Running Out The Clock

Merry and I expected to have our flights to Denmark purchased by now. She'd be scrambling to be ready for her interview and presentation, and I'd be fervently organizing the logistics of our trip to get the most out of a scant couple days there. Then the company decided to delay the process - we're still not sure why.

Not that the initial rush of this whole proposition hadn't already mostly worn off, but now we have a delay of several weeks to contend with (and of course, there's no real telling how long it will be, or if the position will still even exist). But it does give us a little time to further de-stress about this, assuming we need that.

For my part, I've already succumbed to a state where I feel like anything would be fine - nothing would be great and nothing would be terrible. But this is almost certainly not a real assessment. More likely, the impenetrable maze of pros and cons has simply congealed into an impenetrable mass of incalculable tradeoffs. And so, lately, I've just been throwing different decision frameworks at it to see if anything sticks:

1. My dreams still seem to be activating on the Jungian "Hero" archetype as I detailed in my last post. I still think this supports the idea of going, but that makes some assumptions about how such archetypical activation really works - how precise the mechanism is, and whether it's best thought of as 'encoded wisdom' or 'an epiphenomenon.' I'm far from educated enough on any of it to know.
2. An ROI framework requires converting the intangible value of experiences into money (or vice versa) - which is profoundly difficult to do, in my experience. Before my semester abroad, I could never have guessed the 'return' that the intangible aspects of that time gave the trip. Quite the contrary, when the financial crisis occurred that fall, I was certain I had profoundly ill-timed my trip - quitting my job and going quickly cash flow negative. Just when the market was tanking, I was least able to take advantage of it (an aside: I did take out student loans and invest that money). It's remarkable how wrong we can be, even when we seem most certain. In the end, the financial characteristics of the trip were overshadowed - by an order of magnitude - by the experiences I had and friends I made. Having said that, I don't think I can just assume the lesson is: "All trips overseas will have huge positive intangible benefits." It seems more likely that the real lesson is: "the unfamiliar option has a much wider distribution of possible outcomes, both positive and negative."
3. I suspect a "regret minimization" framework would over-weight new experiences above the financial drawbacks. It might also equalize my worries over my parents against the benefits to Signe of having more varied experiences.

The 'rhyme' of the world (how constellations of events possess such peculiar patterns that are anything but random) continues to amaze me. (And teach me!) At the same time, the cadence is slowed to a tempo I should've suspected, for nothing of the civilized world moves at human speed. At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if we never make it there for the interview. After all, we got greedy and started telling people about it before it was at all certain. Such behavior, all by itself, is often enough for the world to cancel its plans on you without further ado.

The Call To Adventure

I'm so sick of thinking about moving to Denmark that I'm sick of realizing I'm sick of it. Again and again, I turn the pros and cons over in my head until they mishmash into something utterly without meaning or usefulness. Never before have I given so much time to a real-world decision, and been left with so little to show for it.

Because of this, I've started considering alternative decision models. The most obvious one was to simplify the list of pros/cons to only the most important and then score them, or rank them, or something, to try to simplify the equation. That made the list more approachable, but it didn't fix the fact that different items are "denominated in different currencies", so to speak - some tangible, some intangible.

The last few days, I've been thinking about applying a heuristic based on Jung's "Hero" archetype. This occurred to me when I started suspecting that my dreams were resonating on the "call to adventure" stage of the archetypal cycle (things like confronting people or situations I'm afraid of).

Let's assume my assessment of the dreams are correct, and are linked to this decision (thoughts of it has consumed so much of my waking time, I assume the link must be there). What are the implications? The "call to adventure" is a necessary stage of the Hero's journey, which is to say, it is a necessary stage for personal growth. (This is also intuitively true, I think - "no pain, no gain.") This path certainly portends 'pain' in the sense that there will be unfamiliar and no doubt trying situations to overcome, requiring sacrifices.

I guess this means that the situation is "resonating" that archetype in my psyche. It's not really a decision model, but I suppose that suggests that I should do this because it will help me grow? Is that the conclusion any time a series of dreams seem to indicate activation of the hero archetype? "Go, now!" I feel like I should better understand where the "wisdom" inherent in this psychic signal begins and ends.

One reason I'm hesitant is because these dreams didn't occur when the possibility of moving first came up - they happened after I had been fixating on it for weeks. How surprising should it be that something I've obsessed over for weeks found a way into my dreams? If I thought obsessively about buying a fancy car long enough, maybe my psyche would mold the hero archetype onto that, too.

Most of my anxiety with modern decision-making is our innate inability to understand where a specific option fits in the context of all possible decisions. Examples:

• "Should we move to Denmark, or stay in our house?" Well, I don't know, but what about moving to Spain? San Diego? Closer to downtown Omaha? To a bigger house? To a smaller house? To an apartment? Live in an RV?
• "Will moving to Denmark make me grow as a person?" Maybe? But even if it will, is it the only, best, or most efficient way for me to grow?
• "What's best for Signe?" I don't even know the answer to that question in Omaha, much less in a place I've never visited. I can't dislodge a fallacy if it was never lodged onto anything in the first place.

In other words, questions we ask ourselves about how we use our scarce time may be presented as binary. But, virtually all decisions are part of a matrix that consists of a multitude of dimensions. We can't hope to analyze the matrix itself - all we ever really have is heuristics to apply against the limited data we possess. I have always felt that the gulf between these two approaches is much wider than most people seem to believe. If I'm right, then in this gulf lay a truth about the futility of trying to analyze the sort of things that have been occupying me for this last month.

And yet, somehow, I doubt that this knowledge is quite enough to convince me to simply stop. But if I'm lucky, perhaps I can at least figure out how to apply some proven heuristic (Jungian or not) to the problem in a novel way.