Defaulting
In relation to our recent post about peer pressure and living within a certain expected mode, our Eudaemonology editor Neil sends us this.
The career you end up working in depends chiefly on what you saw as options when you were just starting to enter the workforce. That was a very narrow period of time, during which you were only aware of a limited number of options. You went with whatever made sense at that time. The result — what you do today — is more or less happenstance.
Friends too, are mostly in our lives as defaults. Most of us have found some incredible and inspiring people just by letting happenstance deliver them, but once we have some stable friendships we become complacent and stop actively looking for friends that really resonate with our values and interests, if we ever did at all.
Unless we take the bull by the horns, we end up as products of destiny rather than masters of it. Not saying that’s a bad thing but it does raise the question of how much free will we really have. Again.
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Career inertia is real, and it augments the older one gets…the older we are, the more financial commitments we rope ourselves into, and the lazier we get when it comes to change. We take the path of least resistance.
I don’t buy the bit about friendship defaulting. That one’s pretty easy, actually. Get rid of facebook and all the other crap that ties you to them (and destroys your brain in the process), and conduct an annual friend audit. Jettison (with kindness) the ones you don’t value. Burn the bridge. It’s therapeutic.
As with the decision to march confidently to your own drummer in any other facet of your life, people will probably respect your decision to be selective about friendships.