Devote Yourself to the Cause of Your Life | Hacker News Reader

Devote Yourself to the Cause of Your Life

every.to

19 pointsyarapavan11 comments

Huh someone decided to be a writer I see.

I see a ton of people around me that are writers, music producers, actors and so on. They all claim that they are in their first years of their careers and they need more time to be successful at a scale that makes it worth spending their life doing it.

The way I see it is that those people have the luxury of not having to worry about money too much and enjoy not being responsible for a boss or customer for fruits of their labor. They all can claim they are Franz Kafka waiting to be discovered later

the most questionable part of the attitude you describe is the construction of a self-image based on external validation instead of intrinsic authenticity. i'm sure even kafka had an ego and enjoyed the attention he got through his writing and maybe even had some literary heros but i would guess that the level of his infatuation was significantly lower than that of many people having grown up with social media. it just messes with one's personality if it is the result of reinforcement learning based on likes.

I think it's the opposite. At least external validation gives you a real-world indicator of how close to success you are.

legends like kafka didn't write to find an audience. they wrote what mattered to them and that happened to find an audience.

There are 2 problems here: validation of your self-image and the acquisition of resources for living.

I can see your argument about the first problem, but the writer/artist still needs to find a way to produce things that others will trade for energy, food, healthcare, housing, art supplies, etc. I've always wanted to be a musician, but unfortunately, I didn't have the means to do that without paying customers and I was never good enough to get paying customers because I'm not good enough. Thus the parent's point about needing to be rich for that.

>Devote Yourself to the Cause of Your Life - Your to-do list can wait

My to-do list sure can wait! Not so sure about my landlord though!

> Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

this quote in the context of this article makes me want to throw up.

Besides it being a somewhat hollow first world pep talk, what is there especially to throw up about?

i don't know how to put it eloquently. but the feeling is similar to what i experience when i scroll through my linkedin feed for longer than a minute.

I feel it is the 100th article of this type I've read.

I hope you meant to write something like "stumbled upon" ... otherwise you might want to reassess your noise detection.

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