A cat gave birth in our yard a few months ago and was keeping some kittens there, and briefly left behind one kitten that we took care of for a day. My wife took a picture of me holding it and said it was the happiest she had ever seen me. I looked at the picture and she was right.
A short while after that my wife was binging the Sopranos off and on while breastfeeding our 2nd kid and I caught the first few episodes (I’ve already seen the series). I saw Tony with the ducks and thought “Oh, I get it now.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxXjhRHrs6k&t=16s&ab_channel=borko
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Amazing show and scene
To answer your question, weddings. I didnt even have that much fun at my own but Ive realized weddings and funerals are basically the only events you can reliably get most people close to you together in the same room. Weddings are much happier.
Kids. One of those things you have no idea Until you experience it. How it opens your eyes to so many things.
That I don’t need to care what others think of me and to live life to make myself happy. That may sound selfish but until I was in my 30’s I always focused on others and what my image was to them instead of living life to make myself happy.
This could mean I’d buy a cool car to make myself fit in or act a certain way to appease a woman etc.
In my 30’s I realized I may not really even know who “I” really am and stopped doing all that. I started living life for me and I’m so much happier being myself.
Exercise is not about losing weight; it’s about your mental health.
Diet is how you lose weight.
I guess I didn’t really “get” the common movie plotline where old friends end up back together doing something, because for a long time I had a robust social circle.
Now I realize it’s been a very long time since a singificant hangout with anyone I know. Many people have moved away and scattered and it barely occurs to me to reach out because I’m focused on my family and local area.
Staying calm.
I finally understood that you have no control over how someone acts, but you do have control over how you react.
Makes life so much easier to just take a deep breath, evaluate the situation, and be rational.
Edit: Wow. Thank you for all the upvotes! Learning this has absolutely changed my life and career for the better. I do sometimes scream “Fuuuck” into the void when I’m alone. So that helps too. Haha.
That the dad in Beethoven was the reasonable one and his wife and kids were shitty.
That it takes purposeful effort to get and stay in shape. Got fat in my 20s. Lost all of it in my 30s cause I got serious about fitness and health. Diet also is like 75% of being healthy too
Any show or movie that depicts middle class family dynamics.
They argue and have so much difficulty because there’s a fundamental lacking in the ability to communicate difficult emotions, making others responsible for their own emotions, and all this other crap that no one really ever teaches us (unless you’re lucky lol).
Elvis was not a hero.
A fulfilling life can look dramatically different from a chill one.
the importance of connections.
I spent my entire life working my ass off academically and busted my ass in the workforce to no significant recognition. then I realized, it doesnt matter how intelligent you are. It matters how you connect with your superiors and colleagues that gets you the promotions. I’ve been told that before, but never seen it in fruition until recently.
That “why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.” wasn’t just a smartass quip, but an alagory of death by suicide.
Coworkers aren’t your friends. They don’t care once you leave, hell they probably don’t care when you are there. I was always the one doing right by my coworkers, trying to help out, making the sacrifices for everyone else. Trying to be fair. Trying to be friends. Taking on the hard work. It is like i never existed after. Like I always knew we weren’t friends but I didn’t think it was like that. I should have been there just for me and been more selfish. Could have made a lot more money, worked less hours and had less stress.
Now this is not saying you cannot be nice, care or be helpful at all. This is not saying you can never make a friend at work that transcends employment. It just you got to realize you are working for you and your family or whatever is important to you. That almost everything you do for someone else is not really appreciated and never reciprocated.
It was just a harsh lesson that everyone needs to learn.
That just going with the flow and accepting whatever comes into your life will leave you emotionally wrecked down the line. And also that sometimes you need to fight for what you really want.
Love songs. The pain and the emotion that is REALLY behind those song.
When I was a kid I could sing a song because I knew the lyrics. When you’ve experienced true love and heartbreak over and over, when I sing a song I FEEL those actual emotions because I’ve lived them.
Singing a Jackson 5 song like “Never can say goodbye” just hits different.
No one cares what you look like. The weight off my shoulders knowing I can just be in the world and not worry about appearances was mangificant. Obviously I still keep hygienic just don’t care if shirt has a stain after lunch or I’m unshaven or hair is messy.
Chicken pox 😂
That I didn’t just have a magical metabolism that allowed me to eat whatever I want. I have always been super lean, I walk a ton and that’s all it took to stay in shape. Never jogging, lifting weights or caring about what I eat.
Once I turned like 33 I started growing love handles in what seemed like overnight.
Gotta take care of yourself!
I think I realized that some people will always view me as the version of myself that they had the most power over, or felt the most superior too, and nothing will ever change that.
Once I realized that, it was really liberating.
Around the same time I realized that some people were laughing at me, not with me.
Once I figured that out, a lot of mental bandwidth opened up and I could focus on solving my own problems and reaching my own goals.
Marrying a good person is much more important than marrying a hot person.
Simping for billionaires is stupid. They just shouldn’t exist to be begin with.
I can opt out of friendships/relationships that I no longer want to be a part of. Just because “we’ve been friends since ____” doesn’t mean I owe anyone access to my current life.
Back pain.
That some of use are just going to be the people no one appreciates until they’re gone.
And that this is no reason NOT to be that person.
And that you should be PROUD to be that person.
Sitting at home in peace and quiet is mentally and emotionally healing and become highly addictive over time.
That I am responsible for my own happiness, and that’s not a bad thing.
There’s an influencer whose whole page is dedicated to this question
Sidneyraz or something like that
He just recently found out he has stomach cancer
Why dads roll their eyes at getting a puppy. Never realized how obnoxious those things are until I couldn’t just drop everything for the puppy’s sake because adults with obligations to others don’t do that. Thank God my sister liked him, because it was just a solid annoyance. I plan on getting a dog soon enough, but it is going to be an older one.
