Reading this piece, I feel a longing for a friend, but it also makes me think about what true talent really is. In the piece, he mourns his friend, but says that the friend's real talent was being an influencer rather than cooking. Reading some of the stories, it's sad, but sometimes I think that the talent a person has and the talent a person wants to have are different.

But I don't know much about the person named Bob, and yet Bob as he appears in this piece still seems cool to me. We like something because we're good at it, but sometimes we keep living because there's something we absolutely want to try even if we're not good at it. To me, programming seems to be that kind of thing.

▲

Firehawke 3 hours ago | parent [-]

One could easily argue that he lived how he wanted to and never gave up on his dream even if it eluded him. On the other hand, one can also argue that at a certain point one should maybe accept that you have talents you can use even if they're not the exact ones you strived for..

I guess I'll go with the middle ground and respect the tenacity to keep going but wonder how much more could be accomplished one finally acknowledges where one's talents actually lie.

▲

jdw64 3 hours ago | parent [-]

While I agree with what you said, I was reminded of Camus's Sisyphus. Bob was pushing the boulder. It's hard to infer whether he knew if the boulder would ever reach the top, but even so, the process was there—and because it was there, I think his friends were there too.

In my own circumstances, I'm actually holding onto programming by force. For most people, going down a different path would have paid better—I'm not a Silicon Valley person, after all. My environment isn't particularly favorable either. But even so, I love this life. Life is, in a way, a trial, and in a way, suffering. In Eastern thought, life is suffering.

If the whole of life is steeped in suffering anyway, then perhaps it's better to choose what you want to do. This is ultimately a difference in ways of thinking, and I suppose you'd agree there's no right answer in what I think either.

Having a dream that's hard to achieve can be cruel (though Bob might not have thought so), but without that cruelty, you would never have dreamed that dream in the first place. A dream is cruel not because it's hard to achieve, but because it makes you unable to give it up even when it isn't achieved. And for those who can't give it up, perhaps the very process of pushing that boulder is already life. In other words, the dream itself may have already become life.

▲

Firehawke 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah. I have degenerative nerve damage related to a set of several severe spine injuries.

On a day to day basis, I have to do certain hobbies not just because I want to, but because I lose the physical coordination to do those things if I don't keep doing them-- and then it takes days of struggle to get that ability back.

Sometimes I wonder why I continue to fight that battle; it's inevitable that I'll lose at some point. As much as I micro-give up multiple times a day, I'm too stubborn to ever truly quit and walk away entirely.. for the most part. There are a few battles I accept that I've lost and moved on from, but there are some things that I'll probably just keep struggling against until I'm physically incapable of entirely or I'm dead.

So I get where Cringely's choice comes from. I'm.. just not sure where one can reasonably draw the line and say "This is something I should give up on, because my time is better spent on something I can uniquely succeed at."

It's not an easy decision to make.

	▲	jdw64 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]