What if…everything you’ve done in the last 10 years has been one mistake after another after another? And you’re still making mistakes? What if we’re so fucked up we’re incapable of making the “right” decisions? I don’t mean things like doing drugs or alcohol or obvious fuck ups. But like making the RIGHT life decisions for us in the long run. What if we think we’re making the right decisions at the time but every decision we’ve made in the last decade has turned out bad, bad and worse?
What if every time we “zigged” we should’ve “zagged”? And that “zig” led to disasterous results?
I don’t see a “light at the tunnel” so to speak. I don’t see a happy life or happy ending anywhere given the way things are going/have been going the past decade.
I’m fucking tired of my life not working out.
I’m tired of always being sick and poor and alone.
I’m tired of the universe constantly throwing a wrench into my life.
Nothing ever seems to work out for me. Even before the car accident, life has constantly kicked me in the face. Only now I don’t have the strength to get back up.
What if…we’re incapable of making the right decisions?
Ex- You’re stuck on the road, in a lane that isn’t moving. So you switch lanes, only to get stuck in that new lane, so you move again to another lane only to find yourself stuck in that new lane and the lane you were just in is now moving fast. My life is kinda like that- except maybe this is a bad example bc there’s HUGE consequences for being in the “wrong lane.” That no matter what lane I go to, that lane becomes the slow, stuck lane. But lest you think doing nothing and staying in that lane is a better option- nay- I am stuck in that lane too, not moving.
So what does one do? Damned if you do and damned if you don’t is the corollary of my life. It seems every step I take, every decision I make, ultimately turns out to be the “wrong” one. Most of the decisions I’ve made weren’t obvious that they were bad, and others I “should have known better.” Still not me purposely doing stupid bad stuff but end result is the same as if I were.
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I think there’s a clear distinction between poor judgment and bad luck. A decision might be “right”, rational, sensible etc, and still turn out poorly. We can never be certain of any outcome. So if you think your perception of reality is generally pretty sound, your luck should (probably) improve at some point if you keep making decisions in the same way.
That’s true. I do have extremely bad luck. But this has been the case since I was very young- bad luck upon bad luck upon bad luck. Been screwed by the “universe” since I was a kid.
I am a very math, science and log based person. However, with my life, I’ve always believed I was “cursed.” How does someone have such extreme bad luck, one after another after another after another? Ok, well statistically, someone CAN have 99 tails out of 100, so I guess I’m one of those unlucky fuckers. But goddamnit, I can’t take this shit anymore that the universe has doled out on me, and continues to dole out on me. It’s just fucking cruel and completely not fair. I deserve a good life, not constant fuckery.
I’ve never asked to be born with a silver spoon- only an average / decent life with decent luck. Apparently that was too much to ask.
Well hence the problem- it’s been decades and it’s ONLY gotten WORSE not better.
I had thought this shit would stop at some point, this constant bad luck, but no, it just gets exponentially worse. So WTF do I do? I can’t go against the Universe and I can’t take this shit anymore. It’s just not fair. I get life isn’t fair, but goddamnit, at least give me 67/100 tails instead of 99/100 tails. And I’m getting to the point where my health is failing and I’m not young anymore, so there’s a small window of time before I am old old and can’t do anything about it anymore. But what can I do if literally EVERYTHING I do leads to shit? And doing nothing also leads to shit so I can’t stay still either. HOW do I get out of my situation when this piss black cloud keeps following me?
well at least thanks for recognizing that a good portion of it is “bad luck.” when i tell ppl, EVERYONE immediately jumps on me and blames ME for ALL the ills of my life, as if luck hasn’t a single part of it.
however, now i’m starting to blame myself- that outward anger at unjustness has turned inward, bc I can’t get myself out of the shit situation I am in. what does one do when everything one does leads to shit? and as heartless rightly said, it does lead to inaction and paralysis. which is what’s occurring the last few years. but how am i supposed to “keep going” when i DO risk things getting WORSE? i flee from one fire only to arrive at another. Rinse and repeat. my body/health can’t risk it getting worse. But I also can’t stay and do nothing either. But everything I do leads to shit.
