What's the smartest or most insightful thing you figured out as a kid that stays with you today?
What's the smartest or most insightful thing you figured out as a kid that stays with you today?
I used to spend a lot of energy being concerned what other people thought of me. How I dressed, how I acted, what I owned, etc. One day I realized 2 things:
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Most people are too busy thinking about themselves to spare any meaningful thoughts for me.
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I'm never going to see most of these people ever again so it doesn't matter what they think.
After that I started directing that energy into making sure that I approved of my choices rather than hoping strangers would.
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Friends can matter to you more than family, and that's ok, but family does a lot more for you than you realize.
I didn't have a great family, but it was only when I was upset about a birthday party when I was like 12 where my mom made all the cards and buttons and stuff and I was so mad that it wasn't the cool cards and prizes that you buy that I kind of realized it.
It dawned on me like two weeks later that my parents couldn't afford any of that, but they took time out of their day, for like two weeks, even though they both worked too much, to hand-make approximations as best they could. Without me knowing, so I would be surprised.
Ever work a double shift and then spend the few minutes you have not working, sleeping, or cooking to hand-make party favors? Yeah, me either.
It still makes me cry thinking about how ungrateful I was and the look of sadness and yearning on my mom's face when I got mad at her for not buying the "good" stuff.
When I was 20, I sat her down and told her about it and how bad I felt, and how I never knew how to apologize for it. We had a good cry, and she thanked me for seeing it eventually, and how happy it retroactively made her knowing I realized it so soon after.
Say what you mean; mean what you say.
No idea where I heard or read it, but preteen me internalized it and it's become part of my creed to this day
I can learn everything I need to know about how to be a decent person from cartoons.
Cartoons have always shown me that being a friendly person, who is honest, do right by their friends and tries to do the right thing will guide me well through life. I needed to weed through the friends a little bit but that has held true thus far
In school, I happened to notice exactly when some random topic went from "uh, I guess I kinda understand this" to having it actually "click". That clued me off to the difference between e.g. knowing a bunch of shitty formulae, and actually understanding the topic to the point where you can actually use it for problem solving. Also, that all the teaching and books I received revolved 100% around the former.
I was about 11 or so and acting out, my teacher said my name. I just froze for a moment and it dawned on me that was the first time he had said my name all day. Completely invisible unless I was doing something wrong. Just a square shape in a square hole unless I choose otherwise and if I do it by making my life worse.
I guess it doesn't sound profound. Every guy knows this on some level but it really knocked the wind out of me at the time.
As a kid I got a lot of “Do as I say not as I do.”
The lesson I learned is that a lot of grown ups are hypocrites. I saw this so much it made me decide I would always be honest with myself and others about why I was doing the things I was doing. It is not always easy, especially now that I have kids of my own, but it is much healthier in the long run. I teach my kids by example rather than preaching fake piety.
There's a book series called The Hammer and the Cross about an English bastard child of a noblewoman that resulted from her being taken by a Viking raid and later escaping back to her home. Then the Vikings invade to avenge the death of Ragnar (his 4 sons are each powerful Viking Jarls).
The way it handled the two religions clashing, where each was powerful based on how many followers they had, along with it being the first time I'd seen where Christianity isn't presented as the Underlying Truth but was just another thing. I realized that it was a metaphor for how religion actually worked. If enough people believe in something, it gains power. Christianity won through politics and warfare, not through truth. There wasn't anything special separating Christianity from other former religions we largely now refer to as myth other than the one Empire that united most of Europe declared it to be the truth and people were slaughtered until they went along with it.
That's when I stopped being a Catholic that just hated going to church and was an atheist at first, then later settled into agnosticism since who knows what's going on beyond what we can directly detect with our senses and tools.
"Family" isn't what you are born in, it's what you decide and stand for. Fuck that kind of "family" I was born with, these useless, manipulative, egoistic, stupid waste of oxygen.
