Tomcat, thank you for bring this up, and I'm glad to see that your diplomatic skills has caused the villagers to decide against stoning you to death.
Another thing that nobody ever seems (dare?) to bring up is that work can be engrossing and fun. After 3.5 years on this board on and off under my previous incarnation as BunsofVeal, I have not read many stories on people who enjoyed what they do. It could be that work is just awful for everyone and that there is no such thing as enjoyable work, or it could be that finding interesting work is really hard and that the people who congregate on this board comprise the small percentage of people who don't enjoy what they do but are good at it anyways and thus have amassed enough money to think about quiting early. I don't know.
I agree-- this is a good thread.
However, BGF, I think that you're describing "demographic self-selection". On this board, you'll only hear from the people who love what they do after they've stopped loving it. The people who still love what they do would never even conceive of the existence of this board, let alone go looking for it.
There is enjoyable work out there, but it doesn't last forever... or the enjoyable parts become mired in the administrivia and smothered by the bureaucracy.
I must confess that I'm not the original thinker on this topic. If you read Paul Graham at all, you'll find that he discusses the topic eloquently in "Doing What You Love." He points out doing what you love to do doesn't mean doing leisure activities or satisfying your every whim because that kind of stuff gets old, and you'll require every greater highs whatever the highs may be.
I'm going to go out on a limb speculating that Graham is not a surfer, nor even a very persistent golfer.
I've never sucked at anything in my life as much as I sucked at learning surfing. Every time I paddle out I find something to work on and do differently, something to do better, or something that I've never seen before. That never gets old. My leg muscles still quiver with fatigue when I stagger back onto the beach, and I may want to go kick Chris "Younger Next Year" Crowley's ass, but the highs don't need to get higher.
If you watch interviews of veterans, battlefield doctors, or NFL greats, they would invariably recall with fondness the period of life that challenged them to use every skill, every reserve, and every last bit of ingenuity they had or didn't know they had to rise to the occasion, and everything afterwards seems as if something is missing. It can't all be a coincidence.
First, at the time they got into those situations they were thinking "Holy crap, how did I get into this situation-- and how the #$%^ am I gonna get the flock out of it?!?"
I had a CO who observed "Every useful piece of submarine intelligence was obtained by guys who got into way too much trouble in a position they were never supposed to be at."
(He was also emphasizing that he'd prefer I leave those decisions to his discretion, but that's another story.) Those survivors should be every bit as happy to avoid repeating those experiences as they are to have survived them.
Second, a frightening minority of these guys are testosterone-poisoned adrenaline junkies. If they keep groping for that point of maximum performance, eventually they're gonna find out that it falls short of surviving the experience.
Finally, the feeling that many of those guys have afterward is often known as "survivor guilt". As we hear from most WWII veterans, I think it's important to cherish the past, but I'm also going to spend my time seeing what I can do about the future. That's what I think is missing from the minds of those who can't stop re-living the past glories. We're supposed to
learn from those experiences, not stay trapped in them.
