Ask HN: How do you overcome feeling completely lost in life?
You seem like a person I can relate to. I felt way you do too, only I had a wife and kids. Then I burnt it all down and went to prison by allowing escapes&#x2F;shortcuts to become habits, habits replace actual living, and ultimately prison. Let me give you my ex-con wisdom.<p>1. You are worth getting to know. You are worthy of friendship. This isn&#x27;t a medium for it, but in another medium I would love to sit down with you and understand you. The fact that you are self aware enough and motived enough to post this here interests me in your story.<p>2. You are worthy of being loved! I 100% can see from this post a human being that is worthy and deserving of that!<p>3. You have to NOT make decisions for other people. That isn&#x27;t fair. Instead of developing healthy relationships where I interacted with people, I instead interacted with made up versions of them in my head, often with the conclusion I wasn&#x27;t worthy of bothering them&#x2F;taking their time, or in the case of my spouse, being 100% fully honest with them for the sake of avoiding difficult discussions (that we could have both grown from if I had given us that opportunity). STOP. Let them decide if they want to answer your phone call&#x2F;email&#x2F;however you kids are communicating these day. Never make decisions for them.<p>Case in point, I almost didn&#x27;t call my son on Thanksgiving because he would be with my exs family and I didn&#x27;t want to make it awkward. But guess what, if he doesn&#x27;t want to he doesn&#x27;t have to answer the phone. But if I don&#x27;t call, I take away him getting to make that choice. I called and he told me how he was making my special &#x27;secret recipe&#x27; that I had taught only him so that I was still a part of his Thanksgiving. My Thanksgiving went from incredibly horrible to having a bright spot because I DIDN&#x27;T MAKE THE CHOICE FOR HIM. Let people choose, don&#x27;t choose for them by not communicating.<p>4. This is it. It&#x27;s our only life. You want it to be a movie or some great novel. But you probably aren&#x27;t going to save the world or alter the course of history. But that&#x27;s OK. You can still choose, are you the hero or the villain in YOUR story? And this is enough. It&#x27;s no just enough, it&#x27;s NEEDED.<p>5. The universe is chaos and indifference. Everyone you know or care about will die one day. Anything you build will barely outlast your lifetime. Today is EVERYTHING. Your approx. 60 trips around one yellow dwarf star out of the 200 billion trillion stars is it. If I offered you a trip to visit only Paris for two weeks would you pass it up because there are 10,000 other cities and only visiting one city isn&#x27;t enough? That because the trip offered is only 2 weeks and you can&#x27;t accomplish everything you want in 2 weeks it isn&#x27;t enough time and not worth taking? Heck no, you would take the trip to Paris. But somehow an unbroken chain of life, driving itself to survive over hundreds of millions of years, leading to your unique chance to experience your life is not enough? Come on dude, you are a little inflated on what constitutes &#x27;enough&#x27; is.<p>Look at your life differently. It&#x27;s not only enough, it&#x27;s MORE than enough. It&#x27;s a LIFETIME worth of experiences. You think it&#x27;s not much, but when I was locked in a prison cell the size of an elevator, with a cellie, bunk bed, lockers, desk, chair for over a year because of COVID, with all normal rights like going outside denied because COVID I would close my eyes and go back to even my most mundane previous days like they were a day spent at Disneyland. I could choose what to eat? I could choose to have hot water to make tea&#x2F;coffee? OMG was I spoiled in those dream days.<p>6. Be present. But that means more than all the self help BS. It also means be 100% honest. People deserve that, you deserve that. It&#x27;s ok to be you. People don&#x27;t have to accept you. I tried to have everyone like me. I learned in prison not only can you make have everyone like you, most people aren&#x27;t worth even knowing you.<p>7. Strange one here. Drink less coffee. It&#x27;s numbing, it sharpens your mind in non-social directions but dulls social&#x2F;emotional needs. It is amazing when I need to be a code monkey drone or weight lifting beast, but adds nothing to me living a fulfilled life. Caffeine to motivation is the equivalent of fast food to nurishment. It will keep you going, but it&#x27;s not going to take you where you want.<p>8. Look people in the eyes. Shake their hands when you see them. Be happy to see them. Call them by their name. Let them know that they are seen. The downside, so many hungry&#x2F;thirsty people who are hurting and unseen will try to latch on to you because you see them when most don&#x27;t. So be honest with them don&#x27;t fake friendship is you don&#x27;t feel it with someone.<p>Mainly you are worthy and deserving of friendship and love, and unless you happen to luck out probably won&#x27;t find either until you understand that. You have no right to make choices for others, so call them, ask them to do things, give them the opportunity to make choices for themselves. You won a free trip to experience the universe as adantical. Be grateful for that and not upset you didn&#x27;t get to be Brad Pitt or someone else. Others deserve to have the person known as adantical at HN treat them with 100% honesty, and you deserve to be able to be 100% to who you are. This doesn&#x27;t mean everyone has to accept your or what you say, don&#x27;t expect that. Others get to be honest too, and their honesty is a gift to you, when again, dishonesty could be easier in the moment. Shortcuts to goals, including simple things like stimulants such as coffee, or finding community in places like HN that ultimately can&#x27;t develop to what you want, can not be allowed to develop from shortcuts to habits, and from habits to completely replacing those things you need.<p>Finally, as we told each other in prison &#x27;Keep your head up!&#x27;