"Fair or unfair is beside the point, because tradeoffs are unavoidable." (Jeff Hayden)
I’ve been having a lot of conversations with students about relationships lately. The number one question they ask is, “How do I find my soulmate?” As the guy they come to because he knows all and sees all, I answer with authority, “I have absolutely no idea.” Yet somehow they still seem comforted when they walk away.
I’m telling the truth, of course. I don’t have a clue how or even if they’ll ever find someone they consider a soulmate. And I don’t know what work they’ll find satisfying or if they’ll live somewhere they love or if they’ll have regrets when the end comes. Obviously, I don’t know or see all. But I do know a few things I can tell them—like life won’t go like they think it will. And they’ll inevitably face tradeoffs in every part of life, including finding a soulmate or a perfect career...
Like with the soulmate thing. We tend to think finding a soulmate means life will be smooth sailing through endless happy days, but where’s that wonderful (and mythical thinking) come from? In truth, even the best match among the 7+ billion people on Earth won’t share our exact wishes and tastes and ideals for where or how we should live. Even with someone we love with our whole hearts, we have to compromise and give grace—and we need them to do the same with us. We even need to apologize. (Sometimes there's a LOT of apologizing…)
The same is true for our ideal career. Aside from being independently wealthy (and even that has its limits), there’s no career that affords us all the free time we want, all the money we want, and unlimited stimulation. We may love our jobs, but just the same, we’ll wind up making compromises. We’ll make less money or work more hours or have annoying colleagues or something else. Be a teacher and you make less money. Work on Wall Street and your free time goes out the window. Work for a big company like Amazon or Apple and you’ll find yourself having to squish yourself into their cultural mold. Become a college professor and you’ve got stacks of papers to grade and endless faculty meetings to snore through. Just spending your evening one way means you're not spending it another...
We make choices, and those choices require that we have more of one thing and less (or none) of others. I want to live with a beautiful view and boundless privacy…but then I can’t walk to neighborhood restaurants or enjoy the fun of a friendly community. I want to live on the ocean—but there are those pesky hurricanes and all that sand. You get the idea.
One of the short readings I assign my students is Jeff Hayden’s LinkedIn piece on this very topic. Tradeoffs are a part of living a finite life. I can’t have a great marriage and sleep with everyone who catches my eye. I can’t have a great job and stay home in my pajamas all the time watching TV. I can’t I can’t I can’t. So what can I do?
As Hayden says, we can acknowledge and accept our tradeoffs. We can know that being in a relationship means you have to bend so the other person gets what they want, too. Know that every kind of work has its limits, its good days and bad. And know that our happiness isn’t a static thing we “have,” but rather something that ebbs and flows. We create it one day, lose it the next. “Perfect” moments don't last very long.
But that’s okay. Life keeps moving and changing, and we're always looking for things. We want a soulmate, a satisfying career, the right place to live, easy relationships with our families, good friends, money for our needs and our wants, fun in our lives... All kinds of ideals are playing around in our heads. And we think deep down that a happy life means having them all. Like it’s really a big scavenger hunt, and we're supposed to follow the clues and gather all the correct pieces, then assemble them into an image of perfection we live in forever. Sorry—it doesn’t work that way. But we can create a life with tradeoffs we understand and even appreciate, with people who aren’t perfect but whom we love just the same (like they love us, despite our imperfections). We can let go of the static image and believe tradeoffs are normal and okay and even beautiful.
One definition of “doing it wrong” may well be: “Living a life with tradeoffs we can't accept.” Hmm… That sounds like the opening line of another post. Stay tuned for that one.
