Today's episode of Mushoku Tensei reminded me a lot of many people I've met through my life. There's that scene where Rudeus looks terrible and he comments that he knows that feeling of shutting down except in a previous life he did shut down and his life effectively ended.
I'm pretty happy with how my life's turned out, but it never had to turn out this way. I've always understood the road to success in any form is narrow and many people fall off into the lava below.
I remember meeting one guy, he was lusting after girls in his friend group but he obviously had other problems, he invited people into his room and it was covered in porn out of magazines plastered over the walls. It's like "Yeah, I can understand where you went wrong, and I can see how I could have become you in a different universe"
I know one guy, and he perpetually comes off as 15 years old. He lives on reddit, doesn't seem to have a life despite having all the capacity to have one, and I'm sure if we were both 15 I'd consider him a cool guy and want to be friends with him, but he's in his mid-30s now. It's like "Yeah, I can understand where you went wrong, and I can see how I could have become you in a different universe"
I've met a few people who were smart and potentially talented, but they hit a certain roadblock and just became NEET hikikomori. It's like "Yeah, I can understand where you went wrong, and I can see how I could have become you in a different universe"
I remember meeting a computer tech who was about 15 years older than me, and he lived the nerd life for sure, including having a D&D group (which there's nothing wrong with), but he was single and didn't want to be and childless and didn't want to be, and you could tell it was tearing him up inside. It's like "Yeah, I can understand where you went wrong, and I can see how I could have become you in a different universe"
I could go on, there's so many roads not taken that it seems like a miracle to have taken the right ones.
There's two cliches, there's the cliche "he's just like me fr fr" and the other one of looking down your nose at people who aren't doing as well as you, but I want to be clear neither of these apply to this situation. I don't look down my nose at them because I understand how easy it would be to fall into the vices or traps they fell into, but fundamentally they aren't like me, and that's why I became what I did and they became what they did. As Aristotle said, we are what we continuously do; virtue therefore is a habit. And every outcome is not just because one different decision got made, but because various decisions were made constantly. The decision to fall into vice, the decision to stop changing or maturing, the decision to fail and accept that failure as final, the decision to be distracted by things that ultimately aren't fulfilling or relevant as the things that make life worthwhile, they're not something you decide once, it's something you make a habit of and a habit you never stop.
"We are not like God. Our powers are limited. Our time is limited. And sometimes we have to play the devil." -- but because we are not like God, we need to be graceful towards ourselves, and when we make a mistake repent and try to do better next time, because our ticket to the future is blank.
I'm pretty happy with how my life's turned out, but it never had to turn out this way. I've always understood the road to success in any form is narrow and many people fall off into the lava below.
I remember meeting one guy, he was lusting after girls in his friend group but he obviously had other problems, he invited people into his room and it was covered in porn out of magazines plastered over the walls. It's like "Yeah, I can understand where you went wrong, and I can see how I could have become you in a different universe"
I know one guy, and he perpetually comes off as 15 years old. He lives on reddit, doesn't seem to have a life despite having all the capacity to have one, and I'm sure if we were both 15 I'd consider him a cool guy and want to be friends with him, but he's in his mid-30s now. It's like "Yeah, I can understand where you went wrong, and I can see how I could have become you in a different universe"
I've met a few people who were smart and potentially talented, but they hit a certain roadblock and just became NEET hikikomori. It's like "Yeah, I can understand where you went wrong, and I can see how I could have become you in a different universe"
I remember meeting a computer tech who was about 15 years older than me, and he lived the nerd life for sure, including having a D&D group (which there's nothing wrong with), but he was single and didn't want to be and childless and didn't want to be, and you could tell it was tearing him up inside. It's like "Yeah, I can understand where you went wrong, and I can see how I could have become you in a different universe"
I could go on, there's so many roads not taken that it seems like a miracle to have taken the right ones.
There's two cliches, there's the cliche "he's just like me fr fr" and the other one of looking down your nose at people who aren't doing as well as you, but I want to be clear neither of these apply to this situation. I don't look down my nose at them because I understand how easy it would be to fall into the vices or traps they fell into, but fundamentally they aren't like me, and that's why I became what I did and they became what they did. As Aristotle said, we are what we continuously do; virtue therefore is a habit. And every outcome is not just because one different decision got made, but because various decisions were made constantly. The decision to fall into vice, the decision to stop changing or maturing, the decision to fail and accept that failure as final, the decision to be distracted by things that ultimately aren't fulfilling or relevant as the things that make life worthwhile, they're not something you decide once, it's something you make a habit of and a habit you never stop.
"We are not like God. Our powers are limited. Our time is limited. And sometimes we have to play the devil." -- but because we are not like God, we need to be graceful towards ourselves, and when we make a mistake repent and try to do better next time, because our ticket to the future is blank.
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