My wife just came across this article about hard choices, which is certainly worth reading and thinking about for anyone who is having a tough time making a decision.
The article
http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/06 ... d-choices/
The TED talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GQZuzIdeQQ
The article is short, and there's a TED talk as well, but I'll provide excerpts below which give the gist of her argument (which, by the way, reminds of Sartre's arguments in Existentialism is a Humanism). Interestingly, her advice about how to make decisions in tough cases runs counter to the "flip a coin" or "just pick any from a list of viable options" advice.
In any easy choice, one alternative is better than the other. In a hard choice, one alternative is better in some ways, the other alternative is better in other ways, and neither is better than the other overall. You agonize over whether to stay in your current job in the city or uproot your life for more challenging work in the country because staying is better in some ways, moving is better in others, and neither is better than the other overall.
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Now, if there’s no best option, if the scales don’t tip in favor of one alternative over another, then surely the alternatives must be equally good, so maybe the right thing to say in hard choices is that they’re between equally good options. That can’t be right. If alternatives are equally good, you should just flip a coin between them, and it seems a mistake to think, here’s how you should decide between careers, places to live, people to marry: Flip a coin.
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When we choose between options that are on a par, we can do something really rather remarkable. We can put our very selves behind an option. … This response in hard choices is a rational response, but it’s not dictated by reasons given to us. Rather, it’s supported by reasons created by us. When we create reasons for ourselves to become this kind of person rather than that, we wholeheartedly become the people that we are. You might say that we become the authors of our own lives.
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Instead of looking for reasons out there, we should be looking for reasons in here: Who am I to be?
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Drifters allow the world to write the story of their lives. They let mechanisms of reward and punishment — pats on the head, fear, the easiness of an option — to determine what they do. So the lesson of hard choices reflect on what you can put your agency behind, on what you can be for, and through hard choices, become that person.
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Far from being sources of agony and dread, hard choices are precious opportunities for us to celebrate what is special about the human condition, that the reasons that govern our choices as correct or incorrect sometimes run out, and it is here, in the space of hard choices, that we have the power to create reasons for ourselves to become the distinctive people that we are. And that’s why hard choices are not a curse but a godsend.
After thinking a bit, it seems to me that I'm not really facing a hard choice. I mean, it's grandiose to think to that I'm making a major existential choice about what kind of person I want to be when in fact I'm just trying to decide between Asheville and Reno for the best weather, trail running, and most house for the money.
But the article definitely made me stop and reconsider what I'm doing with my life in general and why this move seems like such a big deal to me. In fact, it helped me realize that it's NOT a big deal. It probably doesn't really matter where we move. What matters is what we will do when we get there. But we already know that, and in fact can't wait to get started.