告诉 HN：后悔。请仔细思考你如何度过时间
10 分•作者: anonymous_ibex•7 个月前
我写下这些文字，距离我周一的手术还有 38 个小时，这次手术我可能无法活下来。虽然有人告诉我，我活到明年这个时候的几率超过 50%，但我仍然觉得，尽管我还很年轻（五十出头），不应该面对这些事情，但我还是虚度了太多光阴。我想传授一些经验教训。
1. 少数成就真的有意义，但你往往不知道是哪些。我创办了三家公司，其中两家取得了成功，即使它们占据了我二十多年的生命，我感觉自己也只记得其中总共六个小时的重要时刻。与此同时，我仍然记得大学毕业后的第一个夏天，我为父亲建造的棚屋。无论什么看起来不重要，你都会最在意。
2. 你今天做的事情，很可能明天还会做。我浪费了很多时间，但我认识的大多数人也浪费了很多时间，这是因为人们倾向于对今天网开一面，这要么为懒惰找借口，要么为病态的忙碌找借口，而这其实是同一回事。“我明天再做。” 但明天就是今天。永远都是今天。
3. 道德很重要。我不相信有来世，但我发现自己一直在反复思考我所做的事情。2015 年，我与你熟知的一家初创企业孵化器有很多互动，最终参与了讨论和计划，以封禁和抹黑一位年轻程序员，我们认为他威胁到我们的经济利益，因为他关注技术领域的专制主义。事后看来，他并无恶意，但必须杀鸡儆猴。我们决定在这里封禁他，试图让他被解雇（尽管我不知道我们是否成功），并在 Reddit 上用假账号攻击他，这似乎奏效了，因为你很少听到他的名字。
十年后，我仍然为此事耿耿于怀。我是那种会做坏事的人吗？我曾经是。我现在还是吗？我怎么会知道呢？
我不相信信仰是一种出路，或者你可以通过道歉或捐款来摆脱过去的所作所为。你永远是那个做过你所做的事情的人。
4. 善待动物。拥有狗狗的快乐是很少有的。我总是拒绝我前妻想要养狗的提议，在她与我分开后，她养了一只。对她来说，这可能是一种提升。
5. 我擅长创办公司，但我从未学会如何建立社区。它们不是一回事。你可能公司里有三百个人，你真的觉得他们是你的村庄，但他们不是。环境会改变，人们会搬走，五年后，他们中的大多数人不会记得你的名字。
现在大概就够了。我的思绪在飞速运转和长时间的慵懒接受之间切换。所有的人最终都会像我一样，我希望你到达这个境地时，比我少一些遗憾。
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I'm writing this 38 hours before I go into a surgery on Monday that I may not survive, and while I am told I have a better than 50/50 chance of making it to this time next year, I still feel, though I am too young (early 50s) to deal with these things, that I have wasted too much time. I'd like to impart some lessons.<p>1. A small number of accomplishments really mean something, but you often won't know which ones. I started three companies and two were successes, and even though they comprised more than two decades of my life, I feel like I remember a grand total of six important hours between them. Meanwhile, I still remember the shed I built for my father in the first summer after college. Whatever seems unimportant, you will care about the most.<p>2. The thing you do today, you will probably do tomorrow. I've wasted a lot of time, but most people I know have wasted lots of time, and it's because of the tendency to make an exception of the present day, which either excuses laziness or pathological busyness, which is a form of the same thing. "I'll do it tomorrow." But tomorrow it will be today. It's always today.<p>3. Ethics matter. I don't believe there's any life after this one, but I find myself ruminating on what I've done. In 2015, I had a lot of interaction with a startup incubator you know well, and ended up sitting in the discussions and planning around banning and erasing a young programmer we considered a threat to our financial interests, due to his concerns about authoritarianism in technology. In retrospect, he was harmless, but an example had to be made. The decision was made to ban him here, try to get him fired though I don't know if we succeeded, and attack him with sockpuppets on Reddit, and it seems to have worked because you don't hear his name much.<p>Ten years later, I'm still stuck thinking about this. Am I the kind of person who does shitty things? I was. Am I still? How would I even know?<p>I don't believe that faith is an out, or that you can apologize or donate your way out of past behaviors. You will always be the person who has done what you have done.<p>4. Be kind to animals. There are few joys like having a dog. I always refused when my ex-wife wanted one, and she got one after we separated. For her, it was probably an upgrade.<p>5. I developed a knack for founding companies, but I never learned how to build communities. They aren't the same thing. You might have three hundred people at your company and you truly feel like they are your village, but they're not. Circumstances will change, and people will move, and in five years, most of them will not remember your name.<p>That's probably enough for now. My mind goes between periods of racing and long spells of languid acceptance. All humans end up in the place where I am, and I hope you reach it with fewer regrets than I have.