Adulting, The Price of Ambition, and Candy in a Post-Scarcity World

Being a kid, we’re under the illusion that adding numbers to our age. Being 8 3/4 is infinitely better than 8 because it’s a step closer to freedom. If your childhood is anything like mine, there were three things I wanted more than anything else: More candy, the ability to stay up late, and more time in front of the TV and I thought those things would bring me happiness. On the flip side, the wonderful thing about being a kid is that, yes, those things do bring me happiness. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is no more than a two-story building when candy and a bedtime extension is all you need.

Remember the first glimpses of freedom you get as a kid? Maybe its sleep away camp or spending the night at your grandparents house and you realize what it’s like when you’re not under the supervision of people who seek to limit you? Or when you get to college and you get to choose classes that allow you to wake up when you want? There’s something irresistible to getting older because you can taste that sweet freedom. At a certain inevitable point, however, we go from “I have freedom!” to “Now, I have freedom, what do I do with it?” As an adult, we’re often plagued with freedom and the multiplicity of options to choose from. It’s the same feeling you get when you go to one of those diners off the New Jersey Turnpike with a menu that appears as if they’ve curated every known food in the universe. The bigger problem is that the New Jersey diner menu is now life and the consequences are more enormous if you…