Then how come with each passing year, I am wiser than before?

I'm 44, and I've come to terms with the fact that I will never have enough money or time to be able to afford to have a midlife crisis. :) The toughest part at the moment is being in the "sandwich generation" that's looking after both kids and parents. If I get to survive until 50, then my life will be changing again.

I'm lucky enough to only have garden-variety problems, and some of those are just the flip sides of really great things:

---I worry about my family (hey, I'm lucky enough to have a spouse and kids!), my parents and mother-in-law (yay, they're still here with us!)

---I wish I made more money (but I work where I work because I enjoy the field and the people I work with, and it's enough to cover the bills)

---I never seem to have enough time to do things I want to do (but there are other people who actually need me).

Sometimes, changing perspective helps a lot.

Whenever I use the word "retarded", I just mean stupid. I don't mean less advanced in mental, physical, or social development than is usual for one's age. I am well aware that just because someone is slow, doesn't mean he or she is stupid.
In the state I'm currently living in, people drive Mad Max style and don't stop for nobody. They will just hit you and drive away laughing.

not sure if ironic posting but i'll look it up when i feel shitty enough to start begging.

Resistance is futile...

Hi stranger! I can't say I've made it that far (don't take that the wrong way) yet as I'm 27 going 28 at the end of the year. However, I look back on parts of my life and realise I could have done things a lot better in some areas, sans details. Yet, if I changed those things I wouldn't be where I am. Suffice to say, I'm already having a panic about the future.

My life took a turn in high school, where I made friends with the drop-kicks who I thought were just hipsters at the time but really were turds with no goals in life. Their ideals rubbed off and I didn't pay attention in school, so when I 'graduated' I really had nothing to show for it. This led to shitty labour or hospitality jobs that were unsatisfying to say the least.

Bla, bla, bla, and I eventually met my now wife with whom I have 3 gorgeous children with.

After our second I had a good look in the mirror and wondered what my kinds will think of me, a jobless dad who has done sweet shit all with his life. I hit a crossroads; do I continue being a slack arse and awful role model/ provider, or do I try and unlock that inner potential I didn't find I high school?

I'm now in university studying a medical science degree with a pathology specialisation, which can open countless avenues of 'better than what I have at the moment' in the future.

So in a way, I'm very disappointed with what I chose to do in life; however, I can't see myself in any other situation that's better than what I'm in at the moment.

P.S. Sorry for taking up all this space... I summarised as much as I could.

This may rub some people the wrong way, but fuck those people anyway.

Try living for others for a little while, I cannot know what that may do for you, but for me it changed my life.

I have lived in three continents, i have met the most fascinating people around the world, old and young, of all races, i have trekked the Sahara, i have built schools in Congo, i have sailed the Amazon, i helped the hopeless in Indonesia back in 2004, and the helpless in New Orleans in 2005, i met my wife there, another "loser high school drop-out", busting her ass helping complete strangers.

I guarantee you this, you will walk tall among the rich and powerful and be able to look them in the eye and they will know that they will never be as much of a man as you.

Volunteer at one of the UN agencies, find where your local UNICEF office is and tell them you want to help. Find a local soup kitchen, volunteer.

Hell, you may even like it.

What are you talking about? despite most chineses being wary or outright hating white folks, almost all of us worship fat gods like this one

I can't imagine why this post may rub some people the wrong way. Yes, I've heard many people get a lot of satisfaction from helping other people. Maybe helping other people, satisfies some kind of programming in their brains?

I wouldn't say futile but it's definitely hard to stay healthy in this country. People who think it's easy to stay healthy in America fall into one of these groups. People who have a lot of money, people who are young or ignorant, people who are masochists or people who are blessed with good genes. Europeans probably wont understand my words here because Europe is so different from the USA. You have to have lived here to understand. It's like, everything here is designed to lure you into an unhealthy lifestyle. For example, many parts of the USA don't allow you to get from point A to point B without a car unless you want to get run over by crazy drivers. Many parts of the USA, have no sidewalks and bike paths. And 99% of the cheap food here that tastes good is unhealthy for you. So if you are poor and don't want to eat tuna and salad every day, you will be putting your health at risk. I could go on and on. So I think people are being too hard on Americans. Not all Americans are just weaklings who lack will power so they turn into diabetic land whales. I am sure, there are such weaklings in this country but there are such people in every country. I've seen tons of healthy immigrants come to this country and become unhealthy from living here. Then they had to bust their asses everyday to become healthy again. Check out the pic named merica below and you will see what I mean. Then look at pic named sweden and what I am saying might become even more clear for you if it hasn't already become very clear for you.

