How do you deal with the inexorable march of time?

Stop existing to work. Instead create the memories now. Go have fun now. In the US the retirement age is going up to 70. One of the reasons is specifically because people are getting more good years, so of course the bar had to be moved. Enjoying retirement is a con.

That’s great advice in a society where most people don’t need several jobs to survive.
- I know of some people who have radically redefined survive. From Van Life to learning a language and going to developing countries where it's easier to earn money and have fun. I'm not saying that's a good fit for you or that we should all be doing it but at some point putting 90 hours in just to keep the apartment and child care paid for is going to break. So something needs to happen to relieve that first or else you're just going to die young and stressed.
Fun requires being alive, requires money, requires work, demands time. Getting fun can get complicated. There isn't a true answer to this conundrum as far as I know—not an inspiring one, at least. Makes me think about what human life is supposed to look like.
- Makes me think about what human life is supposed to look like.
  I also spent most of my energy working, but I do get some time to occasionally do things I like but those also take some energy. If I imagine my perfect life I probably wouldn't have the energy to live it. But still, I can't help thinking I should do much more and I feel bad...
Go have fun now.
That doesn't look like anything to me.
is the increases to fra still due to reagan's changes to the system in the early 80s?
- I honestly don't know where the blame lies for the financial situation but the age increase legislation was much more recent, like Obama years.

I had workaholic parents who expected "retirement" to finally be the time to enjoy life. So they grinded, 60 hour work weeks for decades. They made a ton of money but by the time they made it to retirement they destroyed their bodies.

My mom has extremely severe chronic hip pain and cannot sit down. Due to constantly working in an office her muscles were severely atrophied and she cannot find the motivation to get back in shape. She spends the vast majority of her time in bed, completely exhausted.

My father suffered chronic stress and once passed out at work. He struggles with high blood pressure and went partially blind. He is still working due to decisions I can't share here.

The grind culture is such an alluring chopping block. A meat grinder... some people go in, apply for a thousand internships, work three jobs, but not all of them go out. Is it a weak vs. strong separator? Am I weak?
I hope not. I'm just an archer, not a tank, I'd like to think.
I'm sorry your dad still has to work, and about their injuries.

When you die, they will put two dates on your tombstone. The day you were born and the day you died. And, in between will be a little dash. That dash represents everything that mattered about your life. All your achievements and failures, all your joy and all your pain. All roll up in just a little dash. Make the most of it before that second date is written.

Remind me to start writing a diary in clay tablets, I'm gonna own the rest of graveyard and future archaeologists!
- Make sure those tablets get baked by a fire when your city is pillaged and burned. Raw clay doesn't stand up well to water.
- It worked for our boy Ea-Nasir.

Nietzsche: Duh!
Nothing matters and all you have are the stories and the memories

And this feeling is why I started picking up music again after I stopped playing/recording for nearly 12 years. I've worked too hard and focused so much on being successful when I've forgotten what makes me truly happy.

Word. All of these efficiencies and inefficiencies... humanness is distinct from it
It's hard to come to terms with sometimes. Looking at a staff with 3 bars, or a short riff, then thinking man, did I review my finances for the month? But the time isn't wasted. The pastime isn't a reward. It's as important as the work.
But you don't have to be a monk to balance again :)

This is why hedonism is a good thing.

You just can't be so hedonistic that you can't keep being one next year, and the year after. Or in a way that screws someone over.

A lot of people use "hedonism" as an excuse to destroy themselves with drug addictions and act egoistically in their relationships with others, causing a lot of pain and suffering.
- Ok?
  Did I not pretty explicitly allude to the need to not over-indulge?

Let go and let life slip through your hand like sand

I don't like sand. It's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.
- just like life
- Ani, have you always been such a whiny bitch?
Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.
- All we are is dust in the wind.

That's a pretty big question, with a couple of different interpretations. If you are asking how I handle thinking about the passage of time, the easiest answer is to make it tomorrow's problem. This is probably not the healthiest answer; but it doesn't pay to stress over inevitabilities, so I just do my best to put them out of my mind.

