Make a Choice

I had a lot of self discipline in high school and going into college. I had grown up thinking nothing matters as much as your career, and I had gotten pretty good at denying myself pleasures for the sake of work. Then one day someone I respect explained to me what I was sacrificing. Sure, people always say “your happiness is most important”, “do what you love”, yap yap yap, but it’s not that simple. It’s tempting to tell yourself that this self denial is temporary, and that you will return to those other priorities later once you’ve reached some vaguely defined point in your career, some level where you will be “satisfied”. This idea always makes me think of the Thoreau quote (which I’ve mentioned before) when he suggests that it's a mistake to “[spend] … the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it”.

After years of hard work I’m exactly where I wanted to be, and now I’ve got cold feet. I’m just beginning to understand what I have to give up in order to take this path. It's not as simple as something like monetary sacrifice, that's easy. You’ll never have deep seated regrets about your life because you chose to give up nice things. I’m talking about the kind of sacrifices you can’t go back on. Missed experiences, potential friendships that never form... serious opportunity cost. Does my career mean that much to me? For those of you who say yes, I’m glad that the opportunity cost remains nebulous—that people are able to remain blissfully ignorant in their own world. If there were some oracle that could show us what we missed, I don’t think people would be able to live with themselves. 

The difficulty is that there are times in your life where you have to make temporary sacrifices for your career. How do you know the difference between the two? How much sacrifice is just denying yourself happiness? Honestly I don’t know, I’m just guessing. Ask me in 10 years if I made the right choice.

I’m also probably making this problem out to be more polarized than it is. You don’t have to choose one completely over the other, there is a balance that can be struck. Yet, there will be a point where you need to make a call in the face of uncertainty. You’ll have to choose one over the other, and you’ll never have the satisfaction of knowing which one was right. You have to stick with the choice you made, and hope it works out for the best.

For me personally, I’ve spent too much time trying to plan my life out. I’m bored by it. Who wants to have the limitations of their life outlined for the next 5 years? People my age, college students entering adulthood, are looking to appear as adult-like as possible. Yet, all the adults want to be like us. This is a unique time where we can take real risk, with only ourselves to worry about. So, at this point I’m going to risk choosing the greater quality of life option, and hope my career works out as I would hope. I’ve made my call.

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Uncomfortable Activity of the Week

I’m a big fan of putting myself in uncomfortable situations. It keeps you open minded, and exposes you to opportunities that you never though were possible. I cannot count the number of times a situation turned in my favor because I chose the option I wanted to do the least. But, like anything else, being uncomfortable a skill, I have to practice it to get good. I want to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. So, I will be adding this section to each newsletter, highlighting the most uncomfortable activity from that week. Enjoy

This week I started cycling and swimming. There’s something about looking stupid in public that terrifies me. Prancing around in a skimpy bathing suit is not my idea of a good time, and clearly demonstrating to people that you don’t know what you’re doing is never easy. But, its great practice in humility, which is something we all need every once in a while.