Meaningful Returns

I’m not old, but I’m older than I used to be, and life as a result is more complicated. As far as I can tell, this is a universal axiom. There are, to be sure, physicists and philosophers who have very different ideas about Time and whether it exists on its own or is simply a human construct, but I’m not smart enough or interested enough to have anything to say about that debate. All I know is, I thought college was complicated, and I remember sitting in my Eno hammock on weekdays at 2pm while eating a whole bag of chocolate Sweet 16s and a downing an Arizona Green Tea, so, clearly something changed. And it wasn’t just my metabolism.

Some of this increasing complication is unavoidable. For example, my son turns one year old on Sunday. July 3oth of 2015 was…actually I can’t even remember. I didn’t have a son then and I have a son now and thoughts regularly mass exodus my brain. There is absolutely nothing I could do to prevent such attrition. But take another example: you might have a job, and the first day you walk into your job they (“They”) handed you a piece of paper with fifty-six 401k fund options and you could “take all the time you need” to pick yours, but everyone else finished in 30 seconds, so you just close your eyes and pick four because they sound fun. This complication is unavoidable, but unlike having a kid, it’s something you can de-complicate by having an expert you trust do it for you.

But there’s a third example, and that’s the one I’m most concerned with. It is the Completely Avoidable Complication That You Don’t Avoid. These include:

• Saying yes to too many activities.
• Running out of gas
• Not putting all your bills on autopay
• Believing your hunch on a certain stock will work out
• Forgetting your anniversary or any other important date, because come on guys Google calendar will send you reminders

Basically, life is complicated. Some of it is there to stay, some of it is unavoidable but can at least be farmed out, and some of it–alot of it–is just stuff we all do out of inattention or carelessness or whatever. Focus on eliminating the third category ruthlessly, then look at the second, and don’t waste your time thinking about the first.