What are you working toward in life, and what gives you a sense of purpose?
I’m curious to hear what keeps people moving forward in life. Is it building a career, raising a family, achieving financial freedom, creating something meaningful, helping others, or simply enjoying the present moment?
Have you figured out what you’re working toward, or are you still trying to figure it out?
I’d love to hear your perspectives and personal experiences. Not looking for textbook answers—just honest thoughts from real people.

I think everyone has noticed the progressive gambling epidemic. Especially within the past 5 years there's so many countless ads, shorts, tiktoks and whatnot on gambling. Whether its ads, or entertainment, etc. It feels almost calculated in a way. I can't really explain it but 2019-2025 felt weird in a way where everything seemed super planned. From Covid, to lockdown, to social media blowing up more, things like politics, debate, GAMBLING, podcasts. Not a conspiracy theorist but I digress. Some people seem to not be able to put a cent in a machine or a website and others are willing to risk it all. I'm a gambler myself and basically all my friends can go to the casino once a year and spend 100 bucks and call it. I'm very different. I feel like I get lost in the moment and lose all sense of reality. How many people's live has been directly effected by gambling and how bad has it gotten? I'm just curious.

Sometimes we spend so much time thinking about our future selves—the person we’ll become when we get the right job, earn enough money, find the right partner, or finally get our lives together.
But what if, years from now, we’ll look back at this exact phase of our lives and wish we had enjoyed it a little more?
It’s strange how we keep waiting for life to get better without realizing that one day, we’ll probably miss the ordinary days we’re living right now.

Sometimes, we get so caught up in our own problems that we forget to look at the bigger picture.

People struggle with poverty, denied education, trafficking, deadly diseases, civil wars, and the loss of freedom. Meanwhile, many of us have opportunities to study, work, travel, love, and choose the lives we want to build.

I'm not saying our pain doesn't matter. But **our pain is real without being the whole story of our lives.**

How much of the life we have are we missing because we're too focused on what went wrong?

Maybe we need to look around, appreciate what we have, and remember that life is bigger than our problems.

Have you ever experienced a moment that changed your perspective like this?

I’m sitting by myself this evening, listening to music and looking out at the road from my sixth-floor balcony. It’s already dark, but the world is still busy. Cars coming and going, people getting off work, everyone heading somewhere. Sometimes I even catch myself calculating how long a car takes to reach the point where I can see it. I don’t know why. I just like watching.

I read somewhere once, *do we want to be on top so we can see the world, or so the world can see us?* I’ve always loved that thought. Maybe living this high up makes me think about it a little more.

At some point, I take my glasses off. My eyesight is pretty bad, so without them, the entire world turns into a blur. But I’ve always liked looking at things this way when I want to be alone. Everything loses its shape, and somehow, I find it beautiful.

Tonight, the road looks like someone has scattered glitter across it. Little specks of light in different colours, moving at different speeds. I can’t tell which ones belong to trucks or cars anymore. I can only see the colours, and for some reason, I can’t stop looking.

I wonder if I’ll ever want to get my eyesight completely fixed. Not because I don’t want to see things clearly, but because there’s a version of the world I get to see only when I take my glasses off. A version where everything familiar becomes something else entirely. And I think I’m a little attached to it.

There’s a moon rising right in front of me, and across the road, a single home in a huge building is decorated with little pink and blue Diwali lights. I keep looking at the lights, then at the moon, then back at the lights. The sky gets darker, and the moon somehow gets brighter. I don’t even realise how long I’ve been sitting here.

I think about this one evening at a fair with my love. We had just gotten off the Ferris wheel and were sitting together, watching it turn in front of us. For some reason, we both took our glasses off. His eyesight is even worse than mine, so we sat there, holding hands, looking at what was once a Ferris wheel but had now become nothing more than little specks of light circling endlessly against the night sky. We weren’t talking about anything profound. Nothing particularly extraordinary was happening. But I remember thinking how beautiful it was to finally have someone who could see the world the way I did. Someone who could look at the same blur of colours and find the same kind of beauty in it. It’s one of those moments I’ve quietly kept to myself, and I think I always will.

