"Life's What You Make It"

[Dubversion]

i'm arguing from the position of someone who's gaped into the abyss of death and turned my life about, if that's what yr trying to say. i worked fucking hard to get into the position of someone who's now got a fucking chance at a life, and i think i'm entitled to say my piece.

i've no idea why you've chosen to take my comments personally - i neither made or intended any specific reference to your life or experiences. my point was simply that any of us is probably better fixed to make a 'life is what you make it' claim than somebody in much worse circumstances.

i know you're determined to find some kind of malice in anything i post, but this is taking the piss. i know nothing at all of your abyss of death, and certainly wouldn't use it in an argument if you did. read my post to you again, and i defy you to find ANY attempt to make any such reference.

now go fuck yourself

 

[onemonkey]

life's too short...

 

[frestonia]

.

 

[Dubversion]

If you compare yourself to your peers then this statement is relevant.

If a group of people all started out with similar backgrounds and 50% sat on their arse and the other 50% set about improving themselves then I'd say that its true.

i agree. but that's another qualification to a universal statement.

 

[sojourner]

i was calling you a twat because you belittled a line from my previous post.
i haven't even read bridget jones!
i merely quoted the words from a previous poster to illustrate my point and relate to it to my current situation.

Did you have difficulties the first time around then, cos I mean, twat - it's not the most complex of words is it? Four letters, and you managed to get one wrong and miss off a 't' altogether. As for not reading Bridget Jones, you kinda missed the point of humour on that one, although admittedly, it was more for my enjoyment than yours.

 

[madzone]

Life is definitely what you make it. Viktor Frankl proved that IMO

 

[kyser_soze]

Realistic. Yes you can be constrained by circumstance but luxury doesn't guarantee that you'll make anything of life any more than being poor - it just means you have a greater opportunity for happiness (altho I'd debate this as well since IME those who have an excess of money are usually just as miserable and fucked up psychologically as those without, just in different ways)

 

[mentalchik]

A bit like the tv programme, Fame. Such good intentions.

 

[liberty]

I fucking detest this complacent and invariably self-congratulatory statement.

Life most definetly isn't what you make it. People are born with a range of "abilities" or "attributes" and are placed in a culture which values some more highly than others. Similarly people have different chances and different luck. Some are able to play games that get them ahead, others cant.

Its rubbish!

It is not what you get but what you make of what happens to you...

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Oh I don't read that into it at all. "What you make of it" to me means how you interpret it, not what you actually achieve.

I agree. Whether you're happy or not, depends more on your perspective than on the details of what is happening to you.

 

[tastebud]

Did you have difficulties the first time around then, cos I mean, twat - it's not the most complex of words is it? Four letters, and you managed to get one wrong and miss off a 't' altogether. As for not reading Bridget Jones, you kinda missed the point of humour on that one, although admittedly, it was more for my enjoyment than yours.

oh well.
it's not worth crying over now, is it! life's too short !

 

[Dubversion]

I agree. Whether you're happy or not, depends more on your perspective than on the details of what is happening to you.

so if you're a homeless Thai in a tsunami-stricken village drinking infected water, your lack of happiness is a failure of perspective?

 

[Poi E]

so if you're a homeless Thai in a tsunami-stricken village drinking infected water, your lack of happiness is a failure of perspective?

Yes. Fuck it, you survived, unlike half your village.

 

[kyser_soze]

so if you're a homeless Thai in a tsunami-stricken village drinking infected water, your lack of happiness is a failure of perspective?

To a degree it is - look at the stories of concentration camp survivors and how they made what little they could from the 'lives' they had while imprisoned.

You seem to be applying a very fixed concept on what 'happiness' means in this debate Dub, and there seems to be an element that it's tied to material security, freedom etc which isn't necessarily true since there are LOTS of miserable people with both.

 

[Poi E]

To a degree it is - look at the stories of concentration camp survivors and how they made what little they could from the 'lives' they had while imprisoned.

You seem to be applying a very fixed concept on what 'happiness' means in this debate Dub, and there seems to be an element that it's tied to material security, freedom etc which isn't necessarily true since there are LOTS of miserable people with both.

Well put. I've seen more smiles in the slums of Dehi and the townships of the Eastern Cape than in London.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

what do you make of that statement?

because it always really bothers me that people think there's any truth in it, indeed it makes me suspect a streak of social darwinism/libertarianism in them.

but am i just being over-negative?

From a psychological angle, there could be some truth to it. We do have some power over our thoughts (power that increases as practice improves our skill at doing this), therefore you could make your life more of a positive experience by continually (and then hopefully automatically) interpreting things in a more positive light, i.e. learning to see the glass as half full, not half empty...

(I kniow thats probably been said about 100 times - haven't read thread yet )

On the other hand of course, past experiences can make it easier or harder to had this degree of emotional management.

 

[Dubversion]

To a degree it is - look at the stories of concentration camp survivors and how they made what little they could from the 'lives' they had while imprisoned.

You seem to be applying a very fixed concept on what 'happiness' means in this debate Dub, and there seems to be an element that it's tied to material security, freedom etc which isn't necessarily true since there are LOTS of miserable people with both.

oh, i don't disagree at all. i'm not for a moment saying that material possession or freedom constitute happiness. i'm talking about the availability of choices and thus the abilility to CHANGE, not interpret, one's life. which IMO - but not most people's, it seems - is what the statemebt implies.

maybe i've just always interpreted the expression incorrectly, and it's about perception. it always, automatically, suggested to me that life is what you do with it, how you change it, not how you perceive it or deal with it.

 

[kyser_soze]

AHHH...never thought of it that way TBH. I'd always taken it as meaning 'It's up to you to see the best in life' rather than 'make' something of it as it were.

Just goes to show that people with broadly similar cultural backgrounds can interpret a commonly used phrase in very different ways.

Or something.

 

[Agent Sparrow]

maybe i've just always interpreted the expression incorrectly, and it's about perception. it always, automatically, suggested to me that life is what you do with it, how you change it, not how you perceive it or deal with it.

I've always thought the phrase was about interpretation of ones life rather than one's actual life... If it was about one's actual physical life then largely I would agree that its a load of unfair bollocks. However, while this will obviously differ dependent on individual circumstances, a positive life view might still actually lead to an increased chance of positive life events happening, namely because positive people are less likely to become demotivated due to learned helplessness and therefore will continue to try and strive for goals while others will have given up.

 

[Dubversion]

i reckon a new poll is in order..

 

[kyser_soze]

Always up for a new poll.