No decision is also a decision

The biggest transformation that increasing age brings is increasing variables and increasing decision frequency.

Suddenly — every decision that you make (be it a micro decision or a macro decision) sparks a butterfly effect of micro or macro outcomes.

In my parlance, segmentation of decisions as ‘micro’ or ‘macro’ is as below –

A micro decision, under this simple framework, is the likes of whether you – should chug the beer at Oktoberfest just because all your friends are telling you to or you should head back home just as the German landscape is becoming a blurry mixture of white shirts and brown lederhosens.

A macro decision is more to do with larger irreversibility — buying a house, marrying a person or separating from them, pursuing the MBA/Masters, moving a country or staying put.

The thing with these decisions is if you don’t eventually decide — the decisions will be decided themselves. You can enjoy a joy ride swimming in this ‘no decision making’ tide temporarily but a life of unconscious decisions eventually catches up with you.

Also, losing the ability/knack of taking the right decisions leads you to Darwinian obsolesce and you eventually lose track of variables.

Why is this age linked?

~ you’ll find that as a whole the world is kinder to /‘I am still trying to find my niche’ type 20 something year olds/‘situationship’ FTW folks largely when they are much younger

A balding 53 year old with a kid at home and ear hair trying to pick a 25 year old in a bar with ‘I am just living in the moment’ hardly paints a pretty picture. ( just to clarify further, i am not in anyway against this

i am just remarking on my assumed probability of this converting and/or the conventional aesthetics of it).

Now let’s assume you will take the stand that ‘it is largely stupid’ to let conventional aesthetics dictate anything and we have as a human race become tolerant of people finding their way even later in life. Let’s bring the other angle to why figuring out shiz by a particular age has a certain allure to it — ‘the physical health’ aspect of it with a lather lurid example.

As proponents of rink football will tell you, your early 20s you can play 3 one hour 5v5 matches in a week and still have a highly functioning life. However, by the mid 30s you need to learn to accept that rink football becomes knowing how to absorb ACLs (anterior cruciate ligament), warmups, cooldowns, as a larger part of your game. Footie life is hanging by your hamstring.

As my friend remarked rather sagely, when I was younger on the field I would not know how to play, but my body knew how to play — now I know how to play, but my legs don’t cooperate.

So, you need to balance and listen to your body and learn to tone down your athletics to a game a week or maybe two.

For all purposes and examples, the world (and the human body) eventually wants you to really figure your shit.

So — the ones that comply — life becomes a decision making paradigm of sorts.

Am I going to really dance for a few hours at the DJ night?

Do I really need to triple text her/him? (always, no by the way).

A balanced life largely starts involving –

being super stern with ‘time/space creepers’ (The same cute friends that would earlier seem inclusive when they asked you to stay on for longer — start resembling monsters that are going to make you sleep till late on sunday night)
Setting quantitative and qualitative limits
Protecting your physical/mental health
repeating 1-3 till it becomes a larger part of ‘you’ subconsciously

And if you decide to still hippie it all away without intent – Knowing that ‘No decision is also a decision’ helps.