Two Paths in Life: Struggle VS Complacency
View of the Mont Blanc Massif from the top of Mont Fort, Switzerland
We slowly write the stories of our lives through a series of decisions and actions. Rarely are these decisions or actions grand declarations, massive feats of effort, or monumental achievements. Instead, we make small decisions and take deliberate actions every single day, and those actions and decisions, when added together, slowly accumulate and collectively make up our lives.
Sometimes we do achieve monumental goals, but what is a monumental achievement except the final action crowning a mountain of thousands or millions of previous actions?
I list "decisions" and "actions" separately because, while they are oftentimes directly connected, they are not one and the same. Generally speaking, you must decide to take an action before you take it. Theoretically, you could take action without thinking and deciding in advance, which decouples these two. And sometimes, the most profound, the most far-reaching decisions in our lives are the decisions to withhold action—to do nothing.
Everyday Decisions Bleed Over Into Transformational Actions
Small, everyday decisions lay the framework and foundation for the rest of your life. They could slowly, over time, form the way you think into the way you continuously act. Or perhaps, the decision to not act then forces the rest of your life to conform to your inaction.
The decisions that we make are endless, but the consequences are profound:
Will you take the shortcut on your next work project and get it done as fast as possible, or will you invest the extra two hours it needs to be truly fantastic?
Will you go out to the bar and watch the sportsball game with your "friends" from work in order to socialize and gain acceptance, or will you spend that time doing something you truly enjoy in your heart of hearts?
Will you snap back at your partner about how dumb and obviously stupid their opinion is, or will you take a second to breathe in, breathe out, and try to understand their point of view in a more levelheaded manner?
Will you take the path of least resistance and turn on the TV to watch Friends reruns, or will you stretch your brain with a challenging non-fiction book?
Will you rip open a bag of Doritos to go along with your Friends reruns, or will you pull on your winter jacket and head out the door into the blowing snow to walk a mile?
Two Paths: Struggle Versus Complacency
The examples I included above highlight the tension between the two most common paths in life.
On the first path, you accept the situation that you're currently in without any analysis or drive to change. You follow the crowd down the path of least resistance. You take what you're given and don't ask for more.
The second path isn't a path at all. Instead, you have to chart your own course, navigating unmarked obstacles and challenges. This path is filled with struggle. It's harder and sometimes it hurts more, but the struggle often pays off in advancement and ends at better and greater rewards in life.
I will grant that there are probably some examples when "following the crowd" and taking the easier path makes sense. There's no point in being a contrarian simply for the sake of being ornery and contrary—we refer to such people as sad, lonely, angry, miserable assholes. But for the moment, think about how, in our everyday lives, we're forced to confront this tension of following the crowd, or striking out on our own down the lonely, difficult path filled with struggle and tantalizing rewards at the end.
The way that we make these daily decisions ends up informing the transformational actions that we have the opportunity to take (or not take) in our lives:
Will you stay in your hometown or home state, close to family and friends and the podunk high school you graduated from, or will you take a chance and move across the country to a town or a city you've always dreamt of living in?
Will you take the safe and obvious career path, perhaps even in the exact same industry or exact same business as your parents, or will you try your hand in a cutting-edge field that didn't even exist five years ago?
Will you go to college like millions of other young Americans, or will you forge a new educational path with certificate programs, apprenticeships, and actual work experience?
Will you buy a house with a white picket fence, or will you question the entire concept of homeownership and move into a van?
Will you believe the same things that your parents believed about the nature of reality and the cosmos, or will you do the difficult work of questioning your foundational beliefs about the universe to determine, to the best of your ability, if they're true or false?
When you ask questions, you're no longer trapped.
Questioning the status quo is the ultimate power move in taking radical control and responsibility for your life. When you question the status quo, you'll inevitably realize that so many of the truths that we just accept as given are actually complete and utter bull shit.
When that reality sinks in, sometimes it can feel devastating because we've spent so long walking the same path as everyone else. It might feel like all of that time was wasted. But if we let our new realization take in and then direct how we make decisions and take action in our lives moving forward, it can feel absolutely liberating!
No longer are we trapped in our narrow view of the world. We're not trapped in the crowd of brainwashed pew dwellers or Sunday mornings. We're not trapped in our dead-end "safe" job. We're not trapped in our small towns, our small ambitions, our small lives.
When you ask hard questions and the answers come back wanting, that's exactly the opportunity to decide to act differently. It's never too late to change your life... and how exactly do you change your life?
One daily decision and one small action at a time.