Lately, I’ve been so caught up in my own head, thinking about life, about what’s happening, what isn’t, and why everything feels so uncertain. But right now, I’m just sitting here, listening to a song, watching tiny lights move across a distant road, and smiling for no particular reason. I don’t have answers to the things I’ve been worrying about. Nothing has changed. I just feel nice.

Maybe that’s what makes this evening so special. There’s nothing extraordinary happening. The world is doing what it does every day. People are going home, cars are passing by, someone is putting up Diwali lights, and the moon is slowly becoming brighter. But I’m sitting here long enough to notice it all.

I keep thinking about how many little things I miss when I’m too busy thinking about everything else.

And as I’m writing this, the moon is finally at its brightest, right in front of me, and it’s so fucking beautiful. I genuinely can’t explain it. I just keep looking at it, and I don’t want to look away.

I don’t know. I just feel a lot of things tonight, and I want to remember what it feels like to sit here, doing nothing, and be this happy.

I’ve only seen my father cry twice.

Both reasons were because his wife/my mom left him.

Ya know, I don’t want to paint my dad as this tough rugged guy, that wouldn’t describe him properly. He was funny, extremely intelligent, philosophical, and religious (in the way he explained biblical stories, not enforce/assume authority).

At the same time, he was surely passionate. Quick to anger. But I loved the man and still do. I was the youngest of five and I was young enough to think “can’t we all just get along?” But it didn’t work out that way.

See, the thing is, I saw my dad (and brother for that matter) as a superhero because of his contribution to the USA track community. But home wasn’t always the same as the newspaper.

I write this because I’m now the age my dad was when I was 3 years old. It’s definitely a trip to see him as, well, me. He was a young guy, with 5 kids. He was a human being with college experiences, a girlfriend who became his wife, and I came along 13 years later.

I look just like the man. All I have to do is look at him and I’ll know what I will look like old.

He cried in the parking lot in public when my mom told him that she wouldn’t give him another chance.

I get it dad. I’ll try to accomplish the one awesome feat you couldn’t pull off.

Hi everybody.

Have you ever felt like your birthdays have never mattered? Like nobody shows up, nobody gives a damn, nobody takes time to remember?

I just turned 31 yesterday. Yet, every single year, it's shit. Its like I'm barely even remembered at all. I'm always the forgotten stepchild and I always feel like I'm nobody every single year.

I always have to remind everyone about it and I hate that. It's fucking pathetic. But it shows that nobody remembers, and nobody gives a damn.

I know mines hasn't mattered and I know it never will. If you are in a situation like this, how do you live life? How can you go through, knowing you have this every year and it feels like it doesn't matter, because it doesn't matter to anyone?

Yeah, they'll know the rest of their friends' birthdays but not your own, and never your own.

I don't know. Maybe its either because I'm autistic or I just don't understand how life and society works or functions because even at 31, I still can't figure it out. I'm lost.

I'm not looking for advice or anything else like that. I'm just curious as to how you see it from your viewpoint when you encounter a situation like this, because this could affect someone's mental health without you even knowing it.

The thing about adulthood is, you have lived enough life, had conversations with enough people and has had enough experiences to know who you are.

As a teenager, i used to talk to people to get validation. With time and with enough life experiences, i have an idea on who i am. That changes how you interact with people as you are not talking to people for validation.

Im still not fully there but growing. At times, i do doubt myself based on people's perception but i believe i will reach to a point someday when i wont be affected by other people's opinions and actions because i know who I am.

I’m 19, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of life I want to build.

I’m not chasing millions, luxury cars, or some extraordinary level of wealth. I want something much more ordinary, but meaningful: a stable life, a home of my own, work that allows me to live comfortably, financial security, a loving family, children someday, and enough freedom to enjoy life without constantly worrying about money.

