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I'm 34. Here's 34 things I wish I knew at 21

https://elliot.my/im-34-heres-34-things-i-wish-i-knew-at-21/
37•clowes•1h ago

Comments

adzm•1h ago
The days are long, but the years are short
kleiba•1h ago
Congrats, you're half way there to publish your first self-help book!
Brajeshwar•26m ago
And then there is the “11 Simple Rules of All Self-Help Books.”

People have mentioned that some of us add our blog links in the comments but here we go https://brajeshwar.com/2024/11-simple-rules-of-all-self-help...

formerly_proven•58m ago
> If you're a man, one of your hardest battle may be not giving in to sexual urges that cause harm to others. History is littered with otherwise entirely brilliant men who succeeded at everything but this.

It really seems quite difficult for straight men to succeed at this.

ap99•54m ago
Or you know, any kind of men... or women.

Think for yourself my friend. Don't just parrot what you hear.

kibbul4•52m ago
Yes, as everyone knows, there is truly no less modest and respectful demographic in their sexual behaviour than those chaste homosexual men.
8bitsrule•48m ago
History is much more littered with people who aren't getting any - for reasons - who try to solve that problem by criticizing those who are (without harm).
akimbostrawman•29m ago
Any statistical facts about this? I have a few about other groups but I'm sure you won't like or accept those.
theblazehen•57m ago
> If you're a man, one of your hardest battle may be not giving in to sexual urges that cause harm to others. History is littered with otherwise entirely brilliant men who succeeded at everything but this. You must succeed.

I'm not sure I like the framing of this

Loughla•44m ago
Uh, yeah. I've been a man my entire life and I've never ever had a problem with wanting to let my sexual urges cause harm to others. I have a very high libido even. Not once has this been a problem.

The fuck is this about?

K0balt•25m ago
That was my first reaction as well. Maybe if we include letting others harm themselves or others by choosing poorly it makes more sense, but then it’s patronising to the opposite sex, like their agency is invalid.

OTOH I can remember being a 16 year old sex crazed sociopath, maybe adolescence is what op refers to? I definitely participated is some extremely questionable decisions at that age, and sometimes I wonder if others were significantly affected by my ignorance and selfishness. Probably not, as they were also sex crazed sociopaths at the time, but still. Such a cringefest.

Being ashamed of your past actions is how you know you are growing.

dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp•18m ago
Ask a divorce lawyer that question.
aipatselarom•10m ago
If you actually did that you'd know most domestic violence is from women towards men.

But it doesn't transcend as men are usually way stronger and just brush it off.

Hint: It's so prevalent it's even considered "normal".

dpkirchner•18m ago
I think this is where the "may" applies.
aipatselarom•14m ago
Same.

Leaving aside the "If you're a man ..." condescending crap, that "cause harm to others" bit reveals a lot about the author.

Sorry pal, you're alone on that hill.

xnx•6m ago
It is poorly worded, but might make sense if interpreted to be about cheating and not sexual assault.
127•55m ago
Sex and violence intersect and interweave. It's not realistic to avoid any hurt.
actionfromafar•51m ago
Transportation and traffic injuries intersect and interweave.
127•48m ago
Mating is where humans are still closest to nature. Traffic has rules. Love has none.
krapp•43m ago
And men wonder why women choose the bear...
direwolf20•23m ago
As a hypothetical. In reality, men and women wonder why men and women choose the sociopath.
kibbul4•21m ago
We're well aware that it's some combination of antagonistic attention-seeking and suicidal naivety.
krapp•2m ago
No, that isn't the reason at all. Not even close.
fao_•54m ago
> One day – probably somewhere between 28 and 38 – you'll wake up and just feel 'off'. A bit sore. A bit tired. That feeling will never leave you. Be grateful for your youth while you have it.

This happened when I was 20. I don't know what else to say other than, it fucking sucks.

pards•46m ago
This represents a fork in the road that becomes apparent by your mid-40s.