I suppose it is actually possible that you’ve been singled out by some malevolent deity to suffer disproportionately, or that you’re cursed in some other way. For all I know we could be living in a simulation created by an unhinged psychopath. Obviously there would be nothing you could do about that, and no way of even knowing. I think if it were me I’d rather just assume that it was down to chance, as then there would at least be the possibility of things changing.
I’m very much not a maths-based person, so you’ll have to tell me if this is right. If it were purely a matter of luck, would it not be more likely that your future luck would trend more towards the average? So if you’ve flipped 49/50 tails so far in your life, would you not expect to get 25/50 over the rest of your life?
I suppose that assumes that nothing in your past bad luck has increased the odds of future negative events, which I guess is unlikely, especially with health etc. But that’s more like the ongoing legacy of past bad luck, rather than bad luck resulting from future decisions you make?
It may be that the odds are stacked against you whatever you choose. In which case it’s not so much “bad decisions” as making the best play with a bad hand. As you say, staying still and doing nothing also carries it’s own risks. All you can do is make your guess at what seems most likely to have the best outcome, and hope that you catch a break. That’s all any of us can do. Guess. We’re just wandering blind into the future, hoping it looks something like we imagine, and that we don’t trip and fall.
Speaking purely statistically, it is statistically possible where someone consistently gets shafted, say getting 99/100 tails. When you are thinking of people getting close to 50/50 over their lifetime, you’re thinking of the AVG case. Sure, the AVG person wins half the time and loses half the time. But you also have the people on the tail end on the left and on the right- those who have consistently “good” luck, and those who consistently have “bad” luck. Think of the bell curve- most ppl are in the middle, but there’s fuckers on both ends- I would be the unfortunate fucker on the shit end. And statistically, that would be normal and not an anomaly. There will always be ppl on both tail ends of every bell curve. Now that is speaking purely statistically.
Now, speaking of real life, yes, the cards ARE stacked against me. When you are poor, you live in a shit neighborhood, and if you live in a shit neighborhood, statistically, more bad shit is going to happen to you than if you live in a good neighborhood. Same goes for drs. If you have great insurance or live in a fancy neighborhood with fancy drs, you’ll get better medical care than if you have shit insurance or no insurance. If you live in a shit neighborhood, you wind up in a shit school, bc statistically all the good schools are in the good wealthy neighborhoods. You in the shit school get a shit education. Not only that you’ll have shitty classmates (I went to 3 different elementary schools in 3 different neighborhoods and I can tell you for a fact that WHERE you live 100% determines what school you go to and how good or shitty that school is). Also determines how shitty your classmates and teachers are and the quality of life you have. In the good schools, I was doing well. In the shit schools, I was bullied bc all the kids in the shit schools were shitty ppl. The kids were shitty bc their parents were also the working poor and didn’t take care of the kids and those kids wound up to be troublemakers, vs the kids in the good neighborhoods who were better behaved with better parental care. So you see how this cycle of shit goes?
If you go to a shit school where you’re getting a shit education, you’re less likely to get into a good university, and if you get into a shitty (or in my case the “best” public university in my state but still shitty compared to the private schools I could have gotten to if I had the money/pedigree/opportunity). Anyhow, if you wind up in a shit uni or mediocre uni, you won’t get the opportunities and networking that you get in a better uni.
There’s a lot more relevant and better examples than these but the gist of it is- if you are born poor, especially with a shit family who does NOT help you in any way, then yes, the hands ARE stacked against me. The cards have been stacked against me the day I was born, and the day I immigrated here to the USA and became a poor ass immigrant (We were upper middle class in the country we came from).
Anyhow, once we got here, we were dirt poor. Like going to bed hungry dirt poor. So I’ve been screwed ever since. There’s only so much “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” one can do if one grows up poor, and on top of that, in a shit family that treats their children like dirt.
I always knew the cards were stacked against me ever since I was a child. Even back then I knew that. But I thought with hard work and intelligence, that I could get beyond it. But no, when your hands are THAT much stacked against you, it’s not impossible, but very improbable to escape a life of poverty.
