Every Possible Self, Poorly

When you're young, there are endless possibilities in front of you. Maybe you'll work at a charity or run your own business or become Prime Minister. Maybe you'll run into Emma Watson one day, at the hairdresser's or the park, and the two of you will get to talking and eventually get married. Anything could happen!

As we get older, we commit to a particular path, and the possibilities become fewer. Around the time you propose to your girlfriend, you give up your dream of marrying Emma Watson or any other woman, or your dream of any of the cool things you might have done later in your life if you were unattached. And even though you love your girlfriend, giving up on those other possibilities can really hurt. It can be a kind of grief, mourning the deaths of all the people you never got the chance to become.

And to avoid that grief, sometimes we avoid making choices. Especially irreversible choices.

The choices we make allow us to tell certain stories about ourselves. For example, the story you might be telling about yourself might be something like "I'll work as a [management consultant / marketing assistant / cashier] until I figure out what I really want to do for a living, and then I'll do that!" That's a great story. Some people follow this story and go on to have a very fulfilling career working at a charity or running their own business or even becoming the Prime Minister.

The problem is when you get stuck. Saying "I want to start my own business" is also probably admitting that you're not going to work full-time marketing an important charity or spend your life in politics. So you might stay at your [management consultant / marketing assistant / cashier] job, because you haven't decided yet, and all of those possible selves can still exist - but you know deep inside that you're doing a poor job of pursuing any of them. So you think less and less about those futures, and they make you more and more anxious, because you know that if you want to start your own business you should probably be doing something different, but that would mean giving up the version of you who's a career politician and the version of you who works at a charity forever, and making that decision is too stressful.

Visa (@visakanv) noted that "the people who take the trouble to prioritize what they want, and then focus on doing whatever is most important to them, are almost never the ones who are anxious about [not having time to do everything]". When you prioritize and take action, you're making a decision, grieving all the people you could have been, and moving towards something you truly care about. It's a much happier way of living than trying to be every possible self, poorly.

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