“The World’s Your Oyster” Problem

“The world’s your oyster”

I’m sure you’re familiar with the meaning. You can do anything, go anywhere, be anyone, do whatever you want. Sounds ideal, right…

But a curious problem arises when you’re actually in a situation that allows you to do anything; you don’t know what to do. And how do you figure out what to do?

Oftentimes, people, myself included, look for a way out of answering because it’s a serious bitch of a question – you can do anything, what do you want to do? So we tend to find things to anchor ourselves with to escape the abyss that a situation with infinite options offers. An anchor might be a long term lease on an apartment or getting an expensive car or something even more long term like a pet. These things minimise the amount of options you have so the question changes from “you can do anything, what do you want to do?” to “you can do a set amount of things, pick your options” and multiple choice questions are always easier to answer.

But here’s the thing, if you’re trying to anchor yourself down, you’re still avoiding the critically important question. If you don’t define what you want to do, you’ll end up in a “life of quiet desperation” as Thoreau would put it; always wanting something that you don’t have, yet never certain what.

I’m still yet to answer the question myself and frankly most steps I’ve been taking to figure out what I want, seem to be missteps. Though part of me recognises that you need to take missteps to figure out where the correct step would be. This is the kind of annoying side of life; you have to do things that you’ll dislike to work out the things you do like, otherwise you’re condemned to death by comfort.

Anyway

Infinite options = a real bitch