I now get why my parents would occasionally scream at other drivers even though they cant hear you.
It just feels good to let it out, especially after a day at work having to hold your tongue.
My parents are just people too. They are not perfect and they are are trying to just figure it all out like me.
Slowing down.
We get caught up in the hustle and bustle of life so much at times that we forget to slow down and just take everything in.
That not everyone thinks the same as you.
I’ve always been a logical thinker who isn’t that emotional and I couldn’t understand why everyone isn’t like that. It took me a long time to figure out people’s brains do genuinely work different
Time.
Each year a new fresh batch of people graduate. If you’re not senior by then, you’d be out of the industry for like 5-6 years already and are competing with fresher people who are easier to underpay and manipulate, with likely the same skill sets.
Not to say it’s impossible, it’s just harder and you have to go more. Ditch the sabbatical until after the first one or two years of work experience.
Other peoples emotional reactions are their problem.
I turned 40 and immediately realized I could tuck my shirt to prevent belt rash, and that the birds outside are fucking awesome.
Mowing the lawn.
It’s one of the few things I can do for an hour that has a lasting satisfaction for the week.
It’s like a zen garden.
I’m not special. I am special to the people I love, but I won’t be written about in the history books.
That a 90% solution that your spouse is onboard with is better than your 100% solution that you’ve got to force onto a situation.
Instrumental female anger is not, never has been nor will it ever be my problem. Regardless of who “started it” or who’s “fault” it is. Not my problem. I can barely manage my own.
Finally realized in my 50s I could stop fighting. Everything did not have to be “won”.
That people never grow up.
My life and all that it came freighted with became so much easier once I realized, at an age not long past 30 and over 20 years ago, that deep down, and without any real reservations, I would do anything for money.
Nobody gives a fuck.
Seriously.
If someone cares…they’re either really close to you or want to be really close to you. The outliers that make a big deal of something small in public are running that circus 24/7 and it has nothing to do with you.
Seriously…let all the anxiety go and just live your life. Practice the golden rule and you’re gonna be fine. On those random days where you fuck up, reasonable people will forget all about it within a week or so.
If you live your life for other people, you’ll never know who you are.
How time is your most valuable resource. For my whole life I would hear people say that and know it’s not true because I had tons of free time and never enough money. Then I picked up responsibilities one by one and all of a sudden I have a family and a demanding job and holy hell where did all that free time disappear to???
Other people can not think the way I do or see the world through the lens I do.
Some people’s experience can block their ability to be empathetic, some people’s experience can rob them of curiosity, some people’s experience can put them constantly on guard and unable to trust anyone.
All these things will color every new piece of information they learn, and a lot of folks are completely unaware of it.
Also, a lot of folks just take their personal lived experience and extrapolate it out to cover all human experience. Tell them something works a certain way, they say “well I’ve never seen a person do that” and then I’m like, “ok, you never leave the town you were born in, and there’s 8 billion people, how many of them have you observed?”
vacations where you just sit by the pool and relax
made zero sense to me until I was nearly 40
now…I get it
Doing absolutely nothing isn’t bad.
That other people’s opinion of me is none of my business
It was 40 but… putting some lotion or ointment on an itch is way better than scratching yourself bloody.
The meditation that is lawn mowing
I’ve always enjoyed confrontation. But I’ve learned just like in a relationship, to pick battles with strangers in public only when it’s really warranted. Far more impactful.
Ducks had babies in the creek behind my house. The mom and 9 babies came into the yard and swam in the pool. Babies got stuck and I had to scoop them out. They continued to live in the creek and were sooo cute.
And then one day all the ducks were gone. The babies were still definitely little so it wasn’t like they fully moved on. I’m hoping they just moved down the creek too far and never came up our way again, but I remember one night when I heard a lot of what sounded like screaming noises from an animal and growling and think the local coyotes may have gotten the duck family.
Dammit now I’m gonna cry again!
Hypertension.
Working at a business that you own or co-own is much more rewarding than working for someone else, including the biggest companies. The rewards are better both financially and emotionally. No comparison really.
There is no reason to fear, you’ll suffer and die regardless, so choose the way you live and die, or someone else chooses it for you.
You can’t change anyone.
King of the Hill. Whenever I tried watching it as a kid, the humor just didn’t land and a lot of the characters (including Hank) weren’t that likeable so I wrote it off.
My brother convinced me to give it another chance recently and it hits WAY better as an adult.
That doing drugs ruined my life. I always told myself I was in control, was just having fun, I had a good job working in the oilfield as an electrician, ended up hurt and prescribed oxycodon that then turned into a crippling addiction and fentanyl the streets. Etc. I’m 38 now. Lost everything, literally everything, I never really got to raise my son, even tho he visits now, I am no longer a electrician, I’m rebuilding my life slowly. But still I waisted so much time and so many years its really terrible, but it is my reality. At least I got a couple years clean now, but I’m basically like 21 yr old financially when I should be owning my own home and reaping the rewards of being responsible. But I wasn’t so I’m not. Lol let this be a warning to any young guys. It sucks when it hits you later in life. I’m sure its why most don’t ever quit.
Women. Didn’t have my first date til I was 31. If youre in the same boat, its never too late.
Your person doesn’t just “happen upon you when you least expect it.” That’s the biggest lie and waste of time. First, know yourself, hobbies, passions, what you like/dislike, then go out and FIND your person. You HAVE to move towards it. It is NOT going to fall in your lap. At least it hasn’t for me.