“Comparison is the thief of joy,” as they say, but it’s not as simple as knowing that and being immediately freed from its clutches.
I looked up a former friend from high school today and found she’s now super successful with her own startup doing cool science shit that might actually improve people’s lives. When I look at my own life and what I’ve done in the same time it feels so insignificant, worthless even.
Normally I’m content to just chug along my path and try my best to better the world, but I’ve got some wounds surrounding this friend and our falling out (largely due to my own insecurities and inability to reconcile my unrequited crush on her :cringe: ) that never healed. Even thinking about her makes me feel so wretched, and all the more hateful towards myself for feeling that way, for being so weak and ill-accomplished. Is there anything to do but just try to block it out of my mind? I wish I could tear out and burn the piece of me that cares about this.
Edit: Thank you to everyone who’s responded to this. Talking about it has helped me feel a lot better and think about some goals for how I want my life to go and what I want to prioritize moving forward. Who knew internet strangers could be so helpful?
Remember that careers are decades long, and a lot of really cool shit is the result of decades of not making much progress. I come from a math background and work in tech, and there’s a lot of :brainworms: about people peaking in their late 20s, like if you don’t make some huge breakthrough right out of school, you’re just spent. This, of course, is
- Obviously nonsense based on all the 70 year olds doing wacky work in their fields
- Exactly the mindset capital wishes to cultivate to create maximally pliable cogs to rip through their spyware startups and graduate programs to burn through grunt work with youthful enthusiasm and a lack of responsibilities (e.g., family)
HOT TAKE EDIT: This latter point is also the defining feature of Western leftist organizing, and a significant hindrance to building any serious power base. “Professional” organizers and their professionalized orgs are in large part imitations of corporate structures and reproduce the same corrosive effects, because colonybrains have difficulty conceiving of any other form of organization other than “LLC but woke”. The systematization of dissent and corporatization of resistance are the wedges necessary for elite capture of that same dissent.
Extra edit: the other reason that capital in particular loves to chew up youths is that most of them haven’t developed any significant theory of ethics due to lack of exposure. It’s much easier to make the Bitcoin-that-rats-you-out-to-your-boss Helmet with an army of 25 year old programmers who have never read Sartre/Foucault/Marx/etc. or recognized the exploitation of an employer before than with people who have had to seriously grapple with the reality of work under capitalism (even if they don’t recognize it, per se).
Took me a long time to sort of cope with this.
cw: trauma
spoiler
So when I was raped my brain just melted. Couldn’t take tests of any kind (including job interviews, god, I have bombed so many). Really messed up my train of thought, I regularly zone out and can hardly hold a sustained, coherent thought anymore, so much so that if I’m talking with someone, I can only say around 2 sentences before losing myself as the thought eventually hits my brain’s trauma wall. That delayed my life significantly, including meaning I gotta suffer a lot cause I never got the surgeries I need, so I would feel extreme jealousy at people that weren’t forced into fucked up situations like I was. Eventually through the power of extreme lying and having a literal earpiece so a friend can coach me as I say things like I’m some sort of Bond villain’s marionette, I got a decent job and have held it down for a while now. It helps people and stuff. But even when I’m helping people, its all faceless so it doesn’t even feel like I am helping. No one knows I’m helping them. It feels insignificant. Personally, I care far more about my interpersonal relationships. Ultimately, nothing matters, death comes for us all, and life is nothing but pain and struggle. But I find it useful to help people I meet have a little bit less pain and struggle in their lives. Sometimes that just means giving a sick friend a free room for a few months or something. I literally did that and helped wipe their ass and stuff and clean some wounds. Seeing them get even a little, minuscule bit better holds a special place in my heart that gives me some meaning. Oh, and also if you find yourself thinking about this too much, I suggest sleeping medications. I only get fucked up thoughts when I don’t sleep well or something hits me bad.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I really do want to help people close to me but I’ve had trouble cultivating those relationships, especially since moving back home after graduation. I think I need to make it more of a project to connect with my community and find valuable connections.
Also wanted to say that I love your posts and comments! Idk what it is but they just hit different, especially when you talk about your partner it’s very wholesome and makes my day better :stalin-heart:
There’s a line from a Scatman John song that I’ve always found soothing: “I wanna be a human being, not a human doing. I couldn’t keep that pace up if I tried.”
Fwiw, I love the person reading this and think they’re just the best.
Nihilism’s the only way to go. It’s always healthy to remember that the whole of human effort will lead to nothing and everyone is equally insignificant and irrelevant. Do as much or as little as you want to, it all amounts to the same thing. Insignificance is incredibly liberating. I became exponentially happier when I stopped thinking that I mattered. When you realise that there is nobody on any plane of existence that truly cares about what you or anybody else does, then you can do anything.
:yes-chad:
It’s funny because this is my attitude like 90% of the time - we’ll all be forgotten eventually so just love as much as you can, try to make the world a little better, and make art. This particular issue just has a special way of boring through my personal growth until I’m 15 years old again.
Stop posting my thoughts on this public forum, it’s extremely irritating.
Jk, I feel you comrade. We do our best but some things get through