Yes your idiotic post does rub people the wrong way. What do you mean by "as much of a man as you"?

So is there a qualification you need to prove to be a man? Biologically and scientifically if you have a penis and no female organs then you are a man.

I'm sick of morons out there telling others what makes a man and what does not. "oh if your a real man then you do this or that" what bs.

You are just rationalizing away your inadequacy by comparing yourself to rich and powerful and then saying that they are not much of a man because they did not do all the crap you did.

A lot of people "help" others because that is the only thing they are good at. They are failures at everything else.

You think your local charity groups are run by scientific geniuses ?

You sound a little down there.

I would encourage you to reflect on the good things you have done in life already. Think about the little things that add up and really are important, very important. I am talking about the times when you were kind to someone in some small way, maybe just in passing. Sometimes, you can do something like that and never know how much it meant to that person.

Make things like that happen. You don't need to do anything earth shattering to be able to feel that your life is meaningful, has purpose and that you can feel good about yourself.

Be mindful of how very important it is to live in the moment. Yesterday is gone now. There is just right now and looking ahead hopefully many days to come. This is the place where hope lives.

Consider your talents and how you might apply them in work that is meaningful to you. I am not talking about a career change. We all have bills to pay and maybe your current job suits you just fine but there is more work you could be doing if you want to take it on in pursuit of goals and accomplishments that are meaningful to you.

Have you ever thought about trying out any sort of volunteer work? It doesn't have to be a big thing, a big time commitment but can just be a small one to test the waters of doing that in some way. Maybe there is some talent or talents that you could share with others to help them or perhaps entertain them in some way. Just as one simple example, you could go to a local nursing home and tell the receptionist, "I'd like to volunteer to help the residents here somehow." If you don't already know how I am sure somebody there can tell you. It means so much to an old person who may not have family to visit, who may be confused and have nobody to ever come call on them, just to drop in and say hi, ask them how they are doing, strike up any conversation. Ask them to tell you stories. This is not hard. It's as easy as saying, "Tell me a story. i bet you have a lot of them." We can learn so much from our elders. They have seen so much in a lifetime.

I'll stop there on that one but it is just a single idea off the top of my head because I once worked as a nurse for a long time before I wound changing careers and getting into software development.

I guess the thing I want most to tell you and encourage you to do is rather than look backwards too much, look at now and look ahead and think about what you would like to do that would be good and make you feel good.

Think about this and set one achievable goal for yourself to do something that you'd feel good about doing.

Some good things, including ones we feel proud of happen on their own somehow in the course of life. However, I think more times things like this happen when we chart a course for ourselves with clearly defined and achievable goals that we then pursue in earnest.

I cannot say enough about the incredible sense of satisfaction that comes when one chooses to do things for other people. Being a nurse was hard and it did not pay me anything near what I made in software but you know what? It was the best job I ever had. It was the most meaningful job I ever had. Of course, I didn't do anything huge. I didn't change the world but I did change some worlds a little, one suffering, scared, lonely human being at a time. They would be so grateful for my story telling, my jokes, my genuine affection for them, my interest in them and their lives as if I was some sort of saint but I wasn't and I am not. I did love them though. I can honestly say that I loved them, even the tough ones, like they were my own. I always told the nurses aids if you want to be really good at this it's easy. Every time you walk into a room, do it like you are walking into the room of a loved family member and then act accordingly. You will never fail this way.

In the end, I feel so good about my decade as a nurse because of how i loved them, they knew it and it made their lives just a little bit better. I will never do anything more rewarding than that for the rest of my life but I will always be grateful that once upon a time I was a nurse and I was proud to be one.

