Admittedly, this meant I lived a relatively uncomplex life without many responsibilities. Quite literally, I was in my own world. When I start connecting yourself to the world with various tethers though, I realize how this inherently interlinks many of your decisions, increasing the likelihood of various frameworks leading to contradicting decisions.

I revisit my decision-making calculus more often as of late, as responsibilities have been piling up and my commitments to others become more consequential. I can no longer deal only in absolutes, as an absolute in one framework contradicts the absolute under another one. Inevitably, what seems like forcing yourself into absolutes really actually is laziness in dealing with hard things.

Unsurprisingly, the answer seems to be to generalize my frameworks beyond specific instances where they need to be applied. But this generalization is actually a lot of work. Like in math proofs, one counterexample shatters your generalization. This means the task is hard and requires a lot of time.

We owe this to ourselves and those who depend on us though. Unanchored decision-making guarantees unreliability, and unreliability leads to both intrinsic and extrinsic discomfort. Learning what it is exactly that you live by ensures that decisions you make don't lead to your own regrets, and also don't lead others to regret trusting what you present yourself to be.

The challenge, simply put, is how to establish consistent behavior for inconsistent circumstances. The solution: establish robust intuition.