The turning point of a life.

Did ever feel that you wasted a certain time of your life ? When and how ? How to get over this guilt ?

One of the toughest day of my life started on 03rd September, 2024. I just did not want to leave my bed at all. The world that I imagined has just crumbled. The future that I envisioned no longer cease to exist. Sense of failure in all aspects of my life has hit me. A failure in professional life, a failure as a son, a failure as a brother, a failure as a friend, a failure as a partner. A complete failure in a nutshell. This is the lowest point in my life where I want to run away, from everything. Not care about anything, not face anyone, and just run away.

I know it’s a very common question, and impossible to know or answer. But curious how you folks here rationalize the meaning of life. Add your age if that’s okay, for good measure For me: I’m 27, my life’s purpose (or so I think) is to build something that helps a whole lot of people have a better life. And it is to make the people around me - family, friends, strangers happier (the scale of which depends on how successfully I pull this off). Whats yours? Would love to engage on this :)

A final year student I made a lot of mistakes in my life Never ever worked hard to my fullest potential Didn't studied well even though I had potential during JEE Keep getting attracted to girls(very few times), even though I am training myself not to. Becoming emotionally down often Feeling guilty of not being able to have someone to talk to. What I simply want is to work to my fullest potential without getting attracted to the other gender so that there are no distractions and becoming mentally strong to the point that I don't need anyone else continuously present in my life for me. There has to be a way Almost everyone around me are so strong My gut believes I don't have that much time left I just want to fix everything for my parents and my brother And leaving with a pride and honor of a MAN.

We evolved to live in small tribes and now live outside of our natural habitat, in an advanced civilization. One effect of this mismatch is that there are a bunch of things that feel dangerous to us that aren't actually dangerous, leading us to be way too risk averse. Like: - Asking someone out on a date - Trying something new even though you'll suck at it at first - Quitting your job to start a company or try a career in the arts - Putting your real voice out there on controversial topics For primates living in a small tribe, rejection, embarrassment, failure, and criticism posed actual material dangers. These things are not dangerous today, but our software hasn't been updated. So we miss out on living our best life, hiding in the 1-4 zone of the danger scale. In a world of overly risk averse people, the epiphany that the 4-7 zone is actually a safe place to play is a superpower.

In 2018, I was doing my BBA from Delhi University, when the cultural fest of our college invited ‘The Local Train’ band for a live show. Of course, they performed Choo lo, Aoge Tum Kabhi, Dil Mere, Bandey, which had all my heart (in 2018 and today). But I chose not to attend the fest. As a 20-yr old, I never reflected why I would have done that...But as a 26-yr-old, I did it today. For a long time, Aalas ka pedh had remained my favorite archive of emotions, feelings of coming of age & loneliness when I had not yet stepped out of the borders of my ‘home’, semblance of how a breakup feels like when I didn’t know what a relationship stands for (let alone being in one), longing for love when I couldn't distinguish it from the romantic movies of SRK. And yet, I chose not to attend the fest. It was a conscious choice. It didn't bother me. “I was not into live music or experiences”. Why? I was not sure about my reasoning then, but now I think it was because I didn't value the very feelings I got from listening to those songs - emotions, coming of age, loneliness, breakup, relationship or love, all of the feelings I got from listening to those songs. My mind was flooded with the thoughts of achieving “objective” metrics - marks, ranks, admission in xyz college, because they were right there, easy to understand and calculate; the input was the attention and hours I put and output were grades. To my mind, that seemed “easier to achieve” than going through the process of defining and valuing those emotions. 4 years after this event, I would have just started my 2nd job, when I heard that the Local Train had unofficially disbanded when the lead singer, Raman Negi, left the band for a solo career. I didn’t feel it that much - because the “objective” bug hadn’t left me, and the value I placed to those emotions - coming of age, loneliness, breakup, relationship or love - still couldn’t be “calculated”. 2 years later, today, I realized 2 things. 1. I will never be able to hear The Local Train “live”. I lost the multiple chances I had. It hits me every time I hear the album again. To “objectify” it, I exhausted my attempts (like in UPSC) and clearly failed. 2. In the past, I have mis-forced “trade-offs”. The decision to not attend had no positive implication on my “success”, but negative implication on who I am today. Those moments and experiences are the attempts to make memories that will form a major part of the brain, when you grow old, shape who you are. While you are doing trade-offs, you value the non-objective things by the number of attempts you have to make. It isn’t that difficult to count the attempts, just uncomfortable. If I had that effort of valuing those experiences and emotions “objectively” better and not forced the trade-offs, I could have been a different person today. 1. Attended those live concerts with my friends 2. Got the chance of dating my crush in MBA 3. Worked with a co-founder closely who I looked up to as a operator 4. Would have watched one of my favorite stand-up comics perform live 5. Many more… Hence, my request to young folks in their 20s to incorporate this method of valuing non-objective things and avoiding forced trade-offs.

we become so busy in our day to day life that we take all the miseries at work, injustice for granted and move on with heavy heart and feeling low Few eg - I dont like my work but have been doing this since long so no other option left - Never looked at things from first principles and now its very late to start again with right approach Peers, family make it worse and we are stuck. I fee thats Injustice to our self and life. It takes a lot of courage to move out of this and spend time on what you are good at. Did anyone feel this and won this battle?