If you are asking the best way to utilize your time, my recommendation is to start focusing on yourself immediately. It's very easy to prioritize work by staying late or overworking yourself to make your bosses happy, but no amount of overwork will ever satiate your company; it will only serve to drain the life from your body. It's very important to set firm boundaries with your job. I, personally, will not even look at my work phone or computer the minute I leave the office (on Mon-WFH days) and have a hard stop every day at 5PM unless agreed upon well in advance. You lose so much time and energy to your job that just standing firm on your boundaries can be a huge QoL boost.

Please also do your best to cultivate a creative outlet as a hobby. A lot of people don't think they are/can be creative, but anyone can be creative if they find the right outlet. It could be art, sewing, crochet, music, writing, or even creative programming. The important thing is to find a way to explore your feelings and do something productive with them. In my experience, I am often the most vivacious are when I am making art in one form or another; I highly recommend it.

Thank you for this. This comment is just a little push but now I see -- I've already forgotten how long I'd gone without writing a note onto a staff. How long I've spent on just "things that will pay me or pay off."
I will do this immediately.
I wholeheartedly agree with all your points! You are not your job (even if you love your job)! Set clear boundaries, have hobbies, friends, take walks in nature, do some sports/pottery/gardening/whatever, try different things, til you find some you enjoy.

Accept that good actions will not give an immediate or always measurable result for you to observe.

You are a social being. What matters most is often not what increases you in status, but what increases others in wellbeing or allows you to appreciate the beauty in lifem

On your death bed you will not wish to have worked more, but probably to have spent more time with people dear to you or that you had spent more time for actions that nudge society a tiny bit more towards your values.

Capitalism especially todays consumerism is built around manipulating you to identify yourself with superficial status. Breaking free of that will open yourself to value your time and actions as meaningful as they become meaningful, even if there is no number or title attachable to it.

Capitalism also exploits the inherent nature of humans to please and feel validated by others through work. However, the system initially stems from the idea that individuality is sovereign and the cornerstone of successful being and society as a whole. However, no one notices or questions this paradox. Capitalism promotes individualism, and yet if you are not immersed in the grind, hustle and productivity culture, you are deemed lazy and unproductive by society. In other words, even in a system that touts individuality, the worth of someone is still tied to impressing society at large. At the end of the day, you're not pleasing yourself or your colleagues, you are pleasing those at the top who are earning more than you ever will.

There are no destinations, only journeys. If you don't find meaning in the path you're walking you have three choices:

Change the path
Change yourself
Live a life you feel is meaningless

There is no right or wrong answer, only choices and your experience of making them.

https://i.imgur.com/LMlTKLM.jpeg

Kaiji expressed the sentiment as well though imo a smidge better

Wasn't this a villain speech? I don't fully remember it but I feel like it might mean something different with the context
- It was a villain speech, but sometimes the bad guys have a point. Remember the villain from the first James Cameron Avatar movie? He had this speech, which, gotta be real, he's not wrong.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jluMqvuQYls
If I may add, to some people, connecting to nature is their "real life", while building empires and going on adventurous journeys is but a struggle they have to endure.

For work-life balance on the basis of the comic, by refusing to do any kind of overtime on a regular basis, and making sure any time it happens I'm compensated for it. I'm also fortunate enough to earn enough that I was able to reduce my working hours to have Fridays free. Having half of the year free gives me the opportunity to actually do some living.

Now for the more general question, I mostly try to not think about it, because it tends to throw me into a FOMO driven frenzy where I do things to cross them from a checklist and end up not really enjoying anything. For the most part, I found I'm much happier trying to live in the moment even if I'm not very good at it.

Capitalism is the hidden antagonist here.

Make your life as close to what you want it to be in the present as you can personally achieve, and make plans. Focus on what you want to accomplish this day, week, month, year, 5 years, decade, and by the time you retire. Adjust as necessary if you go off track, whether faster or slower.

Time will pass. Harness it.

I honestly stopped caring about time as we use it (I'd need to think for a minute if someone asked me what day it is) since the Pandemic. Never had much use for time other than scheduling, but the Pandemic seems to have completely cut me off from it.

Now, I just exist. Que sera, sera.

