Sam: Up to the point of college, the biggest decisions we were forced to make were between home economics and outdoor sports as an elective, or white and brown rice at Chipotle. Now every choice affects our careers, our relationships, where we live, how we will survive - and each one feels more weighty than all those before it.
John: Yes, it feels that way. The twenties sure feel like the decade of decision making, don't they? Money, jobs, women, love, revolutions, dreams - everything we have been talking through is going to require some serious and sometimes constant decision making on your part. And though I feel our decisions are weighty, they aren't nearly as overwhelming as they feel when we are faced with them. I have never found pressure a good motivator for making decisions, nor found decisions made under pressure to be particularly good ones. So let me first try and lift some of the pressure off the decision-making process.
Your generation has been inundated with the promise that, "You can do anything." The cliche' is a staple of every graduation speech as you said, but it began far back in elementary school with good old Dr. Seuss:
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.
Heady and exhilarating stuff for a first grader. The college graduate begins to lose the jaunty promise and feel the weight of decision making descend. A limitless universe of options is not a gift, not even an opportunity to dream; it is overwhelming. Paralyzing. And untrue. You can't do everything. The future is not an endless horizon before you; you cannot simply head off in any direction. Given who you are and how you're wired, Sam, you will never, ever be a professional baseball player, concert cellist, orthopedic surgeon, mathematician, or member of parliament. You get my point. The list is actually quite long. When you consider your age, your situation, your gifting and training, the country in which you live, the economic forecast, I think you'll find that the horizon is not nearly as vast as you have been told - or as the Internet makes it seem.
The truth is, the options before you are limited and that is a great relief. The open ocean is beautiful to look at, but terrifying if you have to navigate it in a small boat. But you are not facing the open ocean. God puts us within a context, with a limited gifting and limited resources, and that is immensely kind.