Those who ignore it will be overweight, unfit, and on daily meds. Those who change their lifestyle will not.

The fix is:

> Leading a healthy life is simple: sleep well, exercise three times a week, have an active social life, eat a variety of vegetables and whole foods, avoid sugar, processed foods, alcohol and drugs. That's 90%. Everything else is optimisation.

paulmooreparks•42m ago
I can honestly say that this happened to me, but the feeling did leave me. It required a massive change of lifestyle and the habits that went with it.
tosser0001•27m ago
I wonder how true this really is if you make an reasonable effort to keep yourself in shape. It wasn't until I hit 60 that I felt unquestionably different, and even then it wasn't terrible.
comrade1234•53m ago
35. Women can be as horny and lonely as men and all you need to do is talk to them to meet them.

This was a revelation to me in my early-thirties.

akimbostrawman•20m ago
>This was a revelation to me in my early-thirties

Have you considered that this had less to do with how you acted but more with your marked value increasing and there's decreasing?

blueflow•11m ago
Maybe its that the social norms around sex are that women do not enjoy it and men have to force it on them.

The harm of that is that women feel shame for enjoying it and men feel shame for wanting it.

The social norms about it are garbage, at some point you figure it out by experience...

ap99•53m ago
> Eating meat is quite clearly immoral. Unless it will be detrimental to your health, eat as little as possible.

Carnivorous animals, are they immoral?

spicyusername•51m ago
One might argue the difference is that they are ignorant of the suffering caused by their behavior, and that the knowing and doing anyways is the moral problem, not just the doing.

Alternately, one might argue the difference is that they have no alternative to inflicting suffering, and that having the option to reduce suffering and choosing to inflict it anyways is the moral problem, not just inflicting it.

jl6•44m ago
That does track with those who are most stridently Good and Moral and Kind and Right having some glaring blind spots when it comes to understanding the consequences of their actions.
K0balt•18m ago
I don’t think that mammals are, in general, ignorant of the character of harm, violence, and death. Animals even kill to end suffering. Life is short, brutal, and violent. We do what we can to make it less so.
cannonpr•50m ago
Morality is a human construct and applies to humans, arguments that try to argue morality on the basis of applying naturalistic arguments to humans do exist, but I don’t think they have much credence in modern moral frameworks ?
roger_•49m ago
Appeal to nature.
cies•47m ago
Can any animal be immoral to our standards?

Rape culture among ducks?

Or crows that attack a member of the flock that misbehaved to a minor of the flock? (this is one of the animals that seem to have their own morals).

Anyway: humans should not project our sense of moral to animals.

And humans are no carnivores. Most likely we're omnivores (like our close animal relatives the primates: and they prefer fruit over meat any day, just like human babies).

torginus•41m ago
I'm sure the concept of self-restraint exists in the animal kingdom among apex predators. Don't hunt too much or otherwise you will destroy your habitat.

This applies to humans too, and not just in the context of eating meat.

direwolf20•21m ago
It does not. One predator eats all the prey, because if he doesn't, the other predators will. The next year they all starve. This is a documented effect. No reference to geopolitics intended.
baal80spam•41m ago
Unless they are bugs, then it's not!
imjonse•40m ago
1) Animals do not (pretend to) have morals, unlike humans

2) Carnivores do not have a choice of food, humans have great alternatives, being omnivores not carnivores.

moralestapia•53m ago
>If you're a man, one of your hardest battles may be not giving in to sexual urges that cause harm to others.

What the ...

kibbul4•51m ago
Author telling on himself here
moralestapia•41m ago
Totally!

There's this one guy that used to be a regular of tech events where I live. He was building some sort of crappy luma clone.

Anyway, one day out of nowhere he posts on LinkedIn "PSA to girls, when at a conference, we are not reading your name tag, we are looking at your breasts[1]", and then some bizarre argumentation of how if we all used his app this would stop.

He was trying to sound like an "ally". I'm not a girl and it made me feel uncomfortable, yikes.