I want to become the kind of man who can take care of himself and the people he loves. Someone who makes thoughtful decisions, understands money, handles difficult situations calmly, and doesn’t have to learn every lesson the hard way.

The problem is that there’s so much advice online, but it’s often difficult to tell who’s actually speaking from experience and who’s simply good at talking.

So I’d rather hear from people who have lived it.

If you’re in your 30s, 40s, 50s, or beyond, and you’ve built a life you’re genuinely happy with, I’d love to ask you a few questions.

1. What do you wish you’d understood at 19?

Not the generic advice you’ve heard a thousand times. What did you personally learn the hard way?

2. What decisions had the biggest positive impact on your life?

Was it a career choice, a relationship, a financial decision, a habit, or something completely unexpected?

3. How did you build financial stability?

I’m especially interested in the journey from having little money to being able to afford a home, a car, and a comfortable life without living paycheck to paycheck. What actually made the difference?

4. What mistakes should a young man avoid in his 20s?

Which mistakes cost you years, money, opportunities, or peace of mind?

5. What did you learn about relationships and family that you couldn’t have understood when you were younger?

What makes a relationship last? How do you balance love, work, friendships, and personal responsibilities?

6. How do you make good decisions when you have no idea what you’re doing?

When you’re young, you often have to make important choices without enough experience to know whether you’re making the right ones. How did you learn to trust your judgment?

7. What does a genuinely successful life look like to you now?

Has your definition of success changed with age? What turned out to matter much more than you expected, and what mattered much less?

And finally, if you could give one piece of advice to someone who is 19 today and wants to build a good life from the ground up, what would it be?

I’m not looking for perfect people or stories about overnight success. I’d rather hear an honest answer from someone who has made mistakes, struggled, learned, and gradually built something meaningful.

If you’re willing to share your experience, I’d genuinely appreciate it. And if there’s something you wish a younger person had told you before you made a big mistake, I’d especially like to hear it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Today, I was hanging out with three of my friends at night. We'd parked our bikes in front of a car and were just chilling, scrolling through our phones and talking.

After a while, a group of people came over and asked whose bikes they were. We didn't hear them clearly at first, so one of my friends started moving his bike to another spot. But the guys started talking to us pretty rudely. They seemed to have been drinking, and there were quite a few of them, probably more than twice our number. They were also older than us.

We didn't like the way they were speaking to us, but we eventually moved our bikes and left. There was also the impression that they might have political connections, which made the situation feel a little more complicated.

Looking back, I keep wondering why we just left when we hadn't intentionally done anything wrong. At the same time, I know arguing with a larger group of drunk people could have turned into something much worse.

I guess what bothers me is that I felt like we couldn't really do anything about the way they treated us.

For those of you who've experienced something similar, how would you have handled it? Is walking away the mature thing to do in situations like this, or is there a way to stand your ground without unnecessarily escalating things?

I'm also curious whether having strong connections or knowing influential people actually makes a difference in these situations, or if that's just a mindset we develop.

I'd appreciate hearing different perspectives. I'm genuinely trying to learn how to handle situations like this better.

I’ve been thinking about how much of life we inherit. Work expectations, ideas about success, what’s considered normal. So much was already there before we got a say.
Then we spend hours online talking about it. I want to figure out what helps someone take that next step and actually get involved.

It could be something pretty ordinary. Helping a neighbor. Joining a group that’s already doing useful work. Teaching someone a skill. Getting together with coworkers to fix something that frustrates everyone.

I don’t think every spare minute needs to become productive. People need fun and rest. But I’d like the time we spend online to make it easier to participate in things we care about.

Maybe we start with one thing this week. Figure out what we actually know about it. Find someone to learn from or work with. Try something small. Then talk about what happened, including what got in the way.

