Lia and I have a fun relationship. I allow her to all-but-ignore my incessant rambling about the future of the world and the role I intend to play in that future, and in return she allows me to incessantly ramble about the future of the world and the role I intend to play in that future. It works out well because I am able to voice my opinion and see how it sounds out loud, and Lia is allowed to maintain her sanity while continuing to read her mommy blogs. Once in a blue moon, however, Lia decides to speak up and obliterate my illusion that I have everything figured out.
Let's take my future career choices as an example. For a number of reasons, I have narrowed my options down to three reasonable expectations for where I want to be in 20 years. The three roles I have chosen for myself are Governor of Tennessee (or Florida, I'm not picky, but I do love living in Nashville), Major Real Estate Developer (emphasizing in urban renewal and mixed-income mixed-use communities), or Entrepreneur Philanthropist Business Tycoon (likely through a Private Equity or Venture Capital endeavor.) While I believe all three of these to be quite realistic if I set my mind to it, I had never completely thought through the repercussions some of these choices may have on my personal life.
Lia may have just thought that three prospects was too many, but regardless of her motivations, she recently decided to eliminate one of those options with extreme prejudice. She set her sights on the Governor role, which I would have to assume is because it is the least lucrative of the three fields and Lia is acquiring quite a taste for expensive puppy toys and doodle accessories. Either way, Lia forced me to come to terms with what that role would mean.
I think that I would love the problem solving and leadership aspects of being a politician. You get to apply your intelligence and power on a daily basis to figure out how to manipulate those around you into acting in the way that you perceive to be in their best interests. You also get unlimited amounts of other people's money to do it and lots of loyal folks with guns to make sure no one legitimately questions what you are doing. Sounds like a dream job, doesn't it?
But then Lia gets into the lifestyle. I like people a lot. I love hearing people's stories and I relish discussing topics with people who really know what they are talking about. I do not, however, see myself enjoying constant random social functions where I am required to pander to specific groups' interests while pretending to like terrible people and act interested in topics that I find insanely boring. I also tend to speak my mind, which isn't regarded very highly in a world where everything you say can be used against you and honesty is synonymous with weakness. I may also struggle with political correctness from time to time, so I could only imagine how often I would make the front page with insensitive comments about how unions are inherently selfish institutions that spit on the consumer and trample the interests of the rest of society while pushing their own agendas forward.
Upon further consideration, I also wouldn't like the job itself very much. I believe in acting intelligently as much as possible, and the current political system makes that all but impossible. While I would prefer to start from scratch and use the finest ingredients to make Lia's delicious cinnamon rolls, politics tends toward requiring people to take a spoonful of sugar and somehow make a bucket of dirt palatable enough to not incite the people watching reality TV to leave their couches and revolt. Most of my solutions to problems require admitting that the current systems have fundamental flaws that are beyond the band-aid approach and should just be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up. The reality is people love the illusion of change, but they actually hate change when it happens. That makes green-field system design all but impossible within the current political environment. Trust me, if people loved change as much as you thought they did back in 2008, I would be out of a job. Since they don't, band-aid approaches branded as changes/improvements/reforms will have to suffice.
This leads me to one of the many observation's I have made that will help you understand my world view: Generally speaking, people are confused about who they are and what they actually want. The example above shows how I am just as guilty as the next person. Lia was able to poke holes in that one illusion I had created for myself, but Lord knows how many others I am nurturing right now.
I think that this principle has significant implications in that it implies that most people make calculated decisions that we will later refer to as "mistakes." One example for me is moving to Sunny Isles Beach. The place looked awesome and appeared to cater to the lifestyle that I thought I wanted. It turned out that the people there were slimy and the location, while being close to things I thought I cared about, was actually quite far from my true priorities. We have luckily fixed that mistake by relocating to Nashville and placing ourselves in the middle of all of our friends and restaurants we can actually afford to eat at. Luckily that mistake only cost us 72,000 happiness units and a year of our lives.
Marriage and children being two obvious exceptions to this next statement, I do believe that people grow out of this lack of understanding as long as they are allowed to make those mistakes. Imagine if I had coincidentally moved to the perfect location after college and did not realize what I valued in living location until after I had bought a house in the wrong neighborhood? I am glad that I had the opportunity to make that mistake while being a young renter and still able to correct it. I think it is hard to watch, but you really do have to let people fail in order for them to learn something from their experiences. As a caring spectator, it is your job to make sure that the person does not cause irreparable harm and then you must also be there to help them recover after the failure.
The exceptions, as mentioned above, are decisions that are permanent in nature or mistakes you only get to make once. Think about how much worst it is for people who pick the wrong career, or god forbid, the wrong spouse. This is one of the reasons that I am a big advocate of pre-engagement interrogation. Lia and I planned out our entire lives before we got engaged, not because we actually thought the plan was going to come true, but rather because we wanted to see whether we were on the same page in terms of our hopes and dreams. We were close enough to where I didn't feel the need to go back to the market. This communication seems like common sense, but I am continually amazed at how many people make the second biggest decision of their lives without taking the time to discuss basic things such as how many kids they want to have or their philosophies on managing family finances.
The governor story above is a great example of how listening to a unique perspective and just talking it through honestly can help a person to realize something is a bad decision before they have to go through the pain of actually making the mistake for themselves. If you are insightful enough to truly analyze a situation objectively, then you deserve to miss out on the pain of a few big mistakes. Imagine if I had taken a political job in hopes of accomplishing a dream that would have actually been disastrous for my long-term happiness? I would have wasted years of my life and not moved myself any closer to accomplishing what would actually have made me happy. It is possible that I would have enjoyed the entry level job for a while, but chances are I would have realized my mistake sooner or later.
Sorry that this post turned out to be so heavy. I don't want to make you question every decision you have made in life, and please keep in mind that I am far more contemplative than the average bear and plan a lot, and I mean a lot, more than you do. To make sure that I do not feel personally responsible for any major life changes that could occur due to you reading this, I have included the sole message that I would like for you all to take away from this story: It is a great thing for me that Lia isn't very good at ignoring my rants.
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