These were students who had eaten enough frogs to get into Princeton and Harvard. Their reward was—surprise!—more frogs. So they ate those frogs too. And now they're staring down a whole lifetime of frog-eating and starting to feel like maybe something, somewhere has gone wrong.
From this Substack essay called "Why are you eating so many frogs" referenced on Ran Prieur’s 082.
The whole thing about coercion feels pretty difficult to navigate to me. On a basic sense it isn’t, because it is evidently clear what energizes me and what doesn't, which I find to be a better indicator than some idea of what your mind believes that you enjoy. But on a practical sense, the world we live in is unlikely to provide stuff that you enjoy, and while it won't forbid you from doing it—unless you're into illegal things obviously—it also won't reward you for it.
So you're either left compromising by working a job that pays the bills but which you probably don't care so much, or you try to turn your interests into something that pays, which can become problematic too because of the tendency to appeal to the lowest common denominator to make that happen, and because it might feel like something you have to eventually force yourself to stay consistent at.
I don't know, I definitely haven't figured this out in my life, but one thing for sure, I don't want to keep eating frogs right now, I'm kind of sick of that. It helped me to get through university, but now I realize that it isn't sustainable at all long term. It's just not enjoyable.
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2024-08-25