People hate what they fear and fear what they don't understand. The path, then, to fight against hate is specifically understanding
I learned this by watching The Crocodile Hunter as a child. I remember very vaguely a point Steve Irwin made about how people are terrified and act to harm animals they know nothing about. Either he went on to further say, or I extrapolated it myself, that knowing how an animal will act informs YOU on how to approach the situation; No need for fear or hate if you understand the reality of the situation. I then further extrapolated this race relations. It's a little general, but a white person may be racist against a black person because they think they're dangerous, just as someone might see a snake they know nothing about and think it dangerous
We were studying XYZ, coordinates during one math class in the middle school.
I asked where's the Z if X and Y were on the paper. My friend pointed with his finger that Z would come out of the paper like this.Mind blown 😂
I still reminiscent on it once in a while.Wanking!
I'm bad at decisions so I will name a few that stuck with me:
- In 5th grade I realize that lines are hypothetical and all that really exists are line segments. (My teacher basically said yes, but you're confusing the class shut up.)
- There are lies in all truths and truths in all lies. (A mantra I had).
- The best way to get your way is to let someone else be the leader, act as the compromiser between the most disparate view points by saying you're adding ideas of both sides, but actually give your positions and lipservice to the others, then finally make it all seem like this was literally everyone else's idea and not yours. Ex. Working in a group project of 4 people to create a alternate energy model. A wants to make a wind turbine and it needs to be yellow. D wants solar panels made from copper. B just wants to do what's easiest. So you suggest a crank powered flash light that uses copper wiring, because it captures A's desire to have a kinetic energy conversion and using the copper wire shows D's desire to prove the usefulness of copper in alternative energy designs. A and D didn't say that's why they wanted the designs, but by making the argument in a good light and attributing it to them it makes them much more likely to go along. I believe my 4th grade teacher saw what I was doing as she had us do a lot of group work because after a while she had me do my own thing.
Don't apologize unless you actually mean it. Saying sorry when you didn't really mean it, or you did the same thing again only devalues any future apology until it means nothing to the people you care about.
No one can tell me who I am, but me.
I am an infinitesimal cluster of neurons inhabiting a large body, and none of us have any idea what the fuck we're doing.
The universe is far larger than I can comprehend.
As far as revelations when I was 10 goes, that's about it. I didn't know about girls or sex yet.
that I could read people's minds by reading the room, reading the situation, reading their mannerisms and facial expressions. I remember having this epiphany about age four.
I think it's an ability many or most people have.
unfortunately some childhood trauma traumatized me and I lost this ability.
People who thrive in life and own companies and run businesses etc have that ability to "read people." I wish I still had that ability.
fuck trauma.
How computers work. Fascinating machines.
Something always happens.
often try and conceptualise things, like if I thought of a thing I would question what caused that thought and run through my previous thoughts to understand it.
And I'd also think about time and how it passes how nothing is truly present as its always an idea of the present. Like one day I found myself walking towards a wire fense, with each step the fense got closer but at no point did the idea feel present, it was always a recollection.
Now I am an adult and can use more constructive words to describe these ideas but even so I still find it all profound
That feats of cryptography can be done using any material. Or rather I'd expect it to be a common conclusion. When you look at quipu, braille, or morse code, does nobody ever think "I wonder what random randomly assorted things might also be an embodied utterance"? Nobody looks to the colors of flowers or the patterns in sounds, they always wait until the mind seizes upon letters and numbers before they go into expect-a-message mode.
My experiences are a biased view of the world by the fact that things closer to me appears more important and things far away from me appears less important.
Knowing this, I can try to readjust my views but this bias will in part remain and this is unavoidable.
(this taught is from before my teenage years)When I was a kid I heard people talking about how kids learn better than adults.
So I realized that the "way a kid's brain works" is probably correlated with "the way it feels to be conscious as a kid" so I used my autistic super-memory to save a snapshot of the feeling of consciousness itself.
Then I instructed my brain to keep track of that, and never lose it.
Now I'm in my 40s, and I can still learn like a little kid.
If you put in the work upfront it will make the back half easier. If you slack on the front end you’ll need to sprint to the finish.
Mainly came to this conclusion in school with academics, but started applying it to everything. It’s not perfect—you can absolutely work hard and still not get the results because of forces of nature (or oppressive systems). But in general I’ve found it’s a good rule to live by.