Is it all a bit boring?

Bassmansam said:
@HangTime yea i think what i was trying to say is i’ll never have kids. I think i am far too selfish and it would stress me out not being able to do what i want when i want. Add in the the financial burden and general worry about them and i just couldn’t do it.

Maybe if i was a millionaire and didn’t have to work then maybe i would do it but i don’t see that happening any time soon :D
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i thought similar to this, but also always want at least 1 child. I struggled at first with losing the "me-time", but as he's growing up now (still only just over 1year old). Now it's all changed i much rather spend the day with him, than do my usual things i did before i had the kid. :)
 
HangTime said:
What you'll find in reality is that you and/or your partner won't want to use childcare to that extent, i.e. have someone looking after kids in the evenings/weekends all the time. IMO maintaining all hobbies/social/holidays and having kids are mutually exclusive, unless you do very little of the former. You won't realise it now, but if you have kids you'll discover stuff like:

  • Holidays are restricted because you can't just book time off work and go off whenever you fancy due to schools
  • Babies will be awake needing attention during hours you are normally doing leisure activities and/or sleeping (meaning you need to sleep at other times)
  • You can't just go out for meals/cinema/drinks/whatever with your partner of an evening, you have to arrange childcare which might not always be feasible.
  • Even if you used your wealth to fund on-call childcare you'll reach a point where at least one parent isn't comfortable leaving their children with others all the time. If you jet off as a couple for a couple of weeks holiday abandoning your kids they might get upset
  • Evenings get disrupted, before I had kids I thought it would just be a case of putting kids ot bed then do whatever I want after that
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This is fair, but a lot is dependant on the child and your hobbies. For instance, we take out kids along with us for our hobbies and it actually makes it more enjoyable. We're also very lucky in that once the kids are in bed (around 7pm) we don't hear from them until about 7.30AM.

So it's not all bad.

They're expensive though, no doubting that.
 
Tony Edwards said:
What are your business cards like?

Maybe look at improving the quality of them and then find other stuff to do with other people.
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+1 Wit

Also bear in mind that you have most likely been, with the rest of us, in a state of "life on pause" for the past year. Not the best time to make longterm lifestyle changes. Sounds to me like you are feeling a little "what's it all about", which normally translates into legacy type thoughts, and that can trigger the thoughts of kids. No reason your legacy can't be something less all consuming though.
 
Thing about legacy is that unless you are a historical world changing figure, it's unlikely anyone will remember or care 50 years after your death. I mean how much do you know about what your great grandparents got up to really?

For most of us in the modern West, life is simply about distractions. Some people pass on the problem and use their children as the distraction, others it's relationships, work or hobbies but in the end it all just distraction from the reality that your life is meaningless.

For some their life will be meaningless a few years after their death for some a few hundred years and for a tiny percentage maybe a thousand or two. But in the end our solar system will die and the universe will too and nobody will escape being forgotten.

I don't have children for this reason, I honestly don't know what I would tell them about the situations we find ourselves in. I can't say I recommend life to the point I would force someone else into it. I've got plenty friends and family I've see in pain both physical and emotionally and the idea of playing God and risking someone else go through that isn't something I'm interested in. The best they could do anyway is just to stay distracted...

I'm at peace with it, I know how to stay distracted.
 
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MookJong said:
I don't have children for this reason, I honestly don't know what I would tell them about the situations we find ourselves in. I can't say I recommend life to the point I would force someone else into it. I've got plenty friends and family I've see in pain both physical and emotionally and the idea of playing God and risking someone else go through that isn't something I'm interested in. The best they could do anyway is just to stay distracted...

I'm at peace with it, I know how to stay distracted.
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I have friends with this opinion and I totally get it. My opinion is the complete opposite, though. Life is literally the only thing I can recommend, it's the only thing that I know exists. Many experience happiness just like many experience pain, and I want to give my children (and the world) an opportunity to create happiness. It doesn't have to have meaning beyond their own happiness.
 
