Who wouldn’t like to live in a world without consequences? Where you could go back in time and start all over again. Where we could be fully in charge of whatever happens. Where life would give us lemonade instead of lemons.
The reality, however, is way different. So when someone asked “What are the hardest pills to swallow in life?” in an AskReddit thread, it surely hit very close to home for many people.
The responses started flowing in, with one uncomfortable truth being spilled after another.
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Animals are worthy of moral consideration
Animals, whether pets or livestock have no say in their situation. If you take an animal into your life, it's welfare must be your priority.
No one really knows you. They know their own version of you.
That’s true even for the people closest to you – like for instance your family. It took me decades to understand that … and a couple more years to accept it as a fact. Oh well …
That your boss and coworkers won’t care how hard you worked the second you leave the company.
Enjoy life. Go outside. Have a picnic. Don’t work so hard.
I mostly worked for myself - enjoyed challenges and creating good and easily usable systems. My work was mine... a source of pride in what I had accomplished. And I enjoyed getting paid for my work... but I did it for me, not for the company.
Some relationships or friendships are meant to be temporary. Appreciate the memories and lessons they give you, but when the time comes you have to let go and move on
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose
Not only is incompetence frequently left unpunished, it is sometimes also richly rewarded.
Being in love isn’t enough to make a relationship work.
Falling in love is a feeling. Staying in love is a choice that requires work. A relationship is like a plant that needs tending.
Just because something is not your fault doesn’t mean it’s not your responsibility
Some bells can’t be unrung. And you have to live with the fallout from decisions you made and things you did when you didn’t know this fact.
You can't force a cat to cuddle
Bad things happen to good people.
Sometimes for no reason at all, completely randomly.
Doesn’t matter how fit you are, you get old and your body starts to break down. It sucks. Hard.
I just turned 41 today. I swear everything in my body started to hurt for no reason, a year ago today XD
Two justice systems; one for the rich and one for everyone else.
Some countries start to wake up on that and change their laws so that fines are a percentage of income and wealth and not fixed amounts of money. A billionaire might just scoff if a parking ticket costs 1000 bucks, but if the fine is 1% of income even they will feel it and think twice about doing it again.
Bad people win frequently.
Some people in leadership position are not good leaders. Some who are not in leadership are good leaders.
People will take advantage of your hard work. Many people get to where they are because of nepotism.
Nobody is obligated to be in your life. Years of commitment and love can go up in smoke because someone decided they were done with you.
Truth. I took my marriage vows 100% seriously. My ex did not.
That sometimes even if you tried your best, you just weren't good enough.
When you're young and healthy, it's hard to imagine being anything but.
When you lose your health, it's mind blowing how quickly things change.
You can't" be whatever you want to be" just by wanting it
And most of the times problems are really problems, not "challenges" how they're trying to sell to us.
you only get the one life, so dont wait for things to be perfect
And don't always wait for something big to happen to make you happy. Find pleasure in the small things, like a beautiful flower, a sunset, the full moon, etc. or life will be dull.
That no matter who you are or what you do, the wide, wide majority of people (like me) will be a memory for one generation and then utterly forgotten.
Sometimes when bad things happen to you it’s your own fault.
The world does not revolve around america.
This is so irritating. No one thinks that. I’m American. We just go about our lives just like everyone else
You’re going to not exist in a very short amount of time that will feel like it went by in a blink.
Life gives you the test first, then the lesson.
Limp Bizkit: life is a lesson, you learn it when you're through
The people you love the most in life will die, sometimes sooner than you could imagine, and the only thing that will come close to healing that wound is time.
Arrogance is not extreme confidence, it's the opposite of confidence and it shows your insecurities.
If people call you arrogant, they are not intimidated by your confidence, they see what you are so desperately trying to cover up.
I don't agree with this necessarily. I've met some really talented people who are arrogant. I think arrogance CAN be a cover for insecurity or incompetence, but quite often it's also a case of narcissism.
No one will love you the way you want/expect them to. I feel like a lot of relationship problems, at least the minor ones, come from a miscommunication of love. We love in our own way, and find ourselves expecting the same kind of love when that’s just not possible. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s hard to remember sometimes.
This one is tough, at least it was for me. I'm a very open, super positive and outgoing person. My husband is the not. I hug and kiss for no reason. He still wonders about that after 15 years of marrige. I made him a choclate heart cake. He said it's a little dry. :( But when I sit down on my favorite spot to have my coffee in peace, there are my favorite cookies waiting with a note "Enjoy your you-time". Or when I struggled to get better in running, there was a note in my running shoes "Today your personal 10k record will be beaten". I noticed, he never says sth sweet, but found a way to tell me anyway. It means sth even if it's not the way I wished it was. And I kept all those notes :)
Nobody is 100% *good* no matter how much you lie to yourself.
