I've been reading about the architecture of decisions lately, how we arrange the furniture in our minds when we're trying to figure out what's more important.
There's this trinity that keeps surfacing: ideas, deals, and ideals.
Three words that sound like they should get along but rarely occupy the same room comfortably, so to speak.
Ideas are raw material in nature and arrive unbidden, usually while you're doing something else entirely. Taking a shower. Walking. Staring at nothing in particular.
In some states of mind, a handful of them can come within a few minutes, don't ask for permission and they certainly don't promise anything.
Then there are deals, which in this context is compromises we strike between what we want and what the world will actually give us.
The negotiation, in terms of effort and outcome, happens whether we're conscious of it or not. Time for money. Comfort fot growth. One path chosen means ten others abandoned.
I think deals influence us to confront the inconvenient fact that you can't hold everything at once, not by any metric.
And ideals, well, those are the standards we pretend to live by or rather actually try to.
Like a North Star that coordinates which direction to set before realizing the terrain doesn't always cooperate.
Most of them are aspirational by design, which makes them both useful and occasionally tyrannical.
An interesting aspect is what happens when they start pulling in different directions like a storm at sea.
Say you have an idea for how your life could look, maybe something creative or unconventional. But the deal required to pursue it asks for more than you anticipated. And your ideals about work-life balance or financial security start screaming in the background that you're making a mistake.
I sometimes tend to spend a lot of energy trying to align these three, as if there's some sort of perfect equation where they all balance neatly against the ever changing nature of reality.
Now, I'm leaning into thinking that's the wrong approach entirely.
Observedly, those who only chase ideas without making deals hardly build anything that lasts, since they're perpetually starting, never finishing.
Ideas are infinite they say, and trying to refine ideas can be an endless process if there isn't any self-imposed limit or those that reality enforced on us via time.
Alternatively, the person who only makes deals without ideals becomes transactional first and foremost, which hollows them out eventually.
What's the point when every interaction is a mechanical calculation to the dot with no principle guiding what's worth trading away?
And the person who clings to ideals without testing them against real ideas and actual deals ends up being unable to adapt when circumstances change or new information arrives.
Fluid reality is a paradoxical constant that I've heard mentioned within philosophical circles, on how to picture the flow of existence.
If I would build a framework around this, then probably a bottom up approach would be taken.
Filter deals, which are the touch points with practical reality, against the ideals I have based on the ideas that come and go.
I think getting attached to ideas is a recipe for stagnation, and even more so to unrealistic ideals such as freedom without responsibility.
When a deal that potentially gives me more freedom comes my way, I'd take it and then observe how it clashes with the ideas and ideals my mind has downloaded with regards to freedom.
I can change my mind based on new information feedback from interacting with reality, it's easier that way too as opposed to seeing it the other way round, which is reality fitting with my ideas/Ideals.
Thanks for reading!! Share your thoughts below on the comments.
