Choose not to choose.
My first article on Medium was a piece about the value of our experiences. A few people read it, a few people liked it, I even gained a follower from it. I felt some excitement when it was picked up by a publication and I briefly wondered if that might lead to it being read by 100s of people! It didn’t, but that didn’t matter. I was still left with a sense of pride that I had not felt for a good while.
My second article is about choice. Choice is often lauded as a good thing. Something that has lead us all to a greater good. But, I’m not so sure about that.
We now have an amazing array of choice in just about everything we do. There is always another way. From the career path we are following to the supermarket we are shopping at or the local club we could be joining to meet new like-minded people.
A choice leading to success is celebrated. A choice leading to failure is celebrated, in some cases more so. We are all acutely aware that we can, apparently, be whoever we want to be and can do whatever we want to do. We now have that choice. Don’t like ‘X’? Then choose ‘Y’. It’s easy, silly!
But, what about the darker side of choice? The accumulation of choice in everything we do is an issue that I think is often downplayed or ignored altogether. Choice in and of itself can now be the very real problem. For me, at best, choice has often sucked the enjoyment out of things I have chosen to do and at worst it has led to an inability for me to act at all. The balance that choice is supposed to bring has in my view toppled over.
What I am therefore advocating is an awareness of the need for a balance. Too much choice ‘out there’ has, I believe, caused to us to forget that answers are often within us. The choice is simply irrelevant.