What we see as “bad luck” is often a case of poor people trapped in shit situations. Why did I have bad drs? Bc I didn’t have good insurance. The shittiest slimiest drs are the ones that take county insurance, and that’s the dentist I got. Ofc I didn’t know he was a shit dr bc all I could look up was Yelp and Google reviews and everything looked fine. If the reviews look bad, ofc I wouldn’t have gone. But the insurance I had, I literally could ONLY go to 2 dentists. That greedy shit dentist, or the other dentist that kept canceling my appt 4x in a row.
Long story short- poor ppl have everything stacked against them. And bc I was poor, I didn’t have enough to eat, never saw a dr, didn’t have a chair to sit in, didn’t have heat, so OFC I was going to grow up with health problems. And once you lose your health, you can’t keep a job, and with no job, there’s no money, and with no money, you’re even more screwed than ever before.
it’s not necessarily that there’s some “evil” force singling me out in particular, though it may FEEL that way- when you are 1- poor 2- without family help and 3- sick, you basically have everything stacked against you. People don’t understand how that literally affects EVERY FACET of life.
Where you live, where you can afford to live, what you can afford to eat, what your neighborhood is like, what kind of neighbors you’ll have, what drs you have access to, job opportunities, networking/connections- all of that is determined by where you live or how much money you have.
And yes, on TOP of that IS this weird thing of shit always happening to me. I wouldn’t believe in getting “shafted” by the universe if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes to other ppl.
There’s this guy I know, he went to the top Ivy Leagues (he grew up in a middle class family) and he was very intelligent. He has several degrees, including several Masters and PhDs. He’s a smart hard-working guy.
But he is like me where literally everything he tries to do, he gets roadblocked or gets screwed in some way. He had notorious bad luck. IDKW it kept happening to him but it did. Now he had a much better life than me overall bc he didn’t grow up in poverty and had opportunities I didn’t have. So he didn’t live a miserable existence like I did. BUT he did have inordinately bad luck. Year after year, decade after decade. Always shit happening to him. He’s a very nice, smart, sensible guy so it wasn’t like he was out doing stupid shit. But shit always got thrown at him. I can’t explain it, nor can he. But sometimes some ppl just get FUCKED by the universe. Some ppl just get inordinate bad luck through no fault of their own. And I’m not even talking about me. How do we explain the shit that happens to him?
What I’m trying to get at is that it’s not like bad luck is some permanent attribute that one has (unless you believe in some kind of actual otherworldly curse.) It’s just what you happen to have experienced so far. Some people do indeed get disproportionately fucked by the universe, by chance. It statistically has to happen to someone, and they happen to draw the short straw.
But surely, all else being equal, the more disproportionately they’ve been unlucky during the first half of their life, the less likely they would be to experience the same over the rest of their life? Because that would make them even more of an outlier, therefore more rare. Wouldn’t it be more likely that any random person finds themselves closer to the centre of the bell curve than the fringes? If your more-privileged friend remained unharmed enough by his past bad luck to approach the world on an even playing field, then shouldn’t he expect his future luck to trend to the average? The point being that if it’s purely down to chance, there’s no reason to expect past bad luck to continue.
The key factor is the things that stack the deck against you, making things unequal going forward. Like you say, poverty, family support, health. That’s down to your past bad luck. But if you were somehow able to make a decision unaffected by those past misfortunes, you should rationally expect the same chance of a good outcome as anyone else. Unless you have actually been targeted by some malign supernatural being.
Think I’m mostly agreeing with you. Just disagreeing with some of the framing. It seems like it’s not so much about making the “wrong” decisions and things turning to shit. It’s more about picking the best from some bad options, and hoping they work out better than you’d expect. Like betting against the odds. It might be that whatever choice you make, a bad outcome is the most likely result, but for some there’s a better chance of a positive than others. Some choices are less bad than others. That’s all one can do, play the odds in accordance with their best judgement.
“But surely, all else being equal, the more disproportionately they’ve been unlucky during the first half of their life, the less likely they would be to experience the same over the rest of their life?”
