Nearly one year ago, I wrote about the systems that I found myself in and if they were serving me in accordance with some fundamental truth about my life. Did the place, the job, and the people at that time feel “right” or “wrong” and how should I change my decision-making criteria to get closer to where I am “supposed” to be? Now, reading this back, it seems paradoxical to be consciously adjusting my actions towards a path that is destined to happen, but I did believe that I could make choices that would result in a greater sense of connectedness throughout my life.
In the following eleven months, I began acting on these thoughts with that goal in mind. I moved to New York City, I chose a function within my organization to lead, and I started proactively unlearning the toxic coping mechanisms that impacted relationships at the center of my life. While I mentally prepared for these shifts well in advance, they all took effect over the course of a few months. It became clear to me that I had put an immense amount of pressure on myself to choose correctly and then act because time was limited.
This brings me to what I want to write about today – The finitude of time and how much our choices matter, particularly in a period of our lives where we have a great amount of optionality. It is a common notion that because life is finite, there is high value (and judgment) attributed to how we choose to use our time and ultimately live our lives.
I recently made the decision to solo travel around Spain with the goal to create the mental space and time for introspection. While in a beautiful part of the world, I could still get out of my comfort zone enough for self-discovery. Through this journey, I was inspired by the content accessible through Sam Harris’ meditation app, Waking Up, which features thought pieces on life and philosophy for the user. Specifically, there is consistent focus on the mind and its sense of self, free will or lack thereof, and ability to be present, all topics that can facilitate well-being through meditation.
One of the series, led by Oliver Burkeman, focuses on time management, which resonated deeply with my thoughts on work-life balance and how to prioritize the meaningful aspects of my life. He provides the following metaphor – Imagine your life is a jar and you must choose which rocks of different size (or importance to one’s life) to fill the space of the jar. Rationally, you should remove the big rocks that have mid-range value e.g., activities that keep you busy but don’t necessarily fulfill a passion, a friendship that is convenient but surface-level, etc. to make place for the high-value priorities. Instead, we often avoid the choice to make room in the jar because there is a risk of unknown, negative consequences. What if the choice to work less and write more meant I had to come to terms with the fact that my writing ability may not be perfect? What if that reprioritization impacts my work product and reputation with colleagues?
These “what ifs” are applicable to broader categories of decision-making such as choosing a partner, moving cities, or switching career paths. It is normal to cling onto the feeling of control by not deciding. Otherwise said, the best way to hold onto a fantasy is by not making it a reality. On the contrary, Burkeman explains that it is freeing to commit to a finite decision because one can then be present in the experience instead of weighing the alternatives indefinitely.
This point made a lot of sense to me. While I love a good pros and cons list, I often come to a decision quickly and confidently (with the help of writing down my thoughts here) because I know it was the best conclusion with the information at hand and can allow me to move onto the next step, which is living my life and learning from whatever happens next. I’ve had this decisive trait since I was a little girl. My mom tells the story of me in diapers at age three asking if I can go to school, to which the response was that I would not be allowed until I was potty-trained. From that moment forward, I didn’t use a diaper again.
I’ve always associated that decisiveness with a strong sense of will power, but the deeper I got into Harris’ series on free will, the more I doubted my ability to control life in general. What really threw me for a loop is the concept of the decision-making process being a product of a causal universe i.e., one that is influenced by a series of events entirely out of our control. We can make the choice to grow or learn or change, but it is in a constrained stream of thought and we can’t control what influences the decision.
As you can imagine, this is a bit unnerving for me as I’ve intentionally thought through a lot of big life changes over the last year. It also begs the question if we should care to be thoughtful in the first place if we can’t control what will ultimately determine what our next move is. Harris argues that accepting this truth removes an ego-centric view of life (i.e., your view of “self” having to choose) and means that we’re all linked as part of a causal system, and therefore, what we do does matter.
Before my trip to Spain, I was on a week-long safari in the Maasai Mara National Reserve where my mom and I watched wild animals in their natural habitat for six hours every day. After observing the symbiosis between species, the dance between predator and prey, and the survival mechanisms of even the strongest animals, it became devastatingly clear that each action, conscious or not, was part of a collective cycle. With the idea of causality in mind, it no longer feels like a stretch to categorize nature as one of many deterministic systems that exist in the universe today.
So, I kicked this off by describing the pressure I put on myself to make the right decision quickly to get closer to where I’m supposed to go. From what I’ve learned, I would now say that those decisions remain important, but they certainly aren’t going to determine how fulfilled I feel in a year from now. I will still use intuition when faced with the next seemingly major decision (probably with a list or two), act on that thinking in accordance with my values, and you best believe that my rock jar will be optimized. However, I will also have some peace of mind that comes with accepting that we live in a causal universe, which disarms my favorite defense mechanism of using control. With that, this is a daunting gift that I will keep in mind, whether I wanted to or not, for as long as I am lucky enough to do so.
Fondue Me 