You Can Choose the Easy Way or the Hard Way
An Old Lady’s Deep Thoughts #10
If there’s an easy way or a hard way to do something — humans tend to pick the hard way.
Are you in a miserable marriage? Stressed with bills? Losing sleep over worrying about the future? Overworked and exhausted? Well, then, let’s get a divorce, remarry, and give the new husband a child. Never mind that you just left years of marital trauma behind or that the two of you brought children into the new marriage from the old marriages. Right? Let’s heap on a few more stressors and then hope that marriage #2 will be better than marriage #1.
Riiiight!
Drowning in debt? Let’s buy a new car and increase our monthly bills. Never have a free moment to relax? Well, then get a puppy and delve into house training and socializing it.
Anything will do. In fact, the very version of our life that was driving us down the road to a nervous breakdown is often exactly what we choose to repeat when given a second chance.
We may think we’d like to start all over. We might love the idea of recreating ourselves. Yet, when given the chance, we marry a guy just like the one we left. Same life, different husband.
What ails us?
The reason we ended up where we were in the first place was often due to how we’re programmed to live our lives — like maybe forever. Nothing changes because we haven’t changed.
The bigger question remains — can we change?
I mean can we change our behaviors, our world view, the very wiring in our brains, the back story that replays a thousand times in our heads. Can we change anything or are we destined to live the same day over and over and over again, trying the same solutions but hoping for different outcomes?
Last but not least, would we even embrace different outcomes if they fell in our laps? Are we so accustomed to feeling a certain way that we’d never be able to totally relax if our story changed? Are we addicted to our emotional life?
Collective change isn’t any easier.
There are times in history where large groups of people were forced to change even if they weren’t happy about it. The Great American Dust Bowl forced a lot of farmers to relocate. Their homesteading dreams of owning a piece of land and building a life quickly disappeared. War, drought, floods, food shortages, and economic depression are examples of forced change. I suspect we’re going to see climate change force people to migrate to other regions. Eventually, even boomers who’ve retired to Florida will be forced to admit that buying property in a state that’s constantly having to rebuild isn’t wise.
But until then, retirees will continue to choose the hard way to live their lives. They’ll pay high insurance bills while worrying whether the insurance companies will provide the assistance they’ve been paying for when the catastrophe actually hits. You’ve got to question whether humans are largely emotional, instinctual, or rational.
I suspect we’re a combination of all three, but most of the time, I sincerely doubt that rational decision making is our strong suit.
Maybe I’m just too much of an introvert to be able to mix and mingle with humankind without coming away with a rather jaded outlook. How have we made it thus far? I mean look at us. We can barely make sound decisions that affect our own lives let alone decisions that impact the lives of others.
We vote against our best interests. Date and marry against our best interests. Spend money against our best interests. We even bring new life into this uncertain world against their best interests.
Life is a challenge any way you look at it.
There’s so much that we can’t control, but when we have the chance to choose the easy way or the hard way, so often we choose to make our lives even more difficult. We don’t need an enemy to bring us down. We’re more than ready to get the job done all by ourselves.
Ain’t life a trip though?
Teresa is an author and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