That’s not how statistics works and that’s definitely not how real life works. That’s just called hopeful thinking. That’s the kind of thinking ppl cling on to bc that would make all the suffering worth it, and make life seem more fair. But real life doesn’t work that way.
Think of a coin toss. If you land a tail, your next flip is unrelated to the previous flip. So even if you had 10 tails in a row, your next flip is still a 50-50 heads or tails.
Now in real life, imagine real life is a race track. If someone has all the cards stacked against them, poverty, lack of money, ill health, lack of help from people, etc. That person has a 100 lb ball shacked to their ankle and they start the race 100ft behind the avg person and 1000ft behind a person born rich. Now you start the race. It’s not impossible for a rare talented person to win that kind of rigged race, but not very probable for the avg person. Even catching up to the “avg” person when you start the race from so behind is a feat.
I busted my ass and worked to the bone to “catch” up to the “avg” person- but I had to literally start working at 7yo, skipped a grade in school, started college at 15, worked 3 part time jobs in college + internships WHILE doing a FULL course load AND a half- JUST so I can catch up to the where the “avg” person is on the race track. If I wasn’t intelligent and if I didn’t work 10x harder than everyone else, I wouldn’t have gotten there. And that was just to “avg” mind you, not even to a life of luxury and comfort.
Now I was able to live a middle class lifestyle so long as my health held up. But it didn’t. Children born to poverty often have health issues, due to malnutrition, neglect, what have you. And once you start having health issues…everything goes downhill from there. You don’t know how important health is until you no longer have it. When you have to struggle just to walk or do laundry, get groceries, etc you’re pretty screwed.
Anyhow, to think that just bc I have suffered and had shit luck that I’m “due” for good luck is a pipe dream- it’s what ppl make up and tell themselves so they don’t feel bad. If someone has all the cards stacked against them, they have to run 10x as fast just to catch up to the avg person. And when you’re sick, you can no longer run.
Anyhow, I have limited options in what I can do. Therefore my potential for a better life is limited. While it’s not “impossible” for my life to change for the better, it’s rather difficult, if not improbable. Especially given my health issues. Unless they magically go away, which is wishful thinking. My life can’t get better unless my health improves. Even if I miraculous was given a palace to live in- sure I’d be much better off than in this shithole room I’m in, but I’d still be sick, I’d still have issues with walking, eating, breathing, moving around, doing errands, getting things done, etc.
It’s hard to keep going and keep fighting and struggling knowing you’ll forever be suffering. Wasn’t it you that wrote a post along the lines of why bother? in relation to being alone but the corollary is the same. Why bother with all that effort when I could just off myself and be done with it (except for the fact that they make it hard to suicide).
Now obviously doing nothing is not going to lead to any changes. But it takes an inordinate amount of energy + money + effort + luck for my life to change. It’s not impossible but incredibly difficult to pull off. If I didn’t have health issues I could do it, just like I busted my ass my whole childhood and youth, but when you struggle to just sit up without pain, or struggle to sit down on the toilet and then get back up well…life isn’t easy. Nothing is easy. ESPECIALLY with NO help from ANYONE. Which pisses me off more than anything.
“The point being that if it’s purely down to chance, there’s no reason to expect past bad luck to continue.”
1- That’s bc real life isn’t random and it isn’t down to “chance.”
2- That would contradict what you said earlier about having shit luck and that I’m “bound” to have better luck. If it’s random and down to chance, then no one is “bound” to have better luck or worse luck as it would be random and not based on previous record.
“If your more-privileged friend remained unharmed enough by his past bad luck to approach the world on an even playing field, then shouldn’t he expect his future luck to trend to the average?”
He’s ~60 yo. At what point is he going to stop having bad luck? When he’s 70? When he’s 5 years from death? How long does he have to wait?
I’m no spring chicken either. At what point will I magically start having better luck? How long do I have to wait?
