“I did this by choice.” Is such a privileged thing to say right? It makes you feel so cool. Like you have ‘options’, sometimes it even makes you feel rich.
But I’ve always had a negative relationship with choices since I was a kid. And luckily my first few economics classes itself explained why I hated choices. The thing with choices is, more often than not, you want both the *insert things* but you can only get one. So it’s about fulfilling a portion of your wants. Now next up, you have to decide which portion. Now when you’re really analytical, but also have a strong gut feeling, and love details and are also an over-thinker, that’s the recipe for someone who struggles with making decisions where one option isn’t objectively better than the other. Oh wait, I just described me again smh.
So from an early age itself, my dad used this to his benefit. If I wanted a toy, he wouldn’t buy it for me, instead he would take me to a toy shop and there I would get confused and end up coming back empty handed. Why, well because both of the toys were good, one would be more fun to play alone with, the other would be more fun when I
have friends over, but then it also had a higher chance of breaking, the first one was sturdier, and then the color, blue is a really nice color, I love blue, but the black one was more realistic looking, which gave it the ‘cool’ factor, how could a 6 year old decide ¯\_(0_0 )_/¯
It was confusion, if you want to get me a toy, just buy me one, don’t bring me here please. And yet I loved the toy shop because it was one of the most fascinating places I had been to with so many new things I had never seen before ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This obviously didn’t only stay true for toys. My brother showed up to any ice cream shop knowing in advance what he wanted to eat and would only take that. Me on the other hand, I had to look at everything. Every single flavor, old and new, if possible, try them out too. Then I’d see how much of it was left in the tub, if it was a good flavor, lots of people would take it, so the tub with the least ice cream should be the best one… But what if my personal taste doesn’t match with the one everyone else liked?! I wouldn’t want to waste money now would I…anyways, what’s the difference between chocolate chip and cookies and cream, they look the same to me from here…
This problem still continues for me today. Except it has evolved, in strange ways…
I can make decisions for others easily, I’ll analyze the pros and cons, compare the option I took to the next best option, and with a good understanding of their needs and what the product offered, make the best decision. I’ve given so many people advice on what new phone or laptop to buy, so all the MKBHD and mrwhostheboss videos I watched paid off…but when it came to my own phone…oh boy!
All of a sudden, I don’t know what my own needs are, I forgot what my daily routine is. No just kidding, that never happened, I knew exactly what phones I wanted. But I didn’t know which of the 4 to buy, they all suited my needs and each of the did the job, with some advantage over the other. Last year, after much deliberation between S10 lite, Pixel 4A, OnePlus Nord, iPhone SE and Samsung A52, when I finally made a choice, my dad simply said no. Coz like my antique 2nd hand badly-abused Samsung Note 3 seemed to be surviving ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Then again, he told me that a new phone would soon come out which would be better than all of these, then I would research on that extensively and then feel depressed about not waiting a little bit longer…and I knew he was right. It’s just a me-problem I guess.
Anyways, this is probably just a first world problem and I’m going to seem like quite a brat right now. I also over-dramatized it a lot, the problem isn’t that bad, its just when I overdo the research or start overthinking, it gets out of hand. I’m working on it and I’m getting there…hopefully, soon enough, this problem will just be a story of the past documented here on my blog.
But still, who likes choices anyways…opportunity cost is such a pain…why can’t we just get both? No actually…why not all the things we want?
Oh, did I ever tell you, I’m also a minimalist…
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