On anything.
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There’s no one answer fits all.
On life? Never. On your goals? Depends. On self-destructive behaviour? Now. On those you love? Never. On business ventures that don’t take off? You tell me.
Point is: life is rarely black & white. Treat it with the color and nuance that makes it what it is.
Why never on life, just asking. If it was completely ruined from the start, why not give up? If you spill ink over a painting, it’s ruined and you toss it out.
It’s practically impossible to fix a painting covered in ink. It’s never too late for a life to change.
No one has ever fixed their lives after 20. It only gets worse if you’re not rich as a teenager or popular online before then. Everything after 20 is just drug addiction and fighting. And even if someone manages to fix their lives later, it’s always in old age where it wouldn’t have mattered. Yeah… all that work and uphill grinding for one week of freedom, sooooo worth it.
As someone who definitely fixed their life after 20, broke it again, fixed it again, and then broke it again again, and is in the process of fixing it, this is an inaccurate statement.
Life isn’t a clean story with a straightforward plot. It is twirling through space while trying to hoist yourself towards more desirable outcomes as much as you can. No matter how good you get at that, you will never be flying a jet—you are just a master tumbler.
Keep trying, keep learning, and see how things evolve.
Everything after 20 is just drug addiction and fighting.
What are you talking about?! The number of people who have never even conceive of drug addiction, let alone suffering it, is staggering.
No one has ever fixed their lives after 20. It only gets worse if you’re not rich as a teenager or popular online before then. Everything after 20 is just drug addiction and fighting.
That’s just not true. I was an unemployed drop out fire a while in my early 20s and got married and bought a house at 30.
My brother was a single father with a useless degree working part time at a pizza chain at 20. Through most of his 20’s he worked for a temp agency making minimum wage. Around 30 he found a job in a machine shop and they paid for his apprenticeship and now he’s their top employee. He’s in his late 30s now and is the happiest I’ve ever seen him.
Another brother I have failed a bunch of high school classes, barely graduated, then turned a crappy construction job into becoming a union carpenter in his 20s. He owns a house, got back together his high school girlfriend. They have 3 kids and are a very happy family now.
I think no one has their life together at their twenties. At your thirties things start to calm down, and gives you the oppertunity to organise your life. Only then you know who you are and what you want from life, and then you can change up your life for it to be what you want it to be.
Everyone else does between 15 and 19, they have their own houses and cars they bought with their jobs, yet I’m almost 30 and I have nothing. Everyone else is getting married at 23. At 30 I’ll still be trying to move out just like I will be at 50, and 80, and after retiring I’ll still be trying to move out by gambling or grinding online stuff until I die in the house I’ll stuck in. Might as well cut my losses.
Everyone else does between 15 and 19
No they don’t. It just looks like it. At 30 the things they found important at 18 aren’t important anymore. Priorities shift.
Everyone else is getting married at 23
I literally know no-one that was married at 23.
At 30 I’ll still be trying to move out
Just like a lot of people of this generation. They are fucked by housing prices.
So you’re not alone in this. I think most people are in a similar situation. Try to find people that can support and help you. Just don’t give up, you never know what happens tomorrow.
As someone just getting started with their twenties, I don’t believe it’s already over for me. And because I refuse to believe it, I continue to fight, one day at a time, until I eventually disprove the claim “it’s over after 20.”
I was absolutely miserable during my teen years, never fit in with my peers since i wasn’t too keen on drinking (yes, i am from europe, drinking at 16 is the norm), along with my quarrel with my gender and sexuality (i didn’t fully realise until quite recently, still ongoing)
And in the last few years, it has been slowly going up. Of course there were setbacks, failures, hurdles with no end. But dsspite that, I kept going, mostly because of momentum. And now I am considerably better than even just 2 years ago.
It gets better. You just have to be around to see it for yourself.
There’s a lot of “all or nothing” thinking here. Have you tried talking this out with a therapist you trust at all?
Wishing you the best, friend, from someone who’s actively fixing their life before I turn 45. It’ll take time to get there. I’m totally enjoying the reduced stress, anxiety and depression as I work on it.
The japanese philosophy of Kintsugi may help you look at things differently. Impurities are what make us all unique. Nothing in nature is perfect.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210107-kintsugi-japans-ancient-art-of-embracing-imperfection
Sure, life can be incredibly tough, and it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed at times. However, unlike a painting, life isn’t a static object. It has ups and downs, and even when things seem completely ruined, there’s always potential for change, growth and even thriving. I actually have a little experience with that.
Staying with your analogy: if you spill ink on a painting, you might see it as ruined at first. But some artists use those accidents to create something new and beautiful. Like so, life can take unexpected turns, and what seems like a disaster now might lead to new opportunities. I am the person I am partly due to troubles and disasters in my life. Could I do without those? Sure. Should I? Not sure.
That all said, if you’re feeling like ending it all I can only encourage you to reach out for support. Talking to friends, family, or a mental health professional in your area can make a big difference.
Your life is valuable. You are important and valuable.
You’re not alone. Definitely not with life. There are people who care about you and want to help.