To think that “good things are bound to happen” is just wishful thinking. Yes, to think otherwise is depressing af. But the reality is that I might never eek out a decent or happy life for myself. No matter how hard I try. It’s different if I was in my 20s and healthy. THEN “good things might happen” could hold true. But the older and sicker one gets, the less likely this is going to happen. You’ll understand when you get older. No I’m not being patronizing, I used to have more hope when I was younger and healthier. The older you get, the less likely things are miraculously going to get better bc “we are due it”
Yep, I’ve repeated that you may well have the odds stacked against you. That’s fine, it’s clearly not a point that’s worth me trying to make. I have written many post along the lines of “why bother?”, and I’m sure I’ll write many more. Generally for me it’s a way of processing feelings I don’t know how to deal with, so I can be a bit more effective in life, as well as wanting others to pass on a bit of the sense of motivation that I lack. But maybe we’re just different in that respect. If what you’re looking for is people to tell you “yeah, there’s no point, you should kill yourself”, I’m sure you can find that from someone.
I don’t think I’ve at any point implied that things will magically get better for you – just that you may not be actually metaphysically cursed, and that having bad luck in the past doesn’t necessitate bad luck in the future. But it seems like rather than engaging with what someone’s trying to say, you scan for things that sound kind of like what you want to argue against, and ignore the rest.
Which is my bad for engaging in the first place, and being unable to resist an argument 😉
the first thing I’d do is attack the idea that you can’t make good decisions, because that’s self defeating. I understand the record, but you want to change that going forward, right?
I’d also deal with the black and white thinking of it all, because what you want is to make better decisions, and eventually if you keep that up for long enough maybe someday they can be what you consider “good”
basically what I’m proseletizing is my life philosophy that the ultimate good is productivity, the ultimate evil is wasted effort. Starting from there, and understanding that all other systems of right and wrong are just as arbitrary, progress is possible.
because regret and examining past mistakes is of limited utility. What happened then may not accurately predict what will happen now. Worst, fear is paralyzing, being terrified of making the wrong decision can promote inaction, as you say. Inaction is also of limited utility. Sometimes it’s better than going either wrong way, and our culture doesn’t value stillness enough.
Sometimes you’ve got to say “screw it, what do I have to lose?”
Essential game theory, assuming that any system will behave somewhat like a game with rules and objectives, you have to make assumptions up front, and the correct assumption in most games is that you’ll lose. Because assuming you’ll win doesn’t do anything for you, it makes most people do stupid things, miss simple threats that could have been dealt with earlier.
So assume you’re going to get your ass kicked. You can’t avoid playing, because life is a mandatory game. Self preservation states that you should aspire to suffer the least from it as possible. The question is the degree to which you lose, and when you attack that, maybe you can win.
because your enemies are idiots, universally. Why? Because you’re motivated, and having you as an ally would be less work and better for everyone in the long run. Yet even when presented with that option, some people are at best incompetent and at worst an active obstacle to your goals.
There is no unbreakable bank, there is no uncrackable code, and there is no unsolveable problem. These are essential truths.
understanding the futility of absolution is essential for getting away from black and white thinking. Challenging that is how you start to move to a new way of looking at things.
I’m going to leave it with a challenge to your premise, that you always make bad decisions by presenting you with a good one you made. You chose to write about your struggle, and to do it in a place where people can give you productive feedback. That’s a universally good idea. The other way, keeping your pain inside, assuming others won’t help, that’s a counterproductive attitude. It’s also unfortunately common.
So you made a good decision, at least a few dozen times by my count. It hasn’t been enough to outbalance the bad, yet. When you’re in a hole, sometimes you can spend a long time digging yourself back out.
and I said I was going to stop, but I’m going to present one more useful tool; creation of a binary and resolving it. Deciding between more than two options is really hard, because of relative value. There’s a hack for that though; create groups and decide between them, make it two options, because that’s so much easier.
So your choice, as I see it, is inaction or action. Understand, there are dozens of ways to execute either, but it starts and ends with that. If you don’t know what action will produce, inaction might be the better choice. Then it becomes a choice between productive inaction such as studying or recouperative inaction such as self care.
and here I went a-rambling again…. hopefully there was something useful in there.