I’m tempted to disagree somewhat as a mid-20-somethibh. I think your point is excellent overall but I also think it’s pretty important to have plans. Just don’t expect to have 20/20 foresight and that your plans will fail - but the takeaway is to make more, better plans, and do your best to take failure on your chin, rather than to feel it’s okay to just drift not knowing what you want in life and not planning on how to get it.
Comment on Anon makes life choices
ameancow@lemmy.world 4 weeks agoAs someone a bit older than most on these sites, I can say with confidence, if you have any kind of solid plan for your life you’re going to get royally fucked over.
If you want any chance of happiness in your life, you have to have a balance between working towards goals, but also learning to love and appreciate wherever life takes you, even if it’s in the opposite direction. Because the harder you try to fit into an image you make for yourself, the harder life pushes back.
I know all this sounds like a wood-etching in grandma’s kitchen, but it’s 100% true and if you don’t get it now… you will.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
ameancow@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
That’s why I said you need to keep working towards a goal, and why a balance between passivity and rigid planning is a must.
Any absolutist viewpoint is going to cause you more problems, and there are a lot of people pushing very absolutist ideas out there about what you need to do with your life to feel rewarded and fulfilled.
The dirty secret is there’s no such thing as a “wasted life.” Short of doing something so heinous that you have your life or freedom taken from you, there’s no “wrong” way to live, you simply existing is a miracle beyond all reason and explanation and even if you just sat on your hands contemplating your navel for 80 years, that’s still an experience of life, and any kind of experience you’re having must be appreciated, because the alternative is not experiencing anything.
TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
I disagree. I think you need to have plans but be willing to let them go. You’re wrong! No you!
someacnt@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
I wonder why self-intro in college application asks so much about life plan, when it is not remotely how we should live.
ameancow@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Those kinds of things, along with work-interviews and small-talk at gatherings, is far more about viewing how someone presents themselves and conforms to societal expectations.
Not necessarily in negative, overbearing way, often this is literally how we appraise people all day, all the time. This is how we keep from inviting psychotic strangers into our tribe who may cause damage. Just seeing if they can conduct themselves as we expect so we know they are likely to hold to their end of our social contracts.
(All of this is also why we’re such a racist and scared species, which is also what inspires college self-intros.)
ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Yeah, but Zoldyck was talking about doing something Vs doing nothing. And that doing something random is fine as long as it is something.
jballs@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
I was trying to explain this to my son yesterday. He’s in middle school but already has a career path picked out. I was like, “dude, I didn’t even know my current job existed until a decade after I graduated from college, you don’t have to have this all figured out yet. Plans change, life gets in the way. Just go with it.”
Croquette@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
It is something I am learning myself, but without the experience to back it up, it’s really hard to understand truly.