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Long ago people typically married as teenagers, but today we usually tell people to date while young, but don’t get married til later. In the US in 2018 the median age of first marriage was 28 for women, 30 for men. Many religions have not allowed you to join until you were old enough to make an adult choice.
What considerations say if you should make choices early or late, assuming that you will find it hard later to change or undo your choice? If later choices force you to put off important activities, choose earlier. But the more that education and life experience will inform your choice, the more you should pick later. And if more can go wrong from a bad choice, or there are more such bad options that you might choose, then choose later.
Given all this, I am here to suggest that you wait longer to pick your causes, be they political, social, religious, justice, charity, etc. You really don’t know enough to choose well when you are young, and there isn’t that much that will go wrong if you wait to choose. Instead of spending money, time, and energy on causes when you are young, you can instead invest those in your family, career, etc., where they can offer big returns, giving you more to spend on your causes later on.
Yes, in worlds where most everyone gets married young, it was hard to wait. Even so, many were often advised to wait. Today, there are many social pressures to get young people to pick causes early. And yes, it can be hard to resist these pressures. Even so, I say: wait and date. You just don’t know enough now, so your younger years are better spent learning and building. Later you will have more time, money, energy, insight, and social connections, all of which will help you to support whatever causes you choose.
So sample and dabble with causes, but wait to marry one. Yes divorce is possible, but that doesn’t mean everyone should marry at age 14. The poor will be with you always. If you rush too fast to help today’s poor you may just mess them all, hurting both today’s and tomorrow’s poor.
Wait To Marry A Cause
Great post. When I was a teenager I was a literal communist keen on bringing about world revolution. I wanted to get a tattoo of a hammer and sickle to make me commit to it because I feared that the siren song of capitalism would turn me. I am so glad I did not marry that cause.
Wait and date is all good but that doesn't tell us when to stop. What is a quantitative measure that tells me "This is your One Time - take it."?