Until a few years ago, I thought the same. They made that decision, not me. I shouldn't have to burden myself with any obligations and should get to just reap the benefits for me and my children alone.
But something changed somewhere.
I now see my parents in a whole new light.
There is a book "Factfulness", in which the author lists a matrix for four income levels. My parents started at level 2. I still remember their parents houses: the makeshift kitchen with dim lighting, the four walls and the hole they named a bathroom, the leaky faucets at the ends of pipes ran across the house and exterior to the uneven, unpainted walls.
The sacrifices they must have took to change their socioeconomic standing and subsequently my own can never be requited. I now fit somewhere along the fourth level. I can't help but feel immense gratitude when I see them now. I now try to give them all that I can so they enjoy the time they have left. And I wish I had the foresight in my earlier years to tell them how I appreciate their efforts but then again, those stubborn bastards loved to argue then.
I don't know what I wanted to communicate saying all this so excuse me while I text my mother.
Thanks for sharing. I saved your comment because it’s something I can see myself coming back to.
I can definitely relate to your story. Child of first generation immigrants. We had to move back to Hong Kong when I was 9 because my dad died and it was too difficult for a single mom in a new country to support us. When I was 18, I took advantage of my citizenship and moved back.
The constant pressure to find a way to take care of my mom has always been difficult for me, especially because it sometimes feels at odds with pursuing personal truths. I can go work for the bank, make sure mom is taken care of, but lose my own life. In my twenties, I spent some time living an “alt” lifestyle, working as a musician, and hanging out with B-listers in Beverley Hills. But I could never really enjoy it, not just because it was vapid, but because finding a way to truly secure a future for my mom was always in my mind. It was like wrestling with two sides of the American Dream. And no one around me could relate.
As I’ve gotten older the balance between “serving the parents” versus myself has become fuzzier. It’s obvious now that making sure my mom can enjoy the rest of the time she has is the right thing to do. But in turn, her expectations of me have relaxed. She understands that she’s raised a free, independent adult, and in the culture we live in, that’s a virtue.
It’s all so complicated, as I’m sure anyone who has had a similar upbringing would know, and the details are so specific to each person. But it’s good to know that it’s a common human experience.
After reading many comments in this thread:
I wonder if we could emulate this problem digitally. To have a digital recording of the decision we'd made and can change the pivotal moments and have the program follow through with decisions we could be making...etc.
I don't know, I'm a bit tipsy. But this could be fun.
I, too, mined some bitcoins when it first appeared. My computer at the time was housed in a case of plywood that I'd made.
I wonder if my crappy computer from over 20 years ago has at least a Bitcoin in it?
Well, time for qat now. Will dig it out later.
At that time you even had bitcoin faucets that gave you 0.5-1-5 btc to play around. Or you could just run a miner on your gpu and get 50btc if you ran it for a few days or so - a ton of people probably have those on some partition on an old laptop or sth.
Yes, but we know where those coins are now: in circulation. And we have a good grasp how many that is and how many could possibly on on those shelved laptops. It is literally how every coin in circulation was minted as there is no central party, only your peer devices.
LMAO. I have about 150 Bitcoins sitting on an old hard drive at the bottom of the local dump. I guess someone would try to dig them up if it ever hits a million, but doubtful they could recover them much less unlock them.
Thank you for the introduction. I finally have proof that all those "videos from the future" are fake.
I knew they were, just didn't know what planar tracking was.
On another note: the Humane AI is released. Maybe the scam is that it's damn slow?
Ok, this is weird.
I just saw this book on a YouTube short a few moments ago.
And now I see it here. Interesting?
Could be that this is trending but the paranoia within has me leaning towards the old suspicion: the Internet is a unique bubble for each one of us. LoL
Yeah, that's basically how I saw it (someone apparently reposted the YouTube short on another website.) I was actually intrigued enough to further look into it, and have no regrets about having done so.
One of the reasons I have realized is that it's sometimes about control. A manager (people, project, product) will not have as much control over an experienced employee who has potentially been at the company a long time or just has a lot of experience in general in terms of getting what they want from the employee, despite the employee having the business' best interest in mind. So it's an implicit attrition that seems to sometimes be desired.
Really? You don't read anything in parentheses? I think that would be harder to do (I'm joking, don't take it seriously) than actually reading the parenthetical information.
But something changed somewhere. I now see my parents in a whole new light.
There is a book "Factfulness", in which the author lists a matrix for four income levels. My parents started at level 2. I still remember their parents houses: the makeshift kitchen with dim lighting, the four walls and the hole they named a bathroom, the leaky faucets at the ends of pipes ran across the house and exterior to the uneven, unpainted walls.
The sacrifices they must have took to change their socioeconomic standing and subsequently my own can never be requited. I now fit somewhere along the fourth level. I can't help but feel immense gratitude when I see them now. I now try to give them all that I can so they enjoy the time they have left. And I wish I had the foresight in my earlier years to tell them how I appreciate their efforts but then again, those stubborn bastards loved to argue then.
I don't know what I wanted to communicate saying all this so excuse me while I text my mother.