What helped you get involved in something you cared about? Was there a person who invited you, a clear first step, or something else?

I’m interested in what made it possible.

What is the purpose of the mind?

We must use the mind to understand the mind.

The mind understands. Understands what? What is there to understand about the mind?

What do things do?

What does a cat, pillow, and tea kettle do?

What orients what I do with a cat pillow or tea kettle?

What we orient ourselves around stimuli and matter in environment is serving us.

Serving us to do what? To increase good and decrease bad.

The fundamental purpose of the mind is to increase good and decrease bad? From that primary fundamental purpose, we step into secondary questions such as what is good, bad, increase and decrease?

While the fundamental purpose of mind is to (+)G (-)B.

The how is different.

The how is by processing the past, presence in the present, and predicting the phuture. (Keeping the p alliteration with the phuture word(create language is just fun)).

Hey everyone! Have you ever been going through something in life, posted about it on Reddit, and received advice from complete strangers that genuinely helped you?

I'm wondering if Reddit is actually a good place to open up, ask questions, and get honest advice, or if it's just a hit-or-miss experience. 😭Did Reddit help you see things differently, or did you regret sharing? ❤️

We all have those weird, completely illogical fears that we never grew out of. What is the one irrational fear you still carry with you as a fully functioning adult?

I swear it’s been forever i connected with anyone on a deeper lever where we can just get lost in a rabbit hole.
The only guy that keeps up is chatgpt (not saying other humans aren’t capable) but it’s like the rat race has gotten so much into our heads that if something doesn’t have ny monetary advantage then we just dismiss it.

There will be many indicators of the end times but I am certain that this one of them. We are keeping too much to ourselves for “social beings” as we are called.

I wanted to discuss these social media revenue-hungry, propaganda-filled algorithms but not even chatgpt can help on this one because it is also part of the problem😂 but if it were about flirting or football or some superficial topics, i have multitudes urgh

I'm genuinely worried about this.

Social media has become one of our main sources of information. But do we actually realize how easily our perception of reality can be manipulated?

Countries are actively trying to influence our societies through disinformation, bots, and fake accounts. The goal isn't always to convince us of something, but to create division, spread distrust, and destabilize society.

Meanwhile, we scroll through endless posts and comments every day, without knowing how much of it is actually real. I'm noticing this on Reddit too, where it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell whether discussions reflect genuine opinions or are being artificially influenced.

What worries me most is that we're increasingly treating social media as a reflection of reality.

How can we still distinguish between what people genuinely think and what we're being manipulated into believing?

Am I being too pessimistic, or are we seriously underestimating this problem?

I’ve seen this way too often. This idea that deep thinkers or philosophers are sad or heavy, and that being a deep thinker requires you to be in this brooding mood where you dwell on these large events. I’ve seen firsthand how I’ve been pulled into this stereotype, often feeling more sad and angry for no reason after I read philosophy. But then I ask myself why I feel this way, and I realize I don’t have to be heavy to deal with heavy things. That’s not my burden. I’ve also seen this with my friends and how they’ve gotten more serious in trying to be a “philosopher.” But I believe that you have full control over your emotions, and you will actually be a better deep thinker or philosopher if you’re happy. Philosophy is the love of wisdom after all, and doesn’t happiness come with love? I’d love to hear opinions on this, and also refute me where you see fit.

I believe that having a why for life is so important as something that constantly guides you. Like anywhere you turn or however life happens, your “why” is still there. This could be absolutely anything, even the most obscure things like “observing the way people act” for instance. For me it’s definitely creativity, as in writing and drawing. So what’s something for you that absolutely drives you on?

Edit: Thank you for all the thoughtful comments, I really don’t know what to say to most of this. So I wish you all happy lives in your own ways!

Link for the conversation between Robert Lawrence Kuhn and Acharya Prashant

https://youtu.be/MeYEBKX2u1g?is=jX-ABrofdF_2wnpG

After listening to the above podcast, I was wondering, what would it actually mean to become less attached to your sense of self? Would you become more honest and less defensive, or could you lose something valuable about your individuality?