There are things I’ve put a long, long “pause” on, just to avoid frustration. But I approach most things like an animal pacing a cage, always looking for a way through.
Never discount the power of small success, consistently repeated. If you’re making progress, no matter how small, you’re making progress.
when its not giving up but moving on.
never.
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then give up; don’t make yourself look like a fool.”
Can’t remember where I first saw that quote, but it stuck with me.
After you spoke to a therapist
I’ve seen you struggling with existential questions a lot here. Are you going to therapy?
There are so many people who deserve it more, now why would I block them from receiving help, so I could be an even bigger burdensome waste of resources? Bruh, come on. My mother literally took food from a food bank that she didn’t need, made each family member (except me because I’d escape) do it and take 4 times the amount alotted to each household, to just NOT use. Literally wasting resources that someone in need could use. Why would I do that myself?
I’m just saying if your life was ruined at the start then it’s ruined forever, either continue living a ruined life or give up.
You are someone in need. You’re not sponging resources. These resources are there to be used by someone who needs the help. You do.
You’re also not your mother.
You are around 20 years old? Means you likely have many more ahead of you. I had a couple of massive twists and turns in my life. Some within, some outside my control. I know enough people who will say the same. You simply don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Anyone who claims to even know what exactly the weather will be like in two weeks is just not telling the truth, let alone what a human life will be like tomorrow or in a few years.
Keep going! You only have one life. You don’t know what’s coming.
You have all the right to claim a spot in society and use the resources it offers you. It is not wasted! You can turn things around if you really try. I would really urge you to seek out therapy.
Hatte to be mister smarty-pants here, but empirically if your life was ruined from the start, your chances of recovery through therapy are actually much higher then for someone who ruined it himself/got Ill later on in life.
The thing is: finding therapy that works for you is a process on its own. You will likely have to try a lot of them to find a good one who has free slots. But you will find one eventually and if you have it does help!
Just one word of caution: go to to ones who actually have a Dr./major/magister in psychology and are registered doctors.
I hope you life in a country with good universal healthcare, if so you can just go to a therapist (they offer single sittings for cases like that) and discuss with him what kind of therapy could work for you and what the next address can be.
I am someone who is not religious and believes everyone should have a free decision if they want to live or not, but my galeart says: man, don’t give yourself up, especially not because of damage inflicted on you by others. All the best from germany
I’ll say I’ve definitely struggled with the same feelings of someone else being in greater need than I am. And from my perspective, you are the person that deserves it more.
Have you ever thought about the first painful sensation a baby ever has? They have no frame of reference for it, and so in that moment it will have been the worst pain they have ever experienced. But to an older person, that same pain is probably just a pinch on the wrist. Does that mean that nobody should console the baby? Ease its pain? Maybe there are people in greater pain than you, or maybe you are the one in greater pain, and unless you have the ability to live another person’s experiences one-to-one, you will never know for sure. All that matters is that you are hurting. Don’t deprive yourself of help just because of some torturous hypothetical.
When a better path forward has presented itself
I like your questions blues. I feel we have come from similar backgrounds. I’ve just passed the 20s, and my life has been not worth it. I’d be relieved to die any day (or to have died at any point prior). My parents were abusive, my extended family were dysfunctional, and my childhood was isolation incarnate. I think this question’s heading is life, although it skirts around that. Suicide is painful. If anyone manages to commit then that’s the right time for them. It really is not something one can just “choose”. It’s not a choice.
I don’t think material conditions play much into this decision, though when articulated it may appear they do. “I don’t have friends,” “I don’t have a car”, “I don’t have a non-degrading job”, “I don’t have a house”, etc. It’s a feeling. One could have everything they thought they craved and still feel miserable and despondent. One could have nothing and be in high spirits. I don’t think anyone knows how to control emotions enough that they’re able to guide someone to a social ‘norm’. I’d suggest engaging with doctors though, and that ranges through to the general practitioner to the specialized psychiatrist, and all those professions in between.
History abounds with morose writings. It’s not a new question, and I don’t think it’ll ever have a definitive answer. Just keep trying different things, and keep talking to others as much as you can, because whilst an individual might not have a definitive answer you usually can find something with enough data.
When the cost of going forward exceeds the cost of stopping now. No consideration of past costs to get where you are. No sunken cost falacy.
Sometimes you have to accept failure and move on from something. You should never give up on yourself, but sometimes you do need to accept your own limitations and reconsider your projects, hobbies, relationships, and career decisions and accept when you’re on a losing trajectory.
Gracefully giving up when you know you’re on the path to failure is the best way to move on to the next thing that you might have a chance of succeeding at.
Hmm, let’s ask Rick Astley that one.
On life? If I have an extremely disabling condition to my mind or I can expect to die soon with a very low quality of life.
I don’t see addiction as being that disabling as there are a lot of available resources to treat addiction and a high enough success rate to try.
Regularly assess the goals that you had when starting the endeavor and decide if you’d start the initiative then if you had the information you have now. What investment is lost if you stop now?
If this is about relationships, that’s another story.
You don’t give up ever.
You pursue a better solution whenever one presents itself.
