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Most worthwhile things involve difficult decisions
One of the problems with the modern attitude to living is people’s tendency to avoid making difficult decisions. Many of us are reluctant to commit to anything, and so we drift through life achieving little. This saves us from a lot of pain, but also takes away much of life’s meaning.
When I look at my grandparent’s generation, the risks and sacrifices they made for what they believed in were incredible. They stood up to the Nazis and the Japanese, no matter how high the cost. They married, and stuck together for their children’s sake, no matter how strained the relationship. They saved like mad to buy houses and build a decent retirement for themselves.
In contrast, people my age and younger seem to want to avoid anything that looks risky and hard. Anything they can’t get out of on whim makes them uncomfortable.
And so we coast along obsessing over the minutia of entertainment.
What’s type of gadget should I buy? What movie shall I watch? Do I like Japanese food or Korean? Is my partner making me happy or should I just look for someone else?
These are the types of question that obsess modern people. We are lucky to be in this position, but I can’t help feeling we are missing something.
The truth is that most worthwhile things in life involve risk and difficult decisions.
One of the great things about being young is the possibilities before you. When choosing a career, you could be a heart surgeon, a tech entrepreneur, an Olympic athlete, an astronaut, or a famous entertainer.
But what makes all these career choices and achievements worthwhile is that they require you to make a decision. You could be any one of them, but you can’t be a heart surgeon and a tech entrepreneur and an Olympic athlete and an astronaut and a famous entertainer.
Each requires a lifetime commitment. Choosing one inevitably means rejecting the others. Simply because our time is limited and ultimately, we are mortal.
This is what cripples so many people with indecision. We are so used to endless choice in our consumer life, that we are reluctant to give up our options.
Yet this risk is what gives things like career, marriage and children much of their meaning. It is the sacrifice we make, as much as the joy of ownership, that makes having these things worthwhile.
You can see the same thing happening even at a simple level. When I was younger, a music CD cost me a big chunk of my weekly income. Because of that, I thought carefully about which one to buy. When I got a new CD, I’d listen to it a hundred times and treasure every one of the songs on it.
With modern technology, I have an endless choice of music available to me for little cost at the click of a button. Yet it doesn’t seem to have quite the same magic appeal. I’ve even heard friends say “I’m bored of music”, a sentence I never would have heard twenty years ago. We have gained much, and yet we appear to have lost something too.
It’s in our nature to value things that require sacrifice. Don’t be too quick to turn your back on such risk.
Most worthwhile things in life require making difficult decisions.
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