Quote: (02-18-2013 04:20 AM)Rutting Elephant Wrote:
Which is more miserable, a less-than-extravagant youth or a destitute old age?
It depends on your tastes, do you like ecstasy ( I don't mean the drug) or the absence of pain?
For me ( ecstasy is a priority) a less than extravagant youth is worse, because the highs of when you are young can't be had later. If life sucks when you get old, just off yourself, it's not going to get much better unless you have some illness from which you can recover.
I lived in my car and rolled around on the floor of sleazy clubs feeding back my guitar for about zero money. Who cares, THAT'S living.
Give THE MAN the shitty years. I'd rather be working FT from 65-70 than from 25-30. How much fun can you have when you're that old anyway.
Also, YOU DON'T KNOW you're ever going to get old. You might die when you're 45, especially if you smoke it's 1/6 get lung cancer.
So you might save, save, save, and then croak without that great period of irresponsibility. I did get a lot of education (doctorate) to avoid humiliation later in life, but the time spent in education was more interesting than any job I could have gotten at the time anyway so it wasn't really a sacrifice. I don't say live for today and be a cokehead, but I don't see living for 30 years away as optimal either.
I remember reading this article by a nurse who did end-of-life care, and she said EVERY GUY who was dying said he wished he had not worked so much. My father said a similar thing, he worked 42 years before retiring. He added when he told me that "It was foolish."
I guess they get to the end and realize, "I've just been used up by the Machine."
When the Giant Hand comes, it's really, really over; it's not some experience you look back on, it's the end of all experience-- you've seen road kill on the highway, that's you, you cease to exist, forever, in half a billion years the sun expands, the earth heats beyond the capacity to carry life, then it all cools down, dissolves to dust and expands infinitely to the edges of the universe.
But you won't be here to see a thing, you will sleep in a few short years. And all the people who told you what to do, well, they'll be dead too.