We all like to think that we have an absolutely embarrassing number of choices with our lives. I say that is a myth. In actuality, I say our choices are much more limited than most of us would care to think about.
Let me start with something pretty simple-the choice of what to wear for the day. Our choices are not unlimited. We have a set amount of clothing in our closet, or dresser, or wherever you keep your clothes. The point is that we can choose from what we own, but that is it. What to wear for the day is further constrained by what we are doing that day. If you go to work, you have to wear appropriate work clothing. If you wear a uniform to work, then there is no choice. You wear the uniform and go to work.
Maybe you’ll give me that one, but you still hold on to the notion that we have more choices than we can sort through. After all, we often tell our children, “You can be anything you want to be.” Let me use myself as an example of how that is selling a false reality. I have no athletic ability whatsoever. Even if I worked three times harder than anyone else on the field/court/field of play, I would still be average at best. That means that the choice to be a professional athlete was never one that I could even contemplate. Already, the notion that I could be anything I wanted is dead. But let me press on. When I chose which courses to take in high school, I was making choices to not go down the path of a skilled tradesman. I am not very handy, and so those choices were not really viable for me. Compound that when I went to college and chose what to study. I am not great in math, so saying that I could be a physicist, or a chemist, or even a meteorologist was not open to me. I simply cannot handle the math. Those were not choices I could realistically make.
Every choice that we make comes with a cost attached. By choosing to go to one restaurant for lunch, I choose not to go to the others. That decision means that my options for lunch are limited by my choice. Can I make a different choice? Sure. Next time. But for the lunch in question, my choice negates all other options. There is a cost, sometimes small and sometimes large, attached to every choice.
We are all human, and so we all have to live with and within limitations. That doesn’t mean we can’t grow and change, but we do not have unlimited choices in our lives. I don’t see that as a negative thing, as it may seem like so far. What it suggests to me is that if our choices are much more limited than we are led to believe or would like to think, then our choices carry that much more weight. I don’t mean choosing where to go for lunch, though that could have serious consequences attached. What I mean is that when we are making the big decisions—where to work, who to marry, when to move on from something—then we should give those choices the consideration that they deserve.