Belief and Support Can Be Mutually Exclusive

Apr 26

Apr 26 Belief and Support Can Be Mutually Exclusive

(Credit to @waitbutwhy for the thumbnail https://www.instagram.com/p/CMCxwi2HdbX/?igshid=1ka0tu2mvw8n4)

Exhausted from nearly two weeks of consecutive solo travel, I remember plopping onto my high school friend’s couch and suddenly feeling revitalized.

Crunk Aint Dead Duke GIF from Crunkaintdead GIFs

When crafting my itinerary, the idea of making an additional stop on the backend did not feel ideal and I had yet to ask if he would even be in town. Visiting him would require delaying my return to Austin by a day and I was unsure of what toll 3,000 miles at varying altitudes would have on my body. Not to mention as someone who fully utilizes remote work to the fullest extent, additional stops when you are already on a tight schedule are generally unwise. Ultimately, I figured being able to see a friend I am lucky to see once a year outweighed my desire to be reunited with my Nectar and fears about work.

By this point, I had been living in Austin for over half a year and the only people I had seen from Macon since the pandemic’s onset were my Mom and neighbor. When you are accustomed to being in relative proximity to your friends and family when that proximity is taken away it is easy to see how you took granted having unfettered access to people you care about.

With this newfound energy, I found it easy to chop it up about how our lives were progressing. We both were in similar situations as new graduates stepping into careers in industries that historically underrepresent people who look like us. This outcome is atypical for two black men from Macon, Georgia. Like Bryson Tiller raps in 502 Come Up,

It’s very rare for young black men to come up outta here

As we progressed through our conversation weaving between new beginnings, high school memories, and everything in between it became obvious that while outwardly you may be able to categorize our paths as similar, we were walking two distinct paths. This very idea is what I have come to enjoy most about growing up. When you are going through the K-12 education system we all have the same structured path and post-high school graduation is the first time we get to see how infinite the possible paths you can walk in this life are. Depending on when and where you were raised, a large majority of your peers likely went to college, the military, or straight into the workforce. However, year by year(really day by day) you likely saw peers who would drop out, start families, graduate, open businesses, etc. The further we get away from high school and the more unique decisions we are allowed to make, the more different our path gets from our peers. I find myself having to remind myself that no path is inherently better than another, no matter what society's ideals push us toward assuming. One way I regulate my humility is through my understanding and fundamental belief of our life trajectory being much more of an exponential function than a linear one. (Math major do not judge me) How you start is not necessarily a strong indicator of how you will finish. Life is unfair, unpredictable, and a ton of other words. So as Kendrick chants in HUMBLE

Sit down, Be humble

(Credit: https://selfawareness.blog/4-lies-of-personal-growth/ for the image)

Nonetheless, as we caught up he told me that he did not plan on staying corporate for long. This revelation alone is not necessarily jaw-dropping as many people who enter the corporate world learn they have no desire to work for someone else or punch the 9-5 clock. However, when you say you want to only work for a maximum of 3 years before being completely financially independent I raise an eyebrow. In the moment, knowing roughly how much he made, I began to estimate how much he would have to save and invest to realistically have a chance of bringing his goal to fruition and I had not even begun to go down the rabbit hole of what he would do to sustain himself post-corporate life. He has always had an entrepreneurial spirit which means he had taken his fair share of Wins & Losses(word to Meek). His losses had worried me more than his wins and similarly, his potential losses worried me more than his potential wins. What happens if he went “broke like Joc?”, bit off more than he could chew, became a scammer, and so on and so forth. I glossed over the inverse if he became financially independent, developed successful businesses, etc. In reality, this was typical loss aversion, a theory that we as humans have a tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquire equivalent gains. You likely implicitly do loss aversion on a daily basis but I will task you will that introspection.

(Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion )

While I remained skeptical of the realism of his goal, I knew it was not my goal. In reality, I had to accept another piece of my skepticism lived in the fact that I would have feared attempting to accomplish his goal. We oftentimes project our fears onto others, ask my ex-girlfriends. (I am kidding, please do not) Who am I to tell another person what they can or cannot accomplish? This fundamental belief I have developed has guided me over the past few years. While I may not believe in what someone says they will do(likely stemming from what they have shown me), I also accept that I could be wrong. The latter part is a reason why I have supported certain people regardless of my personal belief on whether they could achieve their goal. Unless I am a key factor in that person’s goal I cannot control any aspect of the outcome. This belief has led me to an extreme reduction in my urge to combat people’s goals I find unrealistic. Besides, if I am not involved, I do not have to live with the consequences of their actions. Letting people carve out their own path by allowing them to live and learn at their own pace feels like the most conducive way to truly support another person. That being said if there was a gun to my head and someone asked “Do you think your friend will achieve his goal of financial independence in under three years?”, I would have said “No” based on my own belief system mixed with the probability of him achieving his goal. I also would have died at that moment.

It has been seven months since I plopped on that couch. My friend no longer works in Corporate America. He shattered his own goal and in the process proved my assessment to be extremely inaccurate. While I doubt he knew of my assessment because I never voiced it, even if I had, would it have really altered his outcome? To me, that answer is no. You could argue it may have impacted our friendship but that is independent of the outcome. It is very popular nowadays to be focused on proving the naysayers wrong but in reality, their opinions do not control the outcome. The only way they can even influence the potential outcome is if you allow them to. Ultimately, your belief in yourself is what matters most. (obviously, luck plays a part but as they say, luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity) Proving yourself right will as a byproduct prove any critics wrong. I have to remind myself of this often and the fact that you have the autonomy to change your goal(s) as you see fit. Focusing on proving naysayers wrong can lead you to push towards a goal that no longer suits who you want to become and thus there will be little to no satisfaction in proving them “wrong”.

Is belief in a person’s goal a prerequisite for supporting said person’s goal?

As I reflect on this event and many others in my life, I realize for me that answer is no. However, in my book, it does require a belief that your assessment of a person could be wrong. If you want to argue that my belief in myself potentially being wrong can be interpreted as having a slight belief in the other person, I will not fault you. I do not believe my degree of confidence in an individual should reflect the degree of support I give an individual. I am continually grounded by the fact that It’s not my journey so once again why does it matter what I think or how confident I am in them? As a weigh the pros and cons, it seems as though supporting people, especially friends, in their endeavors is a no-brainer. I have nothing to lose by offering my genuine support. Now does that support mean I have faith in them achieving their immediate goal, not so fast. However, it does mean I have faith in them figuring out what is and isn’t for them. Life is a marathon, not a sprint, so while I do not believe you will break the 400m world record, I could be wrong but more importantly, I do believe you will eventually find your pace to complete the marathon. For that reason alone, you can count on me to lend my support. Your worth is not tied to the completion of any goal. People are capable of anything, and our pasts do not have to determine our future. Anywho, kudos to my bro for all the success thus far, and continue to live your life on your terms.

I have really grown to appreciate post-Carolina Cam Newton and so I will leave you with this.