Hi Again,

Have you considered religion? Maybe go spend a few weeks with each of the big ones. See what its all about.
 
Basher said:
I have friends with this opinion and I totally get it. My opinion is the complete opposite, though. Life is literally the only thing I can recommend, it's the only thing that I know exists. Many experience happiness just like many experience pain, and I want to give my children (and the world) an opportunity to create happiness. It doesn't have to have meaning beyond their own happiness.
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But there is no way to guarantee this when creating a human. I mean not just environmental but genetic factors or those outside your control could throw a spanner in the works. It is hard for me not to think this is at some level a story to stave off the chaos of reality. If happiness was a tangible force I would be in complete agreement. But we know it is simply down to brain function.

Seeing family members with dementia brought the robotic nature of life home to me more than anything. I also knew a guy who had a head injury and his personality completely changed. Who was the real him, the old person or the new?...the actual answer is neither.

We are all just slaves to our brain wiring and our identity a construct of brain function. Knowing I don't really exist on a true level you can point to is spooky and not something I have a great urge to pass on. I actually worry for anyone just reading this who hasn't really thought about it before, sorry if I just uprooted your reality.

Anyway, as an alternative I adopted a dog, it was already alive and I know I can (hopefully) create a happier existence than it may have had. However as far as I can tell it is also in blissful ignorance of it's overall place and predicament. This I can live with and I also get some selfish happiness firing in my brain from interacting with an animal so blissfully unaware. This sits better for me than creating someone who might be blissfully unaware like the dog for 15 years but then inevitably can't be sheltered from existential crisis and reality forever.
 
MookJong said:
But there is no way to guarantee this when creating a human.
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True, there's also no guarantee that they'll lead an unwilling life. It's a risk and on the balance of risk it's a complete no-brainer for me. Clearly that's based on my experience and environment, though. So it will be different for others. I believe that things can and will get better but also that the world is an inherently unfair place. I'm confident I can raise children to live a happy and fulfilling life so had kids on that basis.

I 100% agree with your thought process and everything you've said. It's just that clearly we've had different experiences to shape our perception on what all those points mean for the future.

I know my life is largely meaningless, that I don't really exist and that in many respects the world is messed up. I choose not to worry about those aspect that I cannot control, though.
 
MookJong said:
But there is no way to guarantee this when creating a human. I mean not just environmental but genetic factors or those outside your control could throw a spanner in the works. It is hard for me not to think this is at some level a story to stave off the chaos of reality. If happiness was a tangible force I would be in complete agreement. But we know it is simply down to brain function.

Seeing family members with dementia brought the robotic nature of life home to me more than anything. I also knew a guy who had a head injury and his personality completely changed. Who was the real him, the old person or the new?...the actual answer is neither.

We are all just slaves to our brain wiring and our identity a construct of brain function. Knowing I don't really exist on a true level you can point to is spooky and not something I have a great urge to pass on. I actually worry for anyone just reading this who hasn't really thought about it before, sorry if I just uprooted your reality.

Anyway, as an alternative I adopted a dog, it was already alive and I know I can (hopefully) create a happier existence than it may have had. However as far as I can tell it is also in blissful ignorance of it's overall place and predicament. This I can live with and I also get some selfish happiness firing in my brain from interacting with an animal so blissfully unaware. This sits better for me than creating someone who might be blissfully unaware like the dog for 15 years but then inevitably can't be sheltered from existential crisis and reality forever.
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If they’re going to die anyway it doesn’t matter whether or not they experience good or bad things. Experiencing something is probably better than not experiencing something.

Also, you state some absolutes without acknowledging that there are things out there that we can’t/our brains can’t directly perceive therefore we don’t know all there is to know.

You also don’t know whether your dog is suffering or just appears to be content. Not that I’m knocking the fact you have a pet dog.
 