I've calculated that I'm about 45% evil, which is much better than previous estimates of 70-75% evil.
you can’t help people who aren’t willing to try and help themselves
to quote a music artist i like “you don’t take the advice you f*****g use me for”
No but you can suggest options... apart from that it's up to them to pursue them
Sometimes things just change, it’s nobodies fault but they change.
Someone once said (but said it better), "the only constant in life is change"
Accepting the fact that the person you thought you'd spend the rest of your life with might not be the one.
This one is false. There is no “one”. A relationship takes hard work and sacrifice, regardless if they are what you considers “The one” or not.
That lot of people you have are just there for the fun times, when accidents and life trauma happens most of the people you thought of as a safety net will just vanish.
Like how you think as a new parent that if something happens to you, there are this village of close friends and tight knit relatives and family that will be there for the kids. It’s really tough to accept the idea that it’s really not like that.
People come and go from your life and sometimes you’re the reason why.
Problems need to be solved. Most of them don't go away if you ignore them.
Depends on the problems, that's a really touchy advice if you suffer from anxiety because most of your problems are made up to give a reason for your anxiety to exist in the first place.
If you want a great life, great friends and experiences, you have to seek them out for yourself, and nurture them. They aren't randomly assigned to you, and no one else will take care of it but yourself (ofc also partly depending on other people, but you have to have agency)
You aren't as unique as you think, so probably you aren't much different compared to the other 100 people that someone may have met that day. The "I'm built different" dialogue goes on everybody's head.
Being cynical is not the same as having healthy skepticism.
It doesn't make you seem smart, but rather short-sighted and just angry that the world didn't just award you everything you feel entitled to because you are so gifted.
In my experience, trying to see the world as it is, not how it’s supposed to be is often misinterpreted as cynism. Well, maybe so – but that’s okay with me.
You are the only thing you can control and improve, still trying to get this one down myself tbh.
you can’t force communication from anyone, which means you might be left without answers.
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
That pets have such short lifespans and knowing you'll eventually have to put them down knowing it's for the best. Which I unfortunately had to do with my dog of 14 years yesterday :(
There will always be people that you can't vibe with or outright hate even though you know they're a good person, same goes for some people to you.
- No one has the right to go through life without being offended or annoyed, and that includes you. Sometimes you will need to deal with someone being irritating for good reasons, perhaps regularly. E.g. I know someone who likes to play an instrument and it's loud enough that I hear it, and I simply work around it or through it because I know how important it is to their wellbeing. People are going like music, comedy, etc that you don't and that doesn't immediately make them wrong. (P.S.: within the bounds of ethics. Things like inciting violence are always going to need careful examination).
- "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." - Star Trek TNG. I'm not usually a Star Trek guy, but that quote has proven true in my life and in the lives of others. By all means learn from your mistakes, but also acknowledge that it's possible to do your best and still fail. Success is rarely a straight line - often it's about being persistently good as opposed to actually perfect.
- This one is really hard until you get used to it: it's ok to not know so long as you are willing to learn. "I don't know" and "I was wrong" are not in and of themselves admissions of stupidity. Literally everyone has important gaps in their knowledge. Your choices are a) being self-aware and open to change or b) being obstinate as well as wrong. Being right all the time is not on the table.
One's input into a relationship doesn't necessarily mean equal output from your partner.
In a relationship both parties do not always have to put the same amount into the relationship at all times. What each person can give at any given time will fluctuate. When someone needs some self-preservation they might not have much to give but need a lot of support as well to heal and get through something. Also, a partner might not be able to give the same amount of needed support to you that you were able to provide them at a previous time. Get real help if you need it.
Hard work does not guarantee a comfortable life.
Let us remember that most of us reading this actually have much more comfortable lives than most human beings have ever had. We live indoors, in temperature controlled rooms. We have clean water easily accessible. Most of us have a couple of decent meals every day. Already these things are huge, and we rarely appreciate our good fortune and these comforts.
people won‘t treat you as well as you treated them
Many of the things you don't like about your life are your own fault
That just because you want a relationship with someone doesn’t mean that they want the same thing.
And it may not be you, just that they just are not feeling you. No blame
People over-attribute their successes to their own abilities and under-attribute their failures to bad luck or being done wrong by somebody or society.
People often make their own bad luck and fall into success due in no way to any talent on their part.
Yup. I have a friend who bought a house on heavy loan from a parent who didn't have worked for several years and now claims that the new house they bought was due to their "decade of hard work". It is very hard to be diplomatic to such self righteousness, especially to others who don't have that parental financial support
I have to live on public government disability checks at 9,904 dollars a year I think about death all the time
You will keep attracting the same s****y people and the same s****y situations until you own your s**t, do the work, and heal yourself.