Im Glad im not the only one that fell into the void outside of time.
- Life really does feel a lot different once you stop counting minutes. I'm honestly very grateful for this paradigm shift!
That's fantastic for you but most of us don't have the privilege.
- Granted, not something which works for everyone. But I don't think such a shift in mentality is a privilege necessarily.
  I mean, the whole point of my perspective now is that it really doesn't matter what day, or month, or year it is, all that matters is what happens. Why count the time which passes and try to guess the time that's left, when in spite of having the perfect organism in terms of physiological functions and immunity, one could still get smeared by a bus like paint on a canvas tomorrow.
  I will concede that the fact that I do not fear death whatsoever also helps immensely. Literally no pressure, just flinging my best guess at it and dealing with whatever happens as a result.

"My kids will live the life I wish I had"

The trick is enjoying mundane tasks or the simple things like your walk to work.

I did this with having no kids.
"Ohh I'm not in a position to create a good life for an offspring."
"Ohh now I'm over 40 no kids for me, I guess it's better anyway. The climate catastrophe is real the World is on fire."

Here's the secret no one tells you and you have to learn for yourself. There is never a good time to have kids. Either you want them or you don't. If you want them you make it work. I have 3 and would have happily had 20. As soon as you have one your life is fucked anyways lol.

I like watching the changes. The world and everything in it, including me, isn't in stasis. People get old, I'm getting old, wild to look back at 'young me' or think of a close friend at a time when they were totally unfamiliar. My hometown is 10x larger and looks wildly different but I can still point out some unchanged spots when I go to visit.

I wish I could stop time and do whatever but I acknowledge that I was thrust into this with no say in any of it, so I just strive to be at peace with it I suppose

This quote really struck a chord with me:

Over the years as we all worked our way into time as if it were a field of sawgrass, cutting our ankles, a slog into middle age for me and a slow sunken decline towards death for the generation before me and my siblings. There were break-ups, fuck-ups, children and my own struggles with misty sorrow that has seemed to follow me like a sick-feral cat. A walking disappointment was what I felt like much of the time, even though I had enough confidence in myself to live the kind of life I desired. [...] In my mind I see the universe swirling like a giant whirlpool swallowing up everything all at once, and in this grand whirlpool people are smaller than a droplet of water rushing over Niagara Falls and then become mist. And when I die, my memories die with me and perhaps for one or two generations I will be remembered for a few things in my life but not for the mundane or what my daily interactions were like, not the cuddling of my dog nor the pride in my children or the laughter I was a part of, so much laughter that it caused people's head’s to turn.

"Only in death does duty end."

Just hit my mid 30s. Feeling like working hard only gets your more hard work. Not that I’m in a bad spot but for real what does it all mean

Many people saying 'live for the now', which is totally valid, but there's an alternative as well, which is the path I followed - devise a concrete economic plan for your life (5 year plan, 3 year plan, etc), and track ALL your spending until you have a strong grasp on how you like to spend your cash.

It's hard to make more money, so do everything you can to reduce spending in your life. No only will you increase how much can put away, but you'll need less to sustain yourself when you reduce how much you earn, due to the cultivation of a spendthrift life.

Where do I get a career I can retire from to complain about?

skill issue. i would simply refrain from aging. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2bo_u_YmW8

This seems relevant -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsAd4HGJS4o

TLDW: You have to change your mindset. Do not accept the default, be mindful and self-aware.

It took me until my early 30s before I realized this. It's time to begin. Let's do this!

(Next year I am going to go travelling to Paris and likely Amsterdam too)

This shit really gets to me but not in a way you might expect.

I'm extremely content in life. It amazes me there are so many of you that just aren't happy existing. Every day is what you make of it and if you live life as glass half full no amount of milestones is going to fill it.

There is something to be said about simplicity. It can be as little as appreciating the sun on your face but you need to be open to appreciate it.

Life only has meaning when you give it meaning and the longer you hold off doing that then empty you shall remain.

These days, mostly panicking about getting everything on the bucket list set up. I've let too much just fly by already.

bro i hate this type of shit, when you are a kid you are not doing school work all of the time, and when you are an adult you are not working all of the time - yes you will always have responsibilities but that is a part of your life

It's part of the reason I'm a transhumanist.

This is literally a scene from Kaiji.

It's never too early to do that thing you always wanted to do. Sure, you only get 5000 weeks at most, but that's plenty if you make good use of them.

'I Have Read Some Obituaries With Great Pleasure'