Comment by Sohcahtoa82 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sohcahtoa82 | Hacker News Reader

> "Does Anyone Feel Like an Actual Adult?"

I'm 41 years old and I'm still not convinced that I'm not just 3 kids stacked in a trench coat.

Despite the fact that I have a respectable career, own a house, have a retirement account, etc, I still feel like I'm cosplaying as a responsible adult when I put on some nice clothes and go out to a fancy dinner. What am I doing here? This is for people that have their shit together. I don't have my shit together, do I? Maybe I do?

I'm a child that tricked 5 people into thinking I know what I'm doing and gave me a job, then used that lie to swindle a bank into letting me borrow $300,000 to buy a house. I traveled to Italy last year. Are kids even allowed to board international flights on their own?

Someone told me that this feeling is actually pretty common, but it usually goes away once your same-gendered parent dies, but my dad passed almost 5 years ago. Still often feel like I know nothing and am just pretending to know how to navigate life.

I’m a couple years behind you and I feel the exact same. I suppose religious rituals have the goal of conferring life stages/adulthood, but I think that just proves how outdated religion is. I believe Judaism sets adulthood at 13 which is hard to believe was true even in the Bronze Age. My religion sets it in mid teenage years, but my parents sure didn’t treat me like an adult when I went through their ritual (and they were right).

I suppose you could call me a manchild, but I never really got the appeal of growing up in America - work 40+ hours a week with a week or two off per year (and that’s if you’re lucky) for a few decades as you get old and then die. And that’s if you don’t get laid off. Got help you if you get laid off with dependents who need your employment for food, shelter, and health insurance. It’s pretty grim. If I was able to believe in a religion, I bet it would help.

On a brighter note, I find it helps to think of things like play. Work is where I play with computers, the gym is where I mess around and enjoy myself. Framing is important.

> I never really got the appeal of growing up in America - work 40+ hours a week with a week or two off per year (and that’s if you’re lucky) for a few decades as you get old and then die [...] if you don’t get laid off.

America is not a country for salarymen. It is a country for entrepreneurs and business owners. Customers and employees are the human resources they exploit.

You make your money however you can then you exfiltrate your earnings back to whatever country you came from, and retire early as a king.

Well, I'm from here, but I do think about retiring abroad. I'm not sure about navigating another culture and language, but I suppose I could learn.

The good news for you then is that English will get you pretty far in most countries. Most of Europe isn't so culturally different that it's impossible. Places like Australia (good weather) and NZ (medium weather, great activities), where I was born and grew up, are good options if you can get the visa (you probably can if you're a technologist).

So many European countries have high numbers of English speakers, some are better retirement targets than others. Certainly a lots of British people Retire to Spain, Portugal and Greece.

I don’t really get it. I hear people say this but why?

You’re at a fancy dinner to enjoy the fancy dinner.

You either do or do not know what you’re doing at work. Hopefully you do. I feel like most people do.

You borrowed money and are presumably repaying it.

First meta cognition then empathy.

You're at a fancy restaurant because it's your daughter's birthday therefore everybodies' life stories are meeting at this moment, to make it a memorable evening.

You might be a 40yr old man pondering what life means, as your week has been filled with boiler plate code and you've attend endless meetings with the same filler conversations around missed deadlines and dropped targets.

You wonder what the future of your medium sized business app will be in an economy clouded by AI, LLMs and ChatGPT. The looming macro-economic challenges ring faintly in the back of your mind.

Your father would have been at this table, why isn't he here. At my age he was working a respectable management position in a prestigious company. His whole family meeting around the one table, sharing big laughs and emphatic stories. Where is he tonight?

What happened to social reinforcement for my position in life? Why can I never feel truly at ease in a life position, always under threat of destabilizing shock to the government, family, social or business environments. Why is there never any real physical security? Whom will remember myself in the end?

One broken storyline after another and you end up wondering, what does it all mean? Why don't I have my shit together? Why can't I keep my mind out of troubling thoughts?

Having a long memory and metacognition is persecuted (for lack of a better word) in this modern society.

Sure, you're at a fancy restaurant. The totality of what you know is not satisfied by good company and food, man does not live on bread alone.

You're happy for a moment and so is your daughter, as the earnest waitress delivers the birthday cake.

This is nicely written. But I can’t really agree with it.

What does your life mean? Nothing, obviously. You’re doing a job to survive and have wealth to enjoy life.

Your dad had a different economic context. It’s not relevant or a standard you need to care about.

You’re not living on bread, you’re enjoying a nice dinner with a daughter on a milestone.

The tone of all this is distinctly non child like. It’s extremely adult. I feel like you’re conflating anxiety with immaturity

Thanks for saying it's nicely written.

I don't care about past standards, I care about a continous existence.

It is neither anxiety nor immaturity. Irrelevance is fine.

The father and son connection across generations and the larger context we live within, simply is.

A different question, why wouldn't you want an existence?

I don’t think you need to answer these questions to feel like an adult

If so many adults still feel like a kid, why do many seem guarded and overly serious?

At least 2 reasons I can think of: (1) they're afraid of being found out, (2) life has taught them if they don't they suffer real consequences after they slip in their responsibilities.

I don't feel like a kid, but I often feel like a teenager. Weirdly enough, I don't feel like that at work, just in my personal life.

I've been trying to reconcile the different "me" at work (I work from home) vs me in my personal life. I'm way more emotional in my personal life and get angry easier, while at work my brain takes over any time I feel any time I'm losing control, and I manage to give very respectful responses.

Why on earth does this happen? My hypothesis is that by being more emotional, I get also the upside of "feeling more the happy emotions".

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