If every person in your life is toxic, you are the common denominator.
That's a really violent thing to say to people getting abused repeatedly because predators love to prey on people recently destroyed by other predators
You are not special, and no one will remember you.
ugh... I'm hoping some people I know don't see this... it will make them attention-whore harder..."Look at ME, I'm SO special, I poured my OWN coffee this morning!!! Isn't it BEAUTIFUL!!!!???", or "I'm SUPER WOKE, look at these articles I'm posting about the third new disability this week I strongly believe I have but refuse to see a doctor to get properly diagnosed"
The friends you had in high school probably won't be with you in ten years.
OTOH, my best friend has been true to me for 45 years. So sometimes you strike gold!
You are in control of your own mind and don’t have to react to everything. You can have inner peace if you want it.
This is 100% b******t. You are not in control of your mind at all. Try to stop breathing see how long your mind will allow you to do that. People that have anxiety literally cannot control the flood of chemicals in their brain making them feel that way.
That you actually did a bad thing, and didn’t make it up to the person you hurt, and that somewhere out there, someone’s just talked about you in a bad passing way because of that.
Fortunately, if you do good and be good, the same thing will happen in a positive way. It’s hard being good but the results and the affect on other people because you’re good will make the world a bette place to be in, so that you or other people won’t have the need or want to do bad thing.
Somewhere out there are some people who think you're an awful human being because someone told an exaggerated story about you once too. I'm pretty sure some of the people I have marked as "a*****e" are actually nice but they hurt a friend and that friend shared many skewed stories as a result.
Beyond elementary school, there is no value to being "really smart, just lazy."
It just means you manufacture your own failures.
Not sure about this one. I've come to understand "Lazyness" is mainly a scam to make people who struggle to manage their workpace or have no reason to do what you want from them feel bad. So yeah, if you don't adress your own issues you manufacture your own failures. But often the "lazy" are just the people who don't want to do work for you.
Nothing lasts forever.
I prefer a different wording: There's a last time for everything.
You can't be "in love" with someone who isn't in love with you.
You can care about them, you can love them, it can be the strongest you have ever felt about anyone in your life but several orders of magnitude, but it's not being in love.
It might be a crazy crush, infatuation, or an obsession. There might be genuine love and admiration there, but if they are not in love with you, then you two are not in love.
Being in love with someone is like being in business with someone, it takes both of you to be in it.
That no matter how emotionally close I am to someone (in fact, the more close I am), they will always drift apart and disconnect or die at some point in my life.
I have no one I can truly emotionally depend on, permanently. That I will have to walk this earth knowing that I will always be alone at heart.
The love that people carry for me is only in that moment/temporary and it's often made me wonder if I'm unloveable or if there is something worthless about me.
I can't hold onto anyone.... And that's a very scary reality to live in. I don't know how long I can handle this reality and it's made me question my identity.
This level of insecurity is not objective or universal. So sorry to disagree. I think as you move through life and age (I am 60) you will find that love is less about depending on someone or feeling that they give you a sense of stability, but more about having a shared vision of purpose and a feeling that you can connect with one another even if it's been years since you last spoke. That connection inspires you to want to give and to support them, without being overshadowed by anxiety regarding what you will lose when it ends. . . . . . . . And it always ends. Because we all die. Nothing here is permanent.
things arent getting worse, you're just getting older and dont enjoy stuff as much
So it's not because of the inflation i don't enjoy my salary as much ?
It’s nice to talk about what could’ve or should’ve been, but all that matters in life is what actually happens.
The corollary: almost all of the time, it’s up to only you to make things happen in your life.
The corollary to the corollary: it’s usually hard to make the things you want to happen, happen.
I recommend you just remove those words from your vocab and talk about can, shall, and will rather than shouda/coulda/woulda
Growing up sucks
I think this should be said, "Adulting sucks." Because it really does, sometimes.
You’re most likely not special, unique, or extraordinary in any way. You’re probably pretty average.
One day will be the best day of your life, and everything will be downhill from there.
After a brief period of time beyond your death, you'll be forgotten - as if you had never lived.
"let me live unknown; thus unlamented let me die. Steal from the world and not a stone tell where I lie." This is my favorite quote ever. Why do you want to be remembered? It does nothing? I want to leave the world a better place then when I entered it and I hope no one is aware that I did it. I don't want praise or recognition. I just want the world to stop being so s****y.
Not everyone in this life is here to be successful
It depends on how you define success. If you mean the american sense which is monetary wealth, sure. But that's just a function of capitalism. However if you mean "achieving your goals" and your goals are things like having a family, or eating every day, or owning a car, etc., those are all quite realisable.