So, you see it wasn't about making money. It wasn't about status or having stuff. It was not about accomplishing big and great things at all. It was about how special it was when two old ladies frozen with paralysis by MS would be so happy to see me coming and if I was running late, they would ask the nurse's aides where I was because they wanted their bedtime story. They gave me so much I don't know how to even put it into words. I did simple things for them but they did something huge for me. I will never forget them for the rest of my life and how they made me feel so special for doing such a simple little thing for them. I have so many stories like that. I remember so many special people who touched my soul.

That's what helping others is all about and the amazing thing is how much we help ourselves doing it and how good it makes us feel.

You don't have to make a career of it though. You can instead think about this. Think about where you could work with and for other people. I guarantee you in the end you will always somehow seem to get more than you gave. Everybody wins. When you are 50, you won't be making a post like you did here someplace. Instead, you may find yourself responding to one by somebody else as I am to you.

You have the power to determine your future, so do it. Be satisfied. Make it happen. it's up to you but it isn't going to come to you. You need to go and get it. I believe absolutely that you can because of what you posted. You know why? Because this mattered enough to you to do that. You don't feel satisfied but that is a problem you can decide to start fixing right now.

I have been disabled for over ten years now and it is permanent but I don't feel badly or sorry for myself. A lot of bad stuff has happened to me but it doesn't merit going on about here. What is important is that rather than focus on that I deliberately choose to focus instead on good things I accomplished and still intend to accomplish for the rest of the ride.

You know that stuff about the nursing home volunteering? I'll tell you where that came from. I have recently decided that I am going to do that. I might be disabled but I can do that. It will be good therapy for me and for the folks I visit both. Everybody wins. You can too. I hope you'll do more than think this all sounds pretty good and actually go to the next step of acting on it. You will never regret the day you decided to go out make a difference for someone.

By the way, if the ideas I mention don't work for you that is okay. We are all different. Try using your favorite search engine to search on the term volunteer with your town added. That should turn up some stuff to give you ideas. You could also check with local churches for ideas to become involved somehow in your community. You don't need to be a church goer yourself to go offer to help people in some way. Just tell them, your on a mission to find something meaningful to do besides the stuff you already do to get by, etc.

Just one last important thing, just in case. If you find yourself feeling down for an extended period of time don't ignore that or blame your current place in life for it without any way of being certain that is really the case. Call a local therapist and go talk about it if feelings of melancholy persist if you are having them. You don't need to answer to any of this. This is just FYI. Just keep this in mind. Depression if you did have it is a serious physiologically based disorder that can be helped. It is not a sign of weakness. It does not mean somebody is crazy. It is no different than any other illness in that it too is an illness and one that should be treated so someone can have a better life. Again, don't bother justifying or explaining anything for me or anybody else here. Just please keep that info in mind in case you don't feel well and it doesn't subside on its own.

I hope you find this helpful and wish you the best in making good things happen that you can later reflect on and feel good about.

To be honest, I don't recall ever making this post. I saw it today on my community front page as a topic I have participated in and only after clicking on it did I realize that this was a topic I started. It happened on a night that I got black out drunk. The type of night where the next morning you wonder what happened between watching a movie and waking up the next morning.

I want to thank all of you for your responses. I had no idea that two sentences would end up starting a six page topic. I'm not an active community participant, though I stop by here to read about the various things people have to say often. Perhaps in the moment, I felt safe to ask.

I know that I am not as bad off as my question may have lead others to believe. I have a job and a house, though often I fail to find meaning in my life. I usually work horribly long hours and my social life has suffered for it and I suppose I just wanted someone to talk to.

volunteer groups in singapoor left a severely bad taste in my mouth. they're almost all headed by millionaire or billionaire politicians, and yet they hardly hire any full-time paid staff at all. their funds are mostly taken from the community chest, donations from working class people, and our own taxes.

the working poor pays for the poor, while politicians and their associates get the credit and limelight.

Well, shit, then maybe getting black-out drunk was a good thing.

Anyway… I won't tell you to cheer up. Or that you have something meaningful in life. For one thing, no one's ready to hear that until they go looking for it themselves. Have you ever tried to tell a teenager what's good for them? But I like your brutally honest post, so feel free to PM me if you're bored. And maybe get some sunshine. Fresh air and sunshine always help raise my mood.

TELL ME ABOUT IT!