Recently I had to make a big choice that will affect my future in a huge way. For a couple of days I had no idea what to do, so I made a pros and cons list, I thought over it dozens of times and collected every piece of information I could find. Among them there’s philosopher Ruth Chang’s TED talk about hard choices.
Long story short, professor Chang says that, since hard choices are made between equally good solutions, we shouldn’t make a decision by considering their pros and cons, but by focusing on which kind of person we’d like to be, and that most people think the first way, so they always choose the safest solution.
Professor Chang’s speech is very interesting, but how many people really are that brave? When it comes to life-affecting decisions, how many people would choose the less safe solution because it represents the kind of person they want to be? For my part, I prefer safety. Not to mention the fact that sometimes decisions are made by factors that are independent from you.
Regardless of this, I hope you’ll be the brave when facing hard choices.
