I think it’s safe to say there are too many options. Or rather, I should preface the notion of too many options by emphasizing the importance of scope within one’s mind. We all have different perspectives and limiting beliefs that hinder the scope of our options. If I had to guess, I’d say that most of us are only seeing a portion of our actual options in life. From the toothpaste we use, to where we live, to the kind of romantic relationships we enter.
Now, this could easily be confused with privilege. We all possess a different level of privilege in society based on the nuance of our environment and background. But even the privileged have a refined scope; we couldn’t do that because of this, we only do this because of that. Even the poor, yes we have a perceived lesser scope of choice, but it’s nearly an entirely different scope of choice compared to the obscenely wealthy.
The scope of options our minds allow us to perceive from moment to moment varies wildly on any given thought and situation. But I feel like they do kind of stay in the same general vicinity of one another. We all have our choice limits. Still, there is a world that lives outside of those limits.
There are too many options.
If we take the moment to allow ourselves a safe space to explore the possibilities outside of our present choice limits, it is overwhelming. Yes, we’re totally safe. It’s all hypothetical. Yet, our heart beats faster, our amygdala begins to spike, fear begins to take over in the form of
“what if?”, “what will?”, “how could?”
Choice isn’t alone. It is accompanied by its good pals, the (theoretical) future, and the (theoretical) future’s past. Everything we do steers us down a path that lines the way forward while also diverging from the past and every other possible past that could have been. And that is why we develop a scope around our options.
Exploring the brain-imploding possibility of future implications by current decisions is anxiety-inducing and exhausting. I mean hell, from the perspective of being an animal, it makes sense why we experience this. This mechanism protected us from harm. Our brains don’t want us to forget about fear. That leads to us wondering if an apex predator won’t eat us this time and then testing that theory.
Our fear of change, or rather our fear of what change our possible choices could possibly bring about is completely understandable. It’s just annoying as hell. Particularly in the modern day where we still have these primal brains but deal with massively complex systems every day.
We are living, breathing organisms being treated as machines to feed the CEO paycheck that is, on average, 324 times that of the average worker (machine). Our scope of choice is chained down further by responsibility. We are zoo animals friendly with their feeder. They give us a decent place to live, they feed us, so long as we play the game and remain within our confinements.
Okay, extreme. I know.
I am grateful for society. I am enormously grateful for technology, and medical advancements. I am grateful for all of the modern commodities that society has granted me (partly due to luck) for simply participating. Still, I can’t help but wonder the cost of it to not only my being but many many others. The sheer tragedy of impact upon our environment. This can’t possibly be the way. We are a plant living in a craftily constructed steel box.
How do we mitigate the two? How can we possibly find a middle ground between organism and machine to rest our weary heads upon?
I honestly have no fucking clue. It seems mammoth. I feel like a bug stuck in toilet water, and it’s about to be flushed. The water being choices, in this analogy. And the toilet itself being… let’s say the planet. Sure, yeah, that feels right.
But I still practice giving myself a safe space to ponder the possibility of possibility. The safe space to do so is integral to the process. There are many times I give myself the space to ponder better choices I could actively be making and then use that to punish myself later for not making those theoretical better choices.
Instead, I try to allow myself the space to consider how I would feel about the effects of a possible choice. The intent being almost as if I were a child again, unaware of the sheer weight of reality. That is where I ask the questions of “what if?” and see how it makes me feel. I intentionally attempt to remove the dire nature of theoretical decision-making. I dismiss the animal within me for just a bit; just to see what it looks like.
And if it feels right?
Well, I then come back to the real world and consider its application. Oftentimes, for me, it’s a fun little experience but I also do very little to enact it within my life. That’s where scope plays such a big role.
Still, I try not to punish myself for it. It is what it is. Significance is subjective. We are literally dust from dead stars contemplating our impact on a fleck in an ocean of rock. We are magical beings able to sit here considering existence in such a vast darkness of insignificance. We are hydrogen thinking about itself. We are a happy little accident. We are not what we decide to be, we are what we can get ourselves to decide we are.
And so, while I am completely and utterly overwhelmed by my choices, sometimes it is exciting to think about them.
If you enjoy this kind of content and would like to hear more from me, sign up for my newsletter! I'll keep you updated on what's new from me and share my findings in the world of creativity, freelancing, and
self-fulfillment. 😄
self-fulfillment. 😄
Thank you! You'll start receiving my newsletter.
