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Comment by koide | Hacker News Reader

This:

"In general, try things that seem worthwhile, set goals and work hard to achieve them, and see where that leads and how you respond. It’ll be clear when something becomes compelling"

Everybody says "do what you love". Few say how to find what you love. Fewer still say how to manage to work as hard as you should to find what you love.

It's kind of a circular problem, when you love something you'll naturally work very hard on it, when you are still searching what it is you love, it's really hard to get the energy to work as hard as you should to find the elusive loved mission.

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As a recurring depressive, I can't help but think, "How the hell do people live day to day not knowing at least one thing they absolutely love?"

If not for my own things that I intensely can dig into, I would've offed myself a long time ago.

Most people's minds are very good at finding or making up that one thing when it is needed for survival. For happiness, that is a different head of cabbage.

By far the hardest thing for me was finding something that:

A. I love. B. Pays me money.

I don't think most people have trouble hitting either A or B alone.

Very few people find something that does both. I seem to have finally found that myself, but it took me 25 years.

>>"How the hell do people live day to day not knowing at least one thing they absolutely love?"

Because so as long its financially lucrative, its better to start loving what you are doing. Than to keep searching things you would love to do.

The latter may not always pay well.

It's amazing how different how life is lived and understood between depressive and non depressive people.

I personally have a really hard time even imagining depression, and I ask myself: "how can it be so hard to just pull yourself together?"

I can rationally understand it is really hard, but I can't imagine it.

Imagine having nothing that you love to do, and imagine the things that you previously loved to do are now laborious and draining, no matter the positive things you tell yourself about them. Think of something you really enjoy doing, and really look forward to, now imagine replacing the positive anticipation with dread instead. Imagine knowing you should be getting positive feedback from some accomplishment or activity, but all that your brain and emotions register is "meh." It's not that you don't try to pull it together and keep slogging forward every day, achieving things and smiling at people, it's just that none of your efforts ever seem to pay off emotionally. It's not that you don't recognize and routinely count your blessings, but rather the very act becomes negative as you lament not feeling much of anything for them. I understand the sentiment that it's hard to imagine, I hope this description may help.

It's good of you to try to imagine it, as most people seem not to make a conscious effort at empathy if something isn't directly affecting their lives.

I'll second what others have written in this thread, and if you'd like to hear a further description, please send me an email at the address in my profile.

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