Deactivating my fun Twitter because
I’ve quickly come to realize that most people don’t make decisions based on any sort of reason or logic. That would be far too time consuming of an endeavor. Rather, people make decisions on whims, based on what their gut is telling them to do or because they have some sudden impulse. Most actions are poorly planned and oftentimes even more poorly executed. Why did that woman decide to stop abruptly in the middle of the crosswalk so that I had to slam on my brakes and going flying off my bike? It’s inconceivable, and certainly not reconcilable with any type of logic or basic reasoning.
But isn’t that beautiful? What would life be if every action, every decision made by every individual was as thoroughly processed and thought-out as possible? I conjecture to think that such a life would be quite boring. I wouldn’t currently have two massive scrapes on my elbow and left leg, respectively, if that woman wouldn’t have made the illogical decision to stop in the middle of the crosswalk, but at the same time, I wouldn’t have such an engaging story to tell and I also wouldn’t have the sweet comfort of knowing some people truly do care for others when they stopped to check to see if I was alright. I fist bumped that lady after picking my bike up off the concrete and got on with my day, and I’m all the better for it, and it’s all because of an irrational decision.
Deactivating my fun Twitter falls into the category of such rash, whimsical decisions. I suddenly decided, midway through watching Tottenham Hotspur get demolish by arch-rivals Arsenal, that I was spending too much time “doomscrolling.” I somehow was subconsciously comparing myself to all of these hip and cool accounts I saw on my screen. Why couldn’t I generate such a following? My tweets were funny enough, surely. A light chuckle here, a disappointment there, nearly an hour of my life each day gone — that’s all Twitter was giving me.
So now it’s gone from my phone and now I only access the website via my laptop and now the only Twitter accounts I have access to are my pseudo-professional one and the one for a podcast I’m interning with.
There’s a bit more I want to say about rash decision making. At the same time I’ve come to realize that most people make decisions irrationally and that this is indeed a beautiful thing, I’ve also come to realize that these types of decisions aren’t really irrational at all.
So often, I think, people can get caught up in a senseless pursuit of perfection. It’s cliché to say that no one is perfect; it’s less cliché to say that no decision is perfect. We strive to make perfect decisions in all facets of life — what jobs we apply for, what restaurant we go to eat at, what loaf of bread to buy at the supermarket. But while these choices may seem calculated and supported by some reasoning, at their heart they are all incredibly arbitrary, influenced by a mess of conflicting factors.
What I’m trying to say is that even the most seemingly rational, logically calculated decisions are fundamentally unreasonable and irrational. As someone who has long prided themselves as being logical and reasonable, this is a challenging realization to make. However, I’m beginning to understand the real truth of it and, better yet, the real liberty in it.
I think that action of any kind is of paramount importance. There is little need to get trapped in cycles of deliberation. Simply doing is enough. People have this amazing capacity for adaptation and for growth and for learning, all things that happen in the most profound sense when risk is preferred to caution and when actions are simply taken, not carefully deliberated but rather approached with eagerness, curiosity and a healthy amount of naiveté. Maybe that’s the operative word here, “naiveté.” Being naïve is beautiful. Even more, it is essential.
Now this — this feels like a blog post! I’m getting better at this format! I hope you enjoyed.
This post has been in honor of the Twitter account @jakesPancakes — May 2016 to September 2021. If you made people chuckle even once, you were worth all the senseless hours of doomscrolling.