Rejection by someone you love
The pain is real, jagged, physical & feels like to last forever. Time & moving yourself forward will heal you. Forgiveness will let you love again
Accepting a difficult medical diagnosis
I am always surprised that many don't want to know. I have to know the truth as soon as possible.
That I wasted my youth.
Your life is not over, mate. Whatever time you have left, find a way to be meaningfully productive
When the doctor/specialist tells you your child has a severe chronic or deadly health condition or syndrome.
That almost all societal problems are caused by bad parents.
Wife having an affair with your best mate
is this generalisable or is this a hard to acccept truth for all people? What if you are gay and neither you nor your partner are women? etc... Or are you saying you had this experience and it is a hard experience for YOU? I thought the point of this post was to give general hard to accept truths.
Everyone you love is going to die
So love them well while they are alive. Be lavish & generous with your love since you don't know when they will be gone
there's no afterlife. brain physiology works like a laptop computer works. you smash the thing up with a hammer, it's not going to be computing in computer heaven it's f*****g broken forever. our heads are the damn same
life is pretty much a desperate struggle for most people, and we should be relieved that it's gonna end. not preach lies and b******t
If you're physically ugly, not just unkempt or a bit unattractive, chances are very high that you'll remain single. Nobody will fall in love with you.
Then I wonder how I see so many 'ugly' people who are happily married! The truth is: 'ugly' people are often overlooked. But that's true for the singles as well as the couples. But what I've often experienced is ugly people refusing to even consider people looking similar to them. If you're looking for a loving spouse, looks don't matter much. People truly fall in love with personality, not looks. They get crushes on looks, so it's easier to connect but they fall in love with compatibility and presence. And many people who call themselves 'ugly' are not even truly ugly, in most cases they're just average but too obsessed with looks to be genuine.
Sore throat pills
They left out the most cheerful one: you might die any time and today may be your last day alive.
The world isn't black and white and there are no fixed standards. Many truths depend on point of view and in many cases facts have different weight depending on the individual situation. So be careful with judging others. You only see the moment, never the whole picture, so wait a little before you judge and if you can't get all the facts, don't judge at all. I just saw a colleague calling out the laziness of another colleague in an open slack channel at work. Her teamlead made her take down the message in minutes and had the IT delete the reactions. The colleague in question wasn't lazy, she has cancer and is out of office several times a week for cancer treatment. So while it's completely ok to have opinions, it's not ok to carelessly apply them when you're not truly sure and in the know. You never know what's behind the surface.
“Some Bells Can’t Be Unrung” – this is a wonderful and precious thread full of insight and wisdom that makes me ponder or contemplate. Thanks!
What a depressing article. I will not be reading anything this author compiles again.
Just because someone does something you don't like doesn't mean you have to hate them for it
This actually a highly depressing post, that I don't should need 40 depressing things. Life is life and s**t happens whether good or bad. Is the author okay? Because it's awfully Stanger to write a post this long on Debby downers.
Im fairly unique, not in a good way totally, that being said I have 2 pupils in one eye and have pointy ears. I can u also see ultraviolet light. Id like to see how many points eared, 3 pupils people out there that can see ultraviolet there are. On the negative side I do have some mental issues. One day at a time!
They left out the most cheerful one: you might die any time and today may be your last day alive.
The world isn't black and white and there are no fixed standards. Many truths depend on point of view and in many cases facts have different weight depending on the individual situation. So be careful with judging others. You only see the moment, never the whole picture, so wait a little before you judge and if you can't get all the facts, don't judge at all. I just saw a colleague calling out the laziness of another colleague in an open slack channel at work. Her teamlead made her take down the message in minutes and had the IT delete the reactions. The colleague in question wasn't lazy, she has cancer and is out of office several times a week for cancer treatment. So while it's completely ok to have opinions, it's not ok to carelessly apply them when you're not truly sure and in the know. You never know what's behind the surface.
“Some Bells Can’t Be Unrung” – this is a wonderful and precious thread full of insight and wisdom that makes me ponder or contemplate. Thanks!
What a depressing article. I will not be reading anything this author compiles again.
Just because someone does something you don't like doesn't mean you have to hate them for it
This actually a highly depressing post, that I don't should need 40 depressing things. Life is life and s**t happens whether good or bad. Is the author okay? Because it's awfully Stanger to write a post this long on Debby downers.
Im fairly unique, not in a good way totally, that being said I have 2 pupils in one eye and have pointy ears. I can u also see ultraviolet light. Id like to see how many points eared, 3 pupils people out there that can see ultraviolet there are. On the negative side I do have some mental issues. One day at a time!
