Of Little Importance

I've been going crazy writing recently. I've got 7 other posts that I started this week that I haven't had a chance to finish. The reason I've been having so many ideas for posts is partly because I've been seeing so many patterns. So why have I been seeing so many patterns about programming?

I went to hang out with my crazy-cool cousins this weekend. The kind of cousins I only see a couple times a year, but every time it's a blast. And at some point I realized from a conversation that what I'm doing with programming — becoming a relative expert on it, focusing all my time on it, reading about it, writing about it — other people do all the time with sports, video games, movies, and other things. In other words, it's no different. No better. No worse. And the more I focus on programming, the more I will prosper at it. ...But at the same time, I won't be prospering at what's important in life.

This is the pattern of wasting your life, getting caught up in something with only relative value.

I recently saw a documentary called Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality, and it made me realize that instead of trying to live a great life, if you live your life to make death acceptable, you will end up with a life greater than you can possibly imagine. And the phrase "it's a good day to live" will become synonymous with "it's a good day to die".

I don't believe it's chance that the times I've been on the edge of death were also the times I've felt most alive. It was a coincidence — a coinciding of events. In other words, a pattern. This also points to degrees of being alive — i.e. a life/death continuum — rather than the common conception of a binary switch.

So let's remember to focus on what's important.