Humbling Experiences

Life is, as we all know, a life-long learning experience. It can be smoothed out for sure, so one does not learn as much, because learning at my current age is quite painful. But still, I seek it out for some reason. Some examples that protects oneself from this eternal journey of constantly forgotten passports and toothbrushes are:

Never change job

Do not marry

Do not have children

Well that is basically the list. I obviously did all of them because I am a masochist. So, why are these painful?

Changing job is painful because you go from knowing what you're doing, being on top of everything, and feeling a (somewhat made up) sense of being needed, to total newbness, perhaps a new programming language, entirely new context, and new colleagues to which you have to prove yourself once more. Why would anyone at their right mind ever do this? Still people do it all time, today more that ever before. Do I feel regret? Sometimes, but I know it is the right thing. I am learning so much, but I constantly feel like an idiot.

Being married means spending a lot of time with a person who knows you well they will be able to, with great accuracy, point out all of your limitations and flaws, even the ones you did not know about yourself. Marriage has many good parts but I feel pain from this, but I know it's the right thing. Some day I might even get to know myself, I am still learning who I am.

With less accuracy but as much effectiveness your children will teach you things about yourself. I learned from mine that there is a point at which I loose my temper and even shout angrily at them. I did not honestly think I was capable of that. There is no deep pain in this though, and I know it is the right thing for me and my life.

This post was not really going to be about this, but I'll save the original topic for another time. I hope if someone reads this they might feel they are not the only ones struggling. I think this is quite normal. All these things, I would do them again if I could turn back time, probably only sooner.

> How happy is the blameless vestal's lot

> The world forgetting, by the world forgot