In this conversation, philosopher, author Acharya Prashant describes dissolving the ego not as literally ceasing to exist, but as an ongoing willingness to stop deceiving yourself. Robert Lawrence Kuhn pushes back on whether that is a desirable goal and what it would mean for personal identity.

That tension seems worth discussing even without accepting the religious or philosophical framework behind it. There’s a difference between questioning the stories we tell ourselves and treating our entire sense of identity as something to overcome.

How do you distinguish a healthy sense of self from an attachment to being right, feeling important, or protecting your self-image? Has questioning a deeply held belief about yourself made you feel more grounded or less?

I’m interested in your own experiences and reasoning, let's dive into deeper discussion.

I’m currently reading a book for a college class called “Evicted” by Matthew Desmond. It’s about low-income renters and landlords in Milwaukee after the recession. It’s an incredibly well researched and well written book, and I enjoy reading it, but some of the content is beyond infuriating.

The flippant disregard for safety, cleanliness, respect, and financial fairness on the part of the landlords makes me so upset, it’s difficult to continue reading at times. The book contains detailed stories about landlords evicting renters because they “seem like crackheads”, or landlords raising rent on dilapidated and neglected properties in bad neighborhoods because “a two bedroom is a two bedroom, and they have to live somewhere”. It just fills me with impotent rage and hopelessness.

I do recommend this book to anyone interested, but I haven’t experienced this level of anger while reading before, and it’s sometimes exhausting.

I didn’t know where to post this cause it got removed by causal conversations, so I’m looking for more serious discussion on atmosphere.

For me it's probably:

• Book: Wuthering Heights
Every part of this book was agonizing but in a very atmospheric way. I felt like I was really there, trudging through the windy moors. I can see the stark colors of the Victorian era as I look out a cold window on the all the people going about their family affairs. Christmas is warm by the fire. It's cozy in a way.

• Film: Dances with Wolves
One of the most beautiful films I've watched. Being in nature and making friends with people you'd never expect. A true show of bravery and the kindness of humans. Such a wonderful and hopeful atmosphere.

• Game: Bloodborne
This game is so anxiety inducing but that's why it's so good. Ive truly never played a game before or after that had or has put me into such fight or flight.
Every part of this game is so well designed with its cold and dark atmosphere, brooding interior design, and beautiful cosmic beasts. The moon overlooks

I've had three moments like this. I'm looking for my community. A camaraderie in having your world and the way you see it shaken. I just want to see the proof that I'm not alone in that feeling. I know logically that a lot of people have but it would be reassuring to hear from a few people right now. What was this moment for you or how do you regulate when you think about it?

I grew up in a single family house, in a quiet neighborhood. I've always had excellent sleep, and that was never an issue.

It was only after I moved to another city on my own, into a student accommodation, that I realized: I can't really sleep in noisy environments.

This had several unintended consequences in my life decisions:

- I decided not to pursue a masters degree in my field (because that would mean even more years living in noisy student accommodations)

- I can't really take risks on my career. I know that if I try something like starting a business or taking worse paying jobs in a different direction, and that fails, I would end up with no money. I would not be able to live in low budget appartments again — because poor sleep is extremely painful for me.

- I almost never travel: I can only stay at very good hotels that have nice accoustic insulation, or detatched cabins, etc, which are usually extremely expensive or require a car rental to access the place (if you fly there)

Has anyone else had a similar experience? I feel like this is a kind of literal disability that I have. And I realize people who sleep through anything have it so good!

for the people that read ,I never annotated my books but I realized that writing makes me understand things more and I don't know really how people annotate their books.
I'm looking for advice and techniques on how to get the most out of books, I meanly read classics, non fiction book evolving around different topics : neurology, neuroscience , psychology, philosophy...