Are We Actually Choosing, or Just Comparing?

[MontBlanc]

We have more choices than ever.

Careers, relationships, places to live, lifestyles, products, experiences even different versions of ourselves.

That sounds like freedom, but sometimes I wonder if having endless alternatives has made choosing harder rather than easier.

There's always someone more attractive, another job that looks better, another city, another opportunity, another life that seems more exciting from the outside.

Social media doesn't exactly help because we're constantly seeing what other people have chosen and wondering whether we'd be happier doing the same.

If, there will always be another option, how do we ever decide that what we have is enough?

At what point does keeping our options open stop being freedom and start becoming an inability to commit to anything?

Does keeping every possibility open actually give us freedom, or does it prevent us from giving anything enough time to become meaningful?

And if we're always comparing what we have with what we could have had, how much of what is already good in our lives are we failing to appreciate?

[sage2021]

One thing about life that I would like to touch on. Time has a way of slipping through our hands.

When you're 20, you feel like you have your whole life ahead of you to decide what you want to do with it.

You get that job you've always wanted. You work there 10+ years and it's great. That until the place you work at has to close it's doors all of a sudden, and you have lost your job at age 35+.

You gotta start all over again and now you don't have your whole life ahead of you. Your life gets serious.

Next thing you look up and you're 45 and 50 is right around the corner.

The reason why I am mentioning this is because I have lived through how fast your life goes by.

You get back on top again and for a while things are good again.

But now you are older and more experienced than a lot of people, but they've decided they want younger people at their company - bringing fresh new ideas with them.

My point is that sometimes life has a way of choosing for us. Things change along the way. People change.

As I'm sitting here writing ✍🏻 this, and I look back at my life, I stop and wonder 🤔 what are the hundreds of people who I have worked with through the years doing now?

Did they choose right or did their circumstances along the way choose how their life turned out?

[7Phoenix7]

I think it’s a mixture of both… You look at what’s around you, compare your options, and then you choose what feels best for you.

I don’t think comparing is necessarily bad… it’s when you never stop comparing long enough to actually appreciate what you chose that it becomes a problem.

[slatyb]

That is a really good question. Too many people just choose, going from one thing to the next thing that seems better. They would be happier if they thought about what (and who) they really want, and how to get them.

[NathanDavis]

I don't do contests

compatibility is genuine

[Nikki1989]

It's like asking, am I making a conscious choice, or am I just running a comparative algorithm in my head? Most of what we call "choosing" is really just advanced comparison.

[AngryCarl3]

One of my earliest memories is going into a bookshop and getting sensory overload.

[msc545]

It almost always involves comparison and vice versa.