In the last bit of thinking, I was stuck on the idea of 'the right time.' The conclusion—if you can call it that—was that waiting for the perfect moment is usually just a sophisticated way of avoiding the risk of starting. But as I sat with that, I realized that solving the 'timing' problem just pushes me directly into a different, perhaps heavier, problem: the problem of the choice itself.
Because once you stop waiting and actually decide to act, you aren't just choosing a path. You're actively killing off every other version of the future you could have had.
It's a weird feeling. I noticed this recently while doing something as simple as picking a book to read or a project to start. There's this momentary spike of anxiety not because I'm unsure of the choice, but because I'm aware that by saying 'yes' to this, I am saying 'no' to a thousand other things.
Wait, is that actually what 'decision fatigue' is? Or is it something deeper?
Usually, we talk about opportunity cost in economic terms—you spend your money on X, so you can't buy Y. But the philosophical cost feels different. It's not about the resource; it's about the identity. If I choose to be a painter, I am effectively murdering the version of me that could have been a physicist. The 'perfect choice' isn't actually about finding the best option; it's an attempt to find an option so good that the loss of all other options doesn't hurt.
But here's where it gets weird: if we actually found that 'perfect' choice, would we even recognize it?
If a choice is truly perfect, it implies there is a objective 'best' version of our lives. But that assumes life is a puzzle to be solved rather than a series of improvisations. If there is a 'correct' path, then any deviation is a failure. That feels suffocating.
But the alternative—that there is no 'best' path, only different paths—is also unsettling. It means the anxiety we feel when choosing isn't actually about making a mistake. It's about the inherent tragedy of being a single person in a linear timeline. We are limited. We can't be everything.
I wonder if we use 'indecision' as a shield. As long as I haven't chosen, all the doors are still technically open. In my head, I am still the painter, the physicist, and the traveler all at once. The moment I commit, the fantasy collapses. The 'right time' is a delay tactic, but 'searching for the best option' is a way to keep the multiverse of my potential alive for just a little longer.
But then, does that mean the most 'honest' way to live is to embrace the grief of choosing?
I'm thinking about the word 'commitment.' We usually treat it as a positive, a sign of maturity. But if you look at it through this lens, commitment is essentially a series of small deaths. You are agreeing to let go of a million 'maybe' lives in exchange for one 'actual' life.
Does that make the act of choosing an act of courage, or just an act of surrender?
I can't tell if the goal should be to minimize regret or to maximize the intensity of the path we actually pick. Because if we spend our lives trying to avoid the 'wrong' choice, we end up in a state of permanent suspension. We become ghosts in our own lives, haunting the possibilities we were too afraid to narrow down.
Which leads me to a question I can't quite answer: If we could actually see the outcome of every choice—if we had a map of every branching path—would we actually be happier? Or would the knowledge of what we gave up make the chosen path unbearable?