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Efour said:
Hi Again,

Have you considered religion? Maybe go spend a few weeks with each of the big ones. See what its all about.
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Used to be quite religious which I think actually helped. I do think without it the whole idea becomes a lot more pointless....

I think the problem comes from relativism....I am relatively well off in most areas of my life, so any increase is minimal so no real "change" can be found there. I think I need to focus more on personal relationships and create something more tangible.

I have someone interested in me, but I'm not sure if the girl I was seeing before is still wagging me in my mind. Urgh.
 
Just resurrecting this.

Been off alcohol for a bit now, exercising more, reduced work hours. Given myself plenty of time to think. Didn't do anything.

Don't think it's depression but I'm definitely not firing on all cylinders. Can't shake the feeling it's all for nothing.

There's just no challenge at the moment. Think it's going to have to be something irrational like love or a crisis.

So yeah..
 
Stop looking for a purpose would be my advice.

You are fortunate enough to be financially secure so just throw some **** at the wall and see what sticks.

Could be something small like making something, woodwork or 3d printing for example. YouTube it, you'll find thousands of videos with advice and ideas.

Or join the others in the new midlife crisis trend and buy an aquarium :p
 
sigma said:
There is no meaning to any of it. Searching for a meaning is futile. As people have said, do stuff to help others rather than trying to help yourself.
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Exactly. We're here for the briefest blinking of an eye and then it's over.

In 100 years time few of us will have had a lasting impact and fewer still will be remembered.

Most of us work to keep the machine going (civilisation/society) but what over-arching purpose does the machine have? We reproduce because we're hard-wired to do so. Mostly we do whatever our brain's reward centres are conditioned to respond to. We work to fuel our existence and the existence of human society. We exist to work and work to exist.

Looking for purpose in any of it is a challenge.

Congrats to the OP for being loaded. And 30 is still young. 70 is still young but your body is knackered. We all die young.
 
Not an exciting week but little goals, need to get some moss and silt from local river to finish the mini wildlife pond , I've also been you tubing ways to improve my bodyboarding hand placement, dig the rail in so will be trying that on Saturday at Polzeath and it's looking good, little positive hit
https://magicseaweed.com/Polzeath-Surf-Report/969/
Not without mental health issues but this is the way I roll at the moment
 
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Orangeade said:
Just resurrecting this.

Been off alcohol for a bit now, exercising more, reduced work hours. Given myself plenty of time to think. Didn't do anything.

Don't think it's depression but I'm definitely not firing on all cylinders. Can't shake the feeling it's all for nothing.

There's just no challenge at the moment. Think it's going to have to be something irrational like love or a crisis.

So yeah..
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If you have no purpose in life, at all, then you have not got any passions in your life. That doesn't have to be women or children, but get yourself some hobbies. You live in a country where you can be in the mountains in 1-2 hours, there's tons of group activities to join (COVID dependent) from hiking to biking to board games.

Find some stuff you enjoy doing and do them on a regular basis. You said you "didn't do anything" so it sounds like you are just sitting there by yourself looking for inspiration to come and hit you like lightning. Get yourself out there and stop moping. ;)
 
Very true! Think the pandemic been a rough time for getting more involved but the excuse wears thin.

Also I need to reduce my working hours a lot, only recently realised how insanely hard I've been focusing on it. I'm never going to work 50 hour weeks but there is a compromise in there.
 
Orangeade said:
Very true! Think the pandemic been a rough time for getting more involved but the excuse wears thin.

Also I need to reduce my working hours a lot, only recently realised how insanely hard I've been focusing on it. I'm never going to work 50 hour weeks but there is a compromise in there.
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Yup, generally these things are in your control and if you look harder then you will see most things are change-able and you can quickly get out of any self-inflicted ruts. Work to live, or at least find a good balance that lets you enjoy your free time... otherwise you are right that there is little point in just 'existing', especially when living in such an amazing country.
 
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