1: He wrote that word literally, mega wtf.

elliotmy•19m ago
Hi there – author of the post here. I included this quite intentionally.

I consider rape and sexual assault to be one of the worst things one human can do to another – just behind murder and torture. And yet society is littered with it. Ask any woman (and some men), she'll more than likely have a story. And it should be obvious: don't sexually hurt people! I _shouldn't_ need to include this in a simple list of rules for life. But sadly, I feel I do.

I've noticed advice articles, personal development books, and "self-help" podcasts aimed largely at men never seem to address this simple fact: far too many men commit or have thoughts of sexual violence. This was true hundreds of years ago and it's still true now. These men are out there, amongst us. They're "good" in every other way – they're kind to strangers, they love their mother, they're great fathers to their kids (how many of the world's great men have an "allegations" section on their Wikipedia page for goodness sake?). And yet they give in to this disgusting, horrific lust that ends up ruining someone's life (and often their own).

I purposefully included it in my list, because others don't. Because it appears to be something that more men struggle with than people realise.

I don't care if it's taboo. If my post stops just one man acting on his evil desires and harming a woman, man, or child, it was worth it as far as I'm concerned, despite the controversy I've stirred up.

Having said that, if what I wrote was clumsy, inconsiderate or implies I have similar desires – as you and theblazehen suggests – then I do apologise. I am NOT on the side of rapists.

imranq•51m ago
Some great life lessons here, but also some I don't agree with:

- The lazy person works twice as hard. Often I found you can save a lot of time just trying to the minimal possible and gain a lot of insights of why something is minimal vs not

-The opinion of the person who rarely offers it is listened to more closely. I found the opposite to be true, those who don't offer their thoughts frequently are often dismissed when they do want to share something

Anyway, many of the points are great.. I would also add to keep a journal and write down what was meaningful throughout the day.. you will find time passing by with more quality since you know what the take and what to avoid

Madmallard•48m ago
"Eating meat is quite clearly immoral. Unless it will be detrimental to your health, eat as little as possible."

lol

frizlab•19m ago
yeah wtf is he talking about?
elliotmy•8m ago
Hi there – author of the post here. I eat meat – to my shame. Unless you're rearing your own livestock and giving them happy lives and a painless slaughter, I consider eating meat immoral. Aniamls bred for food are kept in awful conditions and killed usually in inhumane ways. I think it's tough to claim eating the results of the the mass livestock industry isn't anything other than supporting the torture of animals. Animals who have the ability to think and feel. It's simply wrong. I would even argue it's this centuries slavery, in that it's something future generations will look back on us in shock, unable to comprehend how we were okay with it all.
downboots•46m ago
Everything has an end. Only the sausage has two.
jojomodding•41m ago
Yes my friend, it is over.
paulmooreparks•43m ago
This is well done. I can't say I agree with all of them, but I agree with the fact that you sat down and thought about them, and that you wrote them down. Good job.

> Adults make a lot more sense when you realise they're just children in big bodies.

That one, I absolutely agree with.

I'm 55. I would have a hard time limiting myself to 55 things I wish I knew when I was 34. When I'm 105, I still will have too many for now. :)

mbeavitt•41m ago
> Don't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from.

The funny thing I find about criticism is that you actually don’t have a choice about whether or not it affects your future actions. Criticism that I have dismissed has persistently come back to haunt me, perhaps via my subconscious.

Esophagus4•34m ago
> curiosity is a superpower

I like this. I’ll take it a step further:

curiosity plus follow-through is a superpower. Lots of people I know are curious… they just never really follow through on it, so they end up average, wasting that superpower. They’re curious in their head, but it stays in their head.

I’m thinking about curiosity in a work sense (“could I build a better widget?”) and in a personal interest sense (“I wonder if taking a dance class / volunteering at a soup kitchen would be fulfilling”).

I’ve learned that the people who tend to excel are the ones who follow that curiosity to completion for something.

Brajeshwar•25m ago
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many_a_true_word_is_spoken_in_...

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