Tag: decisions

All or Some?

Go for it all.

Think big.

Shoot for the stars.

We’ve all heard some version of these sayings throughout our lives.

Our society embellishes dreamers who become doers. It’s why we bestow fame, notoriety and power on our biggest achievers.

This is the reason we recognize Marissa Mayer, but not the engineers who have helped her innovate at both Google and Yahoo. (Unless one of them spews out  sexist comments in a viral memo, that is.) It’s we recognize Derek Jeter, but not Mike Hessman. (Hessman is the all-time home run leader in minor league baseball.)

The message is clear. We must be somebody to be viewed as successful. Anything less means we’re irrelevant.

So, we all strive for fame, fortune and notoriety. We set our sights on titles such as CEO or VIP. We dream of “making it,” simply for the power and prestige that destination provides.

But we fail to consider is what life at the top is actually like.

You see, power is intoxicating. This is why history is filled with examples of both its use and misuse.

It’s quite something to have the ability to control both our own destiny and that of others. But this ability comes with significant side effects.

When we take the reins and ride into the spotlight, we sacrifice our anonymity. Our actions are heavily scrutinized. Our privacy is compromised. And our decisions leave a trail.

Whether we become the President of the United States or a musician with a bigtime recording deal, a basketball star or a chief executive, there is no more hiding from the world after we hit the bigtime. There is no way to turn off the attention our notoriety provides.

For try as we might to get away, there’s always someone there to keep us honest — whether it be a journalist on a beat, a paparazzi photographer or an astute social media user.

That scrutiny can be far-reaching. It can even extend to our families and even impact the way we live our lives.

This is the cost of power, fortune and fame. It’s a cost we often fail to consider until we’ve made it big. And by then it’s too late. The mansion with the pool might be nice, but having to sneak out the back entrance to run to the grocery store sure ain’t.

Is this really what we want? Not a chance.

And it brings us to the crux of our paradox:

We don’t actually want it all. We just want some of it.

Sure, we want the glory and the adulation. But we also crave the anonymity that allows us to reset our batteries and spend cherished time with our loved ones in peace.

This setup is perfect for the middleman role. For the undersecretary. For the vice president.

But those roles are harder and harder to come by these days, and many of the ones that remain are getting replaced by machines.

So, with no ready-made outlet to turn to, what should we do to satiate our ambition yet save our sanity?

We should look before we leap.

We should do our due diligence. We should consider the tradeoffs of the spotlight long before we shoot for it.

And critically, we should ask ourselves the following:

Is pursuing our dreams worth sacrificing life as we know it?

If the answer to this question is yes, we can proceed with eyes wide open. We can round the bend prepared for the cage-rattling hit that awaits on the other end. The world-rocker that will send us into a new reality that there’s no turning back from.

If the answer is no, we can stop chasing a dream that we find undesirable. We can instead strive to make the life we know, love and are comfortable with the best it can possibly be.

Now, neither of these answers are wrong. But only one will be right for us.

All or some? The choice is ours.

 

Playing the Cards

The bus came to a stop two blocks south of New York’s LaGuardia Airport and opened its doors. The chilly fall air rushed in, accompanied by the dueling sounds of highway traffic and an airplane taking off.

As I treasured this peaceful moment, I gazed out the window at the house across the street. It was a decent sized home, complete with a garage and a balcony that was now bathed in afternoon sunlight. It seemed like a decent enough place to live — aside from the constant roar of jet engines and whoosh of highway traffic.

“Who would ever want to live here?” I asked myself. “Maybe this is where people in New York get houses on the cheap.”

My mind drifted east, to a home about two miles past the end of the airport’s other runway. That’s where my mother grew up, and where my grandparents lived for 60 years. That modest rowhouse was no stranger to the roar of jet engines either. In fact, as the story goes, the first time my father set foot in the house, he ducked each time he heard a plane overhead.

As I write this, my grandparents’ longtime home is in the process of being placed on the market. My grandfather has passed on, and my grandmother moved into an apartment in Manhattan with my parents a few months ago. The neighborhood has changed too — what was once a majority white is now predominantly Chinese — and this shift has sent housing prices skyrocketing. So, despite my musings, I know that proximity to the roar from Runway 13 doesn’t bring down housing prices.

Still, I posit that living under a flight path is a nuisance. Which leads to a key question: If we make our own destinies, why would we settle for a scenario with unwanted variables?

Much of our decision has to do with playing the cards we’re dealt.

Consider this. From the day we’re brought home from the hospital, the house we live in is just home. As children, we don’t know what all went into our parents’ decision on where to purchase their home, or the hoops they might jump through to maintain it financially.

But as we grow older and move out on our own, we think about things from a more practical perspective. What do we want our living space to look like? What do we want easy access to? Who must we be near to? And — perhaps most importantly — how much can we pay for all of this?

The answers to these questions help determine our actions, even if it means moving to a tiny, overpriced studio apartment with no counter space, or getting a roommate or three.

These situations might be perplexing to me, as I rent a decent sized apartment in North Texas. But if living in New York City — or San Francisco, or Austin or Uptown Dallas — is important to others, they’ll be willing to sacrifice space, privacy, amenities and even peace and quiet. Heck they might not even notice what they gave up in the process after a spell of time has passed.

It all comes down to perspective.

For example, when my grandparents moved into their home in 1957, it was almost considered a move to the suburbs. The home had everything a suburbanite might need — a garage, a nice enough kitchen and access to a highway built under the brand-new Interstate Highway System. The airport was there, but air travel wasn’t nearly as pervasive as it is now, and many of the loudest jumbo jets had yet to be created.

In 2017, it’s expensive to live anywhere in New York City. Yet the demand is there, particularly on the neighborhood level. Even with the small size of my grandparents’ longtime home, and the adjacent noise and traffic issues, someone will pay a premium for it, as it provides access to living in a coveted neighborhood.

Perhaps the people who live in that home two blocks from LaGuardia — the one I saw from the bus — perhaps they have a similar story to my grandparents, where they bought the home generations ago. Or perhaps they’re like the eventual owners of my grandparents’ home, where they found what might seem to the layperson as an untenable location to be anything but. Perhaps members of that family work at the airport, or for the airlines, and location trumps peace and quiet. Who knows.

What I do know is this: When it comes to where we live, and how, not all is how it appears on the surface. It’s a reflection of the hand we’re dealt, and the cards we play.