There’s nothing wrong with forever, but it shouldn’t be some sort of “standard” we hold everything to.

The "death do us part" thing is a tradition, but marriage is a legal status. Not everyone is going to follow that tradition, and surely you wouldn't argue this ought to bar them from the legal status

I think it definitely applies to relationships. It does you and any of your partners a disservice to say your relationship was only a success if one of you died.

A person isn't a thing you possess. They have needs that grow and change with them. If those needs ever stop being compatible with the relationship, then the relationship should end. That's not failure. It's wanting the person you love to be happy.

My wife just moved out after 30 years of marriage, and it sure feels like a failure to me. Maybe some people get to the point where it's not working, and they aren't invested in the marriage so much that walking away is painful. I think most people would say they shouldn't have been married if they weren't that invested in making it work though.

A lot of people have suggested that we should have marriage contracts that have a renewable time limit. Like, "Hey, let's get married for ten years and see how that goes." I could see that being a good thing, but I also think it's fundamentally a different mindset than the traditional expectation of forever.

I feel an adjacent thing about Lemmy — The conversations I most value are ones I used to have on Reddit, but dwindled over the years, as Reddit discourse degraded. Something that's notable is that, on Reddit, the last bastions of meaningful discussion were the little niche subs, indicating that quality of discussion may be inversely correlated with the size of a community.

The federated nature of Lemmy makes it far more resistant to Reddit's fate, but I still feel a sense of inevitability that there is a timer on how long this can last. (Speaking as an aging punk), it reminds me of what happened to Punk: it went mainstream, and thus less punk. Some people have the instinct of gatekeeping a thing to preserve it, but everything needs fresh blood, and some of the people who discover punk via the mainstream are have a heart as punk as anyone I've met — we can't exclude the masses of "normies" without excluding these people too. In the end, I see that punk is probably dead, but the "true punk spirit" is alive and well, having moved into spaces that were less visible to the mainstream. Similarly, I expect that I'll always be able to find online clusters of cool nerds to have meaningful conversations with, because even if Lemmy dies a slow death, they will find (or build) a new space.

Ultimately, the inevitable temporariness of Lemmy (and other platforms like Bluesky) is quite a beautiful thing for me, because it forces me to be more mindful of the moment I'm in, and how, despite the world being shit in many ways, here is something that I am really glad I get to be a part of

saw another post yesterday about the old and infirm lying in nursing homes, staring at the ceiling, coding, then being dragged back to life by the heroic efforts of the staff and the ER....just to go back to staring at the ceiling for another year.

That explains a lot about the state of software these days.

what you're saying is only true for some religions that don't allow divorce. most do. there's no forever after promise in most cases, just living together and caring for each other.

Putting aside an afterlife, common wedding vows have "for better, for worse, ... in sickness and in health, until death do us part." So at least for people using those vows, they are committing to stay together until one of them dies. A divorce would mean a failure to follow through with that commitment.

I think the fear isn't simply exiting the pool, its drowning.

The "coffee shop" analogy breaks down when you look at the before - assuming debt, developing skills, building business relationships - and after - owing more than you earn, filling for bankruptcy, hemorrhaging staff, going back to being a wage earner rather than an owner-operator.

Same with marriage. You get older and slower and tireder, you have this shared history that doesn't exist between anyone else, you have shared assets that can't easily be divided up, you have a shared family.

These aren't just whims, they're economic events and deeply psychological ones, too. Bad ones. They are describing a material decline in your quality of life.

Yeah, the fixation on nostalgia and fandoms is bad for us as a society. No, you shouldn't feel leashed to your hobbies... or your job or your relationships. But there's also feelings of stability and reliability and security that comes with an enduring institution in your life. Knowing you can substitute experience for raw energy and you don't have to relearn a trade or another person or rules to a new game from scratch has value. It pays dividends.

You don't want to get into the water and find out you need to relearn how to swim. Especially when you've so far from shore.

Open ended and no another season planned? Fuck em.

Great TV show that ended well? Sign me up.

This post wasn't sponsored by Good Place (seriously, go watch it, and watch The Selection right after).

Nah that's wrong, this is pervasive in every culture and throughout history. Every generation complains about the next because they don't do the same things the same way as the previous one. Entire countries did this, a kingdom that was less prosperous or lost territory was failing and in decline.

I think the root cause is an innate human fear of change and loss.

Yeah, I think you're right here: it's all about intent. If someone starts a business, it does well, but then they end it because they want to do something else, is not a failure. If they wanted the business to keep going, but people weren't buying enough of their product to keep the doors open, that's a failure.

You could do the same with any of the examples. It's not a failure if the people are happy to stop or it lasted as long as could reasonably be expected, but if it ends before the people wanted it to, that's a failure. The rocket that lifts its payload to orbit, then shuts off and falls back to earth is a success. But no one says "Well, the rocket ran great halfway to the planned orbit, so even though it and the payload fell back to earth, it was successful."

Agreed, the flip side is allowing something ending to be sad too. Not everything needs a positive spin.

This just reads to me like a classic step of linguistic evolution, where people can't be bothered to caveat the normal word with a deeper meaning (eg "my business ultimately ended, but it was the right call and it was always be a great time in my life..." etc) and so think a new word is necessary, until inevitably the same thing happens, ad naseum.

I mean that does make sense.

The office is still a show that exists and is watchable and all that. It's not gone. It's more like it went into retirement.

That seems to me more just a linguistic quirk of how English works.