Ask HN: How do you accept your place in the world?

You're reading articles good enough to come through to you, from millions of people actively trying to get theirs read. There will be millions of great articles that most of us will never even discover.

I think you should spend at bit of time thinking on the scale of the world, the scale of combined human effort, and try to consider the statistical chance that something any individual does will "make it" to the top, even of hacker news..

Now, also consider whether you want to be spending your time becoming someone who contributes in that way instead of the way you currently do. Consider the amount of brilliant people doing work that nobody will ever see.

There's nothing wrong in being a "nobody" in the grand scheme of things, your primary motivation in life has probably not been to have the world know your name, if so, you'd likely have pursued a different career. But the feeling is familiar, I think, to most of us.

My personal fix to this is to think on it, and maybe sometimes make a little side-project, that's guaranteed to not be brilliant or even good, and post it somewhere online, and enjoy the little bit of attention it got.

I also struggle to accept my place in the world, to be honest, I've gotten further in my life than I thought I would, and still, feel disappointed in myself because I've not done anything great, or contributed to or furthered any field in any meaningful way. But I try to keep in mind that, most people aren't and of those who do, orders of magnitude more are trying hard and still fail, and honestly, I don't want it _THAT_ bad, I can conclude that, because when I look at my own efforts to "become somebody", they are fairly low, and so it's no surprise that I'm a nobody, just coding away and generally being content with what I do.

I'm not the world #1 badminton champion. So?

Second understand that what separates you from these people is they have something to show for what they did. How do you expect people to find your “brilliance” if you don’t show it off somehow? They work for their recognition. People using your “low-level systems” won’t automatically think you’re brilliant because…what? Because it works? Is that the bar?

Write some blog posts. Open source some projects. Give some talks. If you do all that and no one cares, maybe it’s not the rest of the world that has the problem.

I would say, ask yourself why do yo need to compare yourself with anyone? By your own account you do very interesting work, why is that not enough? Start from there.

I think about it sometimes. It is an ego/attention thing imo if you need other people to say "great job". But you can't live in a vacuum either.

I mean part of it is personal interest, I was watching people reverse engineer an s-band transponder from the Apollo missions like cool but what is the point.

I guess just because you won't be an Einstein doesn't mean what you're doing isn't worth it. Personal satisfaction.

I used to love building/flying model airplanes until I got into social media. Then everything I made I had to post online/get upvotes. I lost the passion in it overtime because I was more interested in impressing people.

Nowadays I will build things even if it's a piece of a crap because I had fun figuring it out from scratch.

This other thing I ran into is ego-satisfaction where I would share a fantasy/idea/sketch before it was real/work done for the upvotes.

I also am aware there is just an innate capability/caliber. Like I am not a math guy.

I get the "place in the world" thing in another way eg. being poor but I think I can change it.

Oh yeah the other field I think about this is regarding physical attractiveness/relationships ha. I'm not killing it in that department.

To be fair I still post my crap on a blog, whether or not someone reads it is something else.

What matters is you should get clear about what you want and how you will get there.

Also, you don’t know for certain what kind of person you will become. Who knows what your experience today will bring you in the future?

Try to be grateful for x y z, and try not focus on 1st world problems like your unfounded imposter syndrome. ZZ

If you can improve one industry a bit more than it is today, isn't that a sufficient place in the world?

You don’t have to accept a place in the world because you don’t even really have one, just your idea of what that means. So run with it.

By all means, do what you feel you would enjoy doing and balance it off with the needs of society (by making sure you earn enough currency to live).

If you feel you want to become a better researcher or a better chess player, go and do it. Keep in mind there is no reason comparing yourself to others. Everyone's life is vastly different.

Maybe that brilliant researcher has a broken family, maybe a great philosopher is broke and living in a barrel. What's the point of comparing yourself to someone else? Compare yourself to your past self and try to improve. And don't fret if you become worse, you'll have the rest of your life to improve.

I'd recommend reading something about stoicism: https://www.orionphilosophy.com/academy-stoicism/stoicism-fo...