Nick's Journal
This week is one of my favorite topics to think about and to bring up with others and probe their views on. There are any number of recent quotes and truisms that have sprung up around it, either tangentially or even directly, as there may be no more universal concern in peoples’ modern lives. I could likely use a number of different words to illustrate it, but Choice is as appropriate a framing as any other.
An oft repeated Thomas Sowell quote in the modern zeitgeist is ‘There are no right answers, only tradeoffs.’ Another one, not Thomas, is the paradox of choice, the idea that the more choices you have, the more indecisive you are and the less satisfying your ultimate decision becomes. There are countless other ways to position the topic for a proper discussion but those are two of my favorites. Until you truly wrestle with and understand those two ideas I think you will struggle with navigating your life in a way that you will find rewarding.
Ask the typical person who is middle aged when they first really began to make deliberate choices about how they lived their life and I think the answer would surprise many younger folks. I can’t pretend to have everyone’s answer, but when I have dug and probed, a very common one is either that they have only very recently begun to make their own choices again, after decades of not, or that they have never made them at all. I believe the last one is an exaggeration brought on by the often stifling feeling that responsibilities and obligations can bring with age.
How nonsensical that seems to the youth. They make hundreds of choices every day after all. Who their friends are, what sports they play, what music they listen to, what subjects they pursue. How could someone possibly feel like they aren’t making their own choice? They lack the understanding that allows one to start to see that a huge number of those choices were made for others. That perhaps you liked soccer best, but all your friends chose baseball. Or you enjoyed a particular videogame, but everyone else at your school thought it was weird. Your parents thought math was important and art was for people who weren’t serious.
On and on, over and over, those you spend time with, those you seek to impress and those you wish to have good opinions about you will shape your choices. And as time wears on, those who pay your bills, those who influence your careers and those whose friendship sustains you will seem infinitely more important than simply what your preference would otherwise have been.
On a day-to-day basis it will all seem so innocuous as well. So what if you ended up playing tennis instead of football? It was fun, you spent more time with your friends, it was a good choice. So what if you never pursued that thing you most enjoyed, and instead became a doctor, burying your noise in textbooks for nearly a decade, working eighty plus work weeks for another half a decade just to begin to be able to slowly push your life back in a direction that may appeal to you. You have more resources because of it, freedom that you may never have had otherwise.
And the thing is, those things that you tell yourself are quite literally true. There was a tradeoff each and every time, it was not something you imagined, it was simply how reality works. Time marches on, one choice negates another. I have often told people that I am incredibly selfish, and received looks that suggested that the other person thought I was being disingenuous. I am generous, both with my time and my resources, to a fault even. I am always looking to lift up others, to show someone who wishes to learn how best to do a task. These things all seem the polar opposite of selfishness.
And yet, they are actually exactly how I wish to use my time. They are exactly how I find the most joy in life. And when it comes to how I navigate my life, I would always vastly prefer to struggle with finding out a way to navigate life in the way I see fit, than to conform to another’s view on what is best in order to remove some friction or some obstacle. I am not being self-effacing when I proclaim my selfishness, I am simply speaking to what I believe to be true.
The older I get, the more selfish I become. And once again, that does not mean that I am stingy with my time, my love, or my resources. It does mean I am far more adamant about how I spend them. I will not do something for appearance’s sake, I will not do something simply because it is easier, or it would gain the approval of another. I will carefully weigh each and every choice I make, and make the choice I feel is best, having considered myself, others and all of the tradeoffs. And if that choice upsets others, I will be comfortable with that. It was part of the consideration after all, had I determined they were right than I would not have made the choice I did. My goal in life is not simply to please those around me.
And so think back to where this missive started. That there are no right choices, only tradeoffs. You must look at those tradeoffs and understand them, weigh them in their importance to you, and decide accordingly. If you never put another’s choices above your own, you should expect to be more lonely as a result. If you always put another’s choices above your own, you should expect to feel unfulfilled, and that you have never lived the life you would have chosen. Almost certainly, your path will veer back and forth between those extremes, to some degree or another.
If you are honest with yourself, you will see that the choices were not so obscure as you may sometimes claim. That you saw them with clear and open eyes when you made them. It was only when the consequences came, the ones that could only ever come as they did, that you will claim ignorance. And for a time that might work, but even when it does, it is simply others in your life choosing to forgive or to allow, but never to not understand.
We will say what we say, for the sake of being civil or polite, for the sake of grace or love, but the biggest fool of all is the one who thinks themselves more apt than others, that they have figured out how to make choices and avoid tradeoffs. The world is always keeping track so do not be surprised when the bill still comes due, just in ways that you may not have first predicted. And the biggest lie that one can tell themselves is that every choice was available, that everything was possible. The story that is more true, the one that still gives you wings, but also judgment, is that any THING is possible, but not ALL things.
Much love as always,
Nick