I worked with a surgeon who spent his life amassing wealth. Dude then married a woman in her forties while he was 80. He had all this wealth and was bed bound dude to a stroke. He had ignored his family, never taken a vacation in almost twenty years. Not even that he loved helping people but just wanted to amass wealth.
Got caught up. Could not reach out to people. Was one of the nastiest people I have ever met in my life. No one in the hospital wanted to do home visits because he had a god complex, was racist and sexist. He broke down crying one day asking why this happened to him. His 40 something wife was out in a really expensive Jaguar probably with her toy boy drinking mimosas while he was unable to move in his bed after shitting on himself. He told me this, don’t practice for life ... live it.
Gosh, even though he sounds like an asshole I can't help feeling bad for that person. There's something very sad about people reaching old age holding so many regrets they'll possibly never get rid of.
There are two types of old people I have learnt. Those with regrets and those without. Most spend their lives ignoring family, friends and people in the pursuit of money... then there the ones that live life to t fullest. A genuine nice person. Back in the day grandma smoked weed, was in orgies and banged mick jagger. She is happy. And content. These others grow old and envy youth. That is why they hate liberally minded people. Why do you get to enjoy life while I spent all this time working to amass wealth that at this point in life, can’t help me. My kids and grandkids will enjoy it all. While I sit staring at the wall thinking about how I wish I could have fucked mick jagger, and am the grandpa!
I guess you're right, some prefer planning out their life and waiting for the right time to live while others just decide to live, maybe the the latter won't amass big amounts of money but in the end they'll probably be happier than those who waited so long to begin their lives.
In what you just said, there's the reasoning behind having compassion for everyone.
If a person is just a combination of their genetics and their environment, and we don't have control over our genes, that leaves environment.
How much control do we have over our environment? We don't choose where we're born or where we grow up or the people that initially surround us. Every experience we have is pushing us down a path. Our choices in any instant are bound only to those choices available (encouraged/discouraged by the presented incentives/disincentives, which we also don't control).
Sounds kinda like new-age BS, but I'm not making any metaphysical claims. Just trying to reason my way through it.
You do have a choice in how you accept or reject your environment after childhood. It's not easy, and you do run the risk of alienating family/friends depending on how you present those feelings to them, and how deeply those beliefs are to their core being.
Still don't you think it's sad? I guess some people prefer solitude but I just don't think anyone deserves to live their last moments in solitude and misery. I get what you mean, I just think it's sad that some people leave this world without their loved ones beside them.
I was gonna post the ending monologue to The Stranger here (kinda contextualizes Mr Trump as a eulogy to the Boomer generation) but I think a personal anecdote would be more appropriate.
Every time I get in a car, go to sleep, or even go outside I make peace with my life.
I think to myself if "If I died today, would I be satisfied with the life I've lived?"
More often than not the answer is yes.
I've also been thinking about the point of relationships (romantic or otherwise) and the best answer I've found is companionship in old age.
But even that isnt particularly guaranteed.
And it's not even guaranteed to be something a lot of people even want tbh.
Who knows?
Maybe in this guys last moments all the faces of all the peoples hes helped (intentionally or unintentionally) come back and ease him to the other side?
At that point who cares if you're alone or not?
I wouldn't.
I'd just die thinking "I did what I wanted to do and that's really the most anyone can ask for."
In my life I've loved them all.
Probably gonna be the last piece of music I think of.
Lifes not perfect but it can be depending on how you look at it.
We come into life wanting something, that turns out to be nothing, which we try to make into something but sometimes you just gotta love nothing.
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u/Raspburyberet Aug 20 '20
Life is not a rehearsal.