyone is Paul Graham. Paul Graham
would not have written this before founding his company. He'd not have thought
"there are only 52 weekends when I'm 25 so let me just party".

Most people, especially those who have not made it in life, are worried about
survival. Especially people with kids. They sacrifice their time with kids so
that their kids can have a better life than them. So that they can move them
from <insert class here> to upper <insert class here>. They work hard, attend
pointless meetings so that they can get ahead in their career, not upset
anyone and make sure they have health insurance. They do insane commutes for
the same reason. Most people do not have the luxury to choose.

People are more unsure of their survival despite greater wealth. A single
medical incident could bankrupt them. There are people on Blind wondering if
$2 million is enough to retire. A friend of mine was worried that he'd not be
able to hit his goal of a net worth of $5 million at his current company (he
makes around $600k). Everyone is trying to get ahead and there's serious FOMO
if one is not ambitious. This is prevalent especially in Silicon Valley
companies.

The only solution to live life the way PG envisions is to guarantee basic
income, shelter and healthcare.

------
Abishek_Muthian
Not for the one in pain.

Be it from illness, inequality or just mere existence and yet one endures the
pain due to primordial urge to live.

------
wintorez
It’s actually the longest thing you will ever experience.

~~~
everfree
...according to some schools of belief. Truth is, there is no way to prove or
disprove that, it's a debate for the ages between atheism and religion.

~~~
lcall
Sufficiently for my own decision-making at least, I have proven it and it
helps me much.... (My simple-tech web site I hope provides more info in a
skimmable way; it is mentioned in my HN user profile, for what that may be
worth, or more specific links if requested.)

(With any downvotes, a thoughtful comment is appreciated. thanks.)

------
sanchezdev
"Bullshit is the junk food of experience." Well put!

------
pedro1976
Jordan Petersen once said "working means sacrificing the present for the
future", which is an amazing statement. Its incredible how much our society
believes working is a must, especially fulltime. I once did a sabatical and
people giving me a weird look, after finding out that I don't do a regular
job. Quite sad, imho.

~~~
swagasaurus-rex
It's especially cruel to be living paycheck to paycheck.

At that point, you're not sacrificing the present for the future. You're
sacrificing the present for survival.

------
state_less
If you're dealing with a lot of bullshit, remember that the game should be
worth the candle.

Hopefully that motivates you to change things up if it's been shitty too long.

------
simonebrunozzi
> One great thing about having small children is that they make you spend time
> on things that matter: them. They grab your sleeve as you're staring at your
> phone and say "will you play with me?" And odds are that is in fact the
> bullshit-minimizing option.

Love this passage. Don't have kids, but I can totally see this happening to
parents I know.

------
dstick
"It is possible to slow time somewhat"

I've discovered how during a holiday in a camper 2 years ago. Do a -lot- of
new things on a single day. We had a 6 day trip and it felt like 3 weeks. It
was magic. While routine and habits have their place, if you want to slow down
or bend the flow of time - do new things every day.

------
NiceWayToDoIT
> Arguing - Your instinct when attacked is to defend yourself. But like a lot
> of instincts, this one wasn't designed for the world we now live in.
> Counterintuitive as it feels, it's better most of the time not to defend
> yourself.

I love this one, certainly something I need to practice.

------
justcomments12
It's not that life is short, it's that we waste to much of it - Seneca

------
modernerd
Amit Gupta's “you don't get forever” talk is a good complement to this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AP1hoNJkMk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AP1hoNJkMk)

------
agumonkey
Everything is short when viewed that way.

A climber said: on a wall, a second is a century.

Maybe our culture should reinstate sublime difficulties, preferably in groups,
to make the limited space denser :)

------
OneGuy123
For me the most important take-away of that article is this:

Do you know "life is short" merely intelectually or do you feel it in your
bones as if your body is on fire?

------
healthsuccess
Beautifully written.

------
boring_twenties
Is it just me or is SSL completely broken on this site?

First I get this:

Websites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust this
site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for paulgraham.com. The
certificate is only valid for the following names:
_.store.yahoo.com,_.store.yahoo.net, store.yahoo.com, store.yahoo.net,
_.stores.yahoo.net, stores.yahoo.net,_.csell.store.yahoo.net, _.us-
dc1-edit.store.yahoo.net,_.us-dc2-edit.store.yahoo.net, _.us-
dc1.csell.store.yahoo.net,_.us-dc2.csell.store.yahoo.net

OK, I guess that's close enough, but when I "Accept the risk and continue," I
get this, which can't be bypassed:

An error occurred during a connection to paulgraham.com. Cannot communicate
securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s). Error code:
SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP

~~~
tlb
Fixed by changing the URL to http, thanks.

------
tallgiraffe
Fyi, submitted link is HTTPS but PG's site isn't. The link fails to open in
some browsers.

------
farrarstan
hackernews.txt

