Reading through this thread makes me wonder, what are achievements really? If it's not something that brings something to your life and helps you or others grow, then I don't think it's that much. Sometimes those things can even be things where the outright goal failed, because what really matters is something else, excellence of character, enjoying your life and helping bring that out in others as well.
I think of someone like Steve Jobs, I remember when he was alive how much he was idolised and how everyone wanted to be the "Next Steve Jobs" now it has been some years that has passed, I feel like that light is a little less and people have moved onto the next thing they want to be, the next Elon musk, mark Zuckerberg or just some level of crazy achievement.
But I wonder what it is worth really? Even those people that have achieved so much more than I ever have, did it really matter so much anyway? If those people were not around, everyone would find someone else to idolise, if those people were not around, the problems they solved in the world would likely just be solved by someone else or perhaps they would be solved in a different way at some point in a future and who is to say that that other future is not somehow better than what we have now? Due to the butterfly effect, we just cannot know what crazy alternative realities would happen if the people that we assume have added to humanity and given so much did not exist, somehow life would have continued and the fields in which they came would be just fine or perhaps even better as something else would have come along at some point, something that doesn't have to happen now because of the work they did, you cannot know that life itself is actually better because of them. You could cure cancer, but then the next evil dictator survives cancer due to the treatment and then nukes the entire planet into oblivion.
When you think of it like this and see that 1) It is very unlikely that you would be able to achieve at that level and 2) It doesn't really matter anyway, your perspective is forced to change on these things, you start to look at just enjoying your life, doing things in a more localised way than trying to change the entire world.
I think of someone like Steve Jobs, I remember when he was alive how much he was idolised and how everyone wanted to be the "Next Steve Jobs" now it has been some years that has passed, I feel like that light is a little less and people have moved onto the next thing they want to be, the next Elon musk, mark Zuckerberg or just some level of crazy achievement.
But I wonder what it is worth really? Even those people that have achieved so much more than I ever have, did it really matter so much anyway? If those people were not around, everyone would find someone else to idolise, if those people were not around, the problems they solved in the world would likely just be solved by someone else or perhaps they would be solved in a different way at some point in a future and who is to say that that other future is not somehow better than what we have now? Due to the butterfly effect, we just cannot know what crazy alternative realities would happen if the people that we assume have added to humanity and given so much did not exist, somehow life would have continued and the fields in which they came would be just fine or perhaps even better as something else would have come along at some point, something that doesn't have to happen now because of the work they did, you cannot know that life itself is actually better because of them. You could cure cancer, but then the next evil dictator survives cancer due to the treatment and then nukes the entire planet into oblivion.
When you think of it like this and see that 1) It is very unlikely that you would be able to achieve at that level and 2) It doesn't really matter anyway, your perspective is forced to change on these things, you start to look at just enjoying your life, doing things in a more localised way than trying to change the entire world.