PostdocPartum #7: Today is the first day of the rest of my life
{1615 words, 7 minutes}
Ed. note: May has been a busy month, as I predicted in my New Year's post, so I'm squeezing out a blog post from a draft I started in August, when I first moved to Norway, just so I have something for May. It is a reminder that I have tons of unfinished drafts, writing I started when inspiration struck but never returned to finish, which seems to describe much of my life. Nevertheless, onward!
One realization I only recently had after graduating is that now is the beginning of the rest of my life. There are no more incubatory stages anymore, no more excuses to hide behind for procrastinating. Every dream, fantasy, and ambition doesn't have to wait anymore. Traveling to a foreign place, learning a language, picking up a new hobby, opening a business, starting a blog, even … falling in love; the time to start acting on these is now, because there aren't any more predictable milestones in the future to plan these ideas around. It sounds silly at 28 (ed. note: as I first wrote this, but now I'm 29), but my mentality is finally past the "when I grow up" phase. I am so free to spend my time and I have so much more money, and I have no idea how or what to do with either. It is both energizing and terrifying.
In the Stanford marshmallow experiment, children were offered 1 marshmallow now or, if they waited, 2 marshmallows in 15 minutes. Those who waited, who could delay present gratification for the promise of more in the future, were found to be, later in life, more likely to earn more and less likely to be in prison or have done illicit drugs. Growing up, my parents have always focused on teaching me to work hard now and play later. They probably meant on a day-to-day basis to get me to do my homework before playing video games but I think I might have gotten carried away in applying it as a life principle to guide decision-making. And now my attitude is ingrained by habit and thinking of bigger rewards on bigger scales. I'm not waiting for another marshmallow in fifteen minutes; I'm waiting for 15,000 marshmallows in 20 years.
And that's what it's been: more than 20 years of education, of putting off gratification, enjoyment, real relaxation and pleasure, the things I'm passively told to be missing by friends on facebook, because of the belief that there's another marshmallow or twenty to be had in the next hour or year. Sure, I let myself have the little gratifications along the way: a few weekend dinner parties, a plane trip every now and then, maybe a little (too much) gaming at night. But there's plenty of Friday and Saturday nights of staying in, working, reading, and learning or feeling guilty otherwise. Plenty of times that I've turned down invitations to parties, barbecues, movies, out of habit after a while. I have to consciously force myself to get outside, to be social, to spend time with friends, to convince my introverted, money-scraping self to indulge in a little self-gratification. My latest revelation in introspection at my behavior happened when I realized that ordering a medium fries instead of a small fries at an Arby's was conscious step toward allowing self-gratification into my attitude. The combination of hoarding and grad student survivor mentality, saving for a better payoff later, was that strong.
It certainly had its roots when I was a child who picked up every coin, every penny off the floor at school, who checked coin return slots regularly, and dug behind vending machines for dropped and kicked coins. I still remember Benjamin Franklin's quote, "a penny saved is a penny earned" scribing in my brain like lightning did the Ten Commandments. It wasn't out of want or poverty; I had a comfortable home, plenty to eat (my parents were in fact frequently disappointed at how little I ate when I was young and how short I was, as a presumed result thereof). I never even spent that money I saved, in combination with birthday and graduation money, on toys or games or ice cream (OK, a few times at Dairy Queen to get a hot dog, ironically). I took all that money with the advice of my mom, and … put it into a CD. (OK, so maybe my parents did encourage me to delay gratification in life.) A Certificate of Deposit! Because locking in those high interest rates was so attractive to my mind! I was given money from doing nothing with my money, which could then be saved again! The wheels of delayed gratification turned in my brain; it wasn't until I was 19 that I finally spent that money. My parents absorbed it into their bank account and used it to help buy a brand new hatchback (my dear Yaris) for me to use in college. One-third of the cost was borne by my life savings. Ten years later, I'm playing the same game with my money, just one and half orders of magnitude larger.
Delayed gratification does wonders for your success over long periods of time. What I've failed to consider is the question of to what end? I have long thought that an end goal wasn't necessary. Hoarding resources means being able to pick which opportunities to take and expand. Hoarding more resources meant bigger opportunities. And having an end goal felt … like an ending I didn't want. Reaching a goal meant you won, the game was over and there was nothing left to do. I don't want end goals, I want high scores, I want to play to the max until I'm forced out by the game. What's the best that I can do?
But life isn't only a high-scoring game. Delaying gratification raises the potential high score in life but there comes a point where gratification can be delayed beyond an expected lifetime. I could save money (a form of delayed gratification) and missing a great chance, even my best chance, while waiting for a bigger, shinier opportunity to go all in. You'd be silly to make a huge retirement nest egg and not live long enough to enjoy it. Goals, like saving for financial goals, also matter for an emotional reason: if I don't have a goal, I won't know when I've succeeded, which means endlessly doubting myself and measuring my work against a moving reference point. Even marathons have to have an end, if only for the emotional release that comes with personal human achievements, working like an escape valve to relieve internal pressure. Without an end, my survivor-at-war mentality will persist until death.
Here, then, is a crossroad: is it time to stop delaying gratification or do I want more marshmallows, given that now, life is about a lot more than marshmallows? On the first day of the rest of my life, it's now about every time I thought, "one day, I'm going to do X because that would be awesome". I think every person wants to live up to their potential, but not one bit more. To do less is to waste your talents; to attempt to do more is to endure pain and failure needlessly. How do I stay balanced in the sweet spot? Should hitting the optimum be as difficult as threading a needle at arm's length or a full court basket?
There's another voice inside me that says, "but look at what a privilege you've had to get this far. You should be grateful merely for the opportunity to get more marshmallows." I am grateful; and recognizing how fortunate I am to be where I am today actually places more weight on my mind to again aim for the best. To me, the privilege invokes duty, responsibility. Noblesse oblige (tr. nobility obliges) or, as I understand it, to whom much is given, much is expected. To create the most value out of myself is to make the best of the investments that have been made into me by aiming for the best I can be.
When faced with a decision like this, I'm torn between living for myself and living for others. I struggle to hit that balance of some of each when my head is turned toward the other the entire time. Living in service to others is an ethical and moral high ground I believe in but not self-sustaining. Living for oneself is sustaining but feels like robbery of the world of your contributions. And the ability to criticize one's own decisions, honed by years of academic training, is paralyzing when trying to do either activity. I either hobble along halfheartedly trying to relax and indulge or readily pay sacrifice after sacrifice to the altar of moral idealism.
Now, after several months of living in Norway, I realize that it's actually quite incredible to see how the Puritan roots shaped the American mindset compared to the European, which seems more self-indulgent and proportionally more emotionally satisfied with life. I feel like I've been delaying gratification for so long, I've actually forgotten what it's like to truly gratify oneself completely freely and without an ounce of guilt, in the way I see so many Norwegians who seem to outwardly enjoy spending time on their own lives.
Still, one thing has changed since graduating and moving to Norway: I have realized that every day is the first day of the rest of my life. I've got a lot of marshmallows now and more are sure to come. I've just got to figure out what to do with them in the time that I have.
