Recently, my girlfriend and I were discussing the phenomenon of choices vs obligations. It seems like something that happens in life is that you start a cycle by making a choice about how you’d like to spend your life. And it starts out feeling like a choice. But making and maintaining this choice leads to a series of draining obligations. Then, the obligations start to crowd out the choice itself.
So eventually you’re living a life where everything feels like an obligation to maintain a choice that you made in the past about how you want to live your life. But you’re barely “living” your original choice because the thing you chose is now buried under so many related and unpleasant obligations that it’s unclear if given the maintenance required you’d make the same choice again.
Add into this the double whammy of the novelty of things wearing off with the declining energy levels that accompany each passing decade and you basically get a recipe for a personal lifestyle disaster where you’re swimming at full speed treading water just to keep your life afloat whilst trying to ignore the fact that your life sort of barely even does it for you anymore.
I think there’s ways to beat it but that said I see it happen pretty frequently. It’s sort of the main trap of adulthood to some extent.
Recently, my girlfriend and I were discussing the phenomenon of choices vs obligations. It seems like something that happens in life is that you start a cycle by making a choice about how you’d like to spend your life. And it starts out feeling like a choice. But making and maintaining this choice leads to a series of draining obligations. Then, the obligations start to crowd out the choice itself.
So eventually you’re living a life where everything feels like an obligation to maintain a choice that you made in the past about how you want to live your life. But you’re barely “living” your original choice because the thing you chose is now buried under so many related and unpleasant obligations that it’s unclear if given the maintenance required you’d make the same choice again.
Add into this the double whammy of the novelty of things wearing off with the declining energy levels that accompany each passing decade and you basically get a recipe for a personal lifestyle disaster where you’re swimming at full speed treading water just to keep your life afloat whilst trying to ignore the fact that your life sort of barely even does it for you anymore.
I think there’s ways to beat it but that said I see it happen pretty frequently. It’s sort of the main trap of adulthood to some extent.