Meadow

Sometimes there's just no right choice

In our culture we're brought up with the latent understanding that there's always a right answer: the correct choice in an exam, the proper thing to say in certain situations, the correct way to file taxes, the proper manners we should have, etc. However, very frequently in life we're faced with the task of choosing between a number of options where it's impossible for us to determine what the optimal choices are.

When we're faced with such a situation we frequently tell ourselves that if we only had more information we could certainty make the proper decision. But life does not work like that. Sometimes there is no right or wrong to a situation, sometimes it's impossible to forsee the consequences from your current vantage point.

This happens for both big and small things. What choice of shirt I wear today might not have much impact in my overall life, while choosing which city I want to live in will definitely have unforeseeable ramifications for both my life and my self-identity. Even a smaller thing like deciding whether to check-in with that long lost friend might open up all sets of possibilities that we can't even fathom. After all, humans are notoriously bad at perceiving the future, or even making plans beyond what they'll eat today - and even then things don't always go according to plan.

It is easy to get bogged down in collecting facts, determining pros and cons, weighing them, and in general losing lots of headspace. It's hard to accept that there is no perfect answer.

So, when faced with such a situation, don't panic and cheer up in the knowledge that whatever you choose will be ok, just do whatever your gut tells you to do.

After all, what is a sure decision besides something we've told ourselves we have enough partial knowledge to judge correctly?