1. I am getting older and not doing anything remotely impactful. 2. People half my age know all the programming I know. I don't bring anything special to the table. 3. Is this what life is all about?
Now, I don't say the problem is with the world. Something could be wrong with me. But damned if I know.
1. Very few people leave a legacy. The people that do often didn't do it deliberately or intentionally.
2. They don't. There might be a few people half your age that know as much about programming as you do, but the majority don't. In any case, you are the worst person to judge what special thing you bring to the table. Go and ask one of these young people that you fear / respect / admire / think are knowledgeable and ask them to tell you what value you bring. The answer will surprise you.
3. A lot of people have pondered the meaning of life. Opinions differ on whether we've made any progress on that question. It's OK to go on a journey of "spiritual discovery" at 37; it doesn't require heading overseas to a monastery.
It's extremely common to gradually move into a state of mind where you denigrate yourself – and the effort you've put forth in life. You need to ensure your own happiness, and no one in here, or anywhere else, can tell you how to do that. Mindfulness is a great tool, because it allows you to become more certain of yourself. To discover what it is that you feel and where it is you need to go.
That being said, here's what works for me: Acknowledging that creation is hard, but that I love creating and helping people around me. That family is important and love even more so. I also remind myself to do something new every day that somehow moves the boundary of what it means to be me.
Added note: A book that also helped me realise my own tendency to create barriers around myself was "The Flinch" by Julien Smith. It's awesome and I highly recommend giving it a read – and practice some of what it champions. I suspect you will gain a lot from it, but then again: Only you can know that.
I don't know if that speaks to your situation at all. Either way, I wish you (individually) self-understanding and happiness. ^__^
Over time, I realized that this situation occurs because there's something that I must/need to do but I am procrastinating. That surfaces as anxiety and my mind ends up "translating" it into a spiritual discussion - all in my head - with questions like "is this life", "is this all"?
Expectations of self can be hard and confusing.
Moreover, there are so many things that need doing that are plenty impactful and just require discipline to do it frequently; that you never bothered to think of other ways to make an impact shouldn't mean you should dissuade others from finding out new ways to make an impact.
Lastly, there is precisely zero evidence that you get another shot at life so it's grossly irresponsible to push people into thinking that their dreams and their real life should be readjusted into some bullshit dichotomy of fantasy vs real life.
(I have heard people in their early 20s giving this same advice; Good god could you imagine the world if people stopped following their dreams so early in life)
(I was a C/D student in STEM subjects by the end of high school. I can't imagine what my life would be like if I didn't kick it into overdrive, thereby managing to get involved with some of the most prolific scientists on this planet and getting my name on a few papers; actually I can imagine, I would have blown my brains out because my life was incredibly miserable up until then)
“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world.”
If you are in your mid 40s you are not going to become great at something new to you (painting, quantum physics, chess, programming, etc etc). It is nice to dream of that, but it does not happen.
You might become decent and contribute to society in your new skill but that's different.
Who are those people who have made a single great contribution at an advanced age (let's say past 50)?
The few that I can think of (like that obscure mathematician who didn't get tenure and did his research alone) labored in their calling starting in their 20s at the latest.
The one exception could be business success which indeed is possible even at a very late age(Colonel Sanders etc)
Business success and greatly contributing to the society in the way that most people dream of aren't mutually exclusive. You might not be the kind of person with a PhD who made a scientific breakthrough and finally developed a great self-driving car, but if you created a business that managed to achieve that same thing, I see no reason why it wouldn't count.
"Good god could you imagine the world if people stopped following their dreams so early in life"
I imagine it would be indistinguishable from the way it is now. I don't see that the world is built on "great contributions to humanity", just the slow layering of knowledge upon knowledge.
I'm glad you made yourself happier by applying yourself more diligently to your studies when you were in school, but "try harder" is not a helpful response to the parent comment. Almost none of us make any impact beyond our immediate social circle, and even if you do that impact will very quickly become indistinguishable from noise. You don't need to accept that, but it's true, and if you do accept it your life will be better
That's a very interesting statement. Almost all people I know here in Poland, including myself, dream of having a life devoid of external pain, obligations, limitations etc., so that you can do whatever they choose to do. Rarely if ever anyone mentions anything about wanting to have a greater impact.
Maybe that's the next step of rich consumer society that US is at and that Poland hasn't reached yet - one in which people are aware that living (surviving in relative comfort) is easy, so they need to raise the bar for themselves somehow or they'll get depressed over the lack of challenges.
Or maybe it's just a cultural difference? American society is very much a culture of doers, while Polish is not. There are societies even richer than American, for example the Quatari, where people seem just content to mostly do not do anything particularly ambitious and just hang out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/in-praise-...
Serious question.