(Which assumes that happiness is your goal; or that the long run is what counts most…)

Then again, more likely it’s not straightwardly in either direction (and I’m speaking now statistically of people in general, not just you). There are maybe circumstances where it is best not to spend much time wavering over whether to switch (standing in line at the supermarket, should I really agonize over whether to jump out of line at the last second to switch to a low-sugar jelly?); and there may be circumstances where it is best to continually reevaluate your decision.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to imply that one should always just make a decision and stick to it forever. But in those cases where leaving options open does more harm than good… the problem is identifying such situations, which is no doubt a personal thing.

And when you phrase it in terms of choosing between something you know you don’t enjoy vs changing your circumstances, it’s obvious that change is healthy there.

But what if I frame it as choosing between something you don’t enjoy *because you have left other options open* and something you *think* you’ll enjoy if you switch, and considering that you might not be the best predictor of outcome happiness (or whatever); then is your intuition pumped at all in the other direction? Maybe you would be happiest with your initial choice (compared to the other options obtaining) if you didn’t see the other options as real possibilities, and perhaps your rational evaluations that another possibility is better than this current one turn out to be wrong (once you have option B, option A looks better again, or C looks better…).

Or perhaps (B while wondering whether A or C or D would be better) is better than (A while wondering whether B or C or D would be better), *BUT* (A with no other option) is better than either of them?

Obviously, this is all in general terms that makes it hard to apply universally (and it shouldn’t!), and easy to find counterexamples. But it at least seems plausible to me that some situations would in fact be better if choice were removed. Wisdom lies in identifying those situations.

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts.

The first is almost always a good thing. More opportunities are lost to indecision than to bad choices, and the inability to act does seem to be very common these days. Anecdotally, though, the second seems directly responsible for rather a lot of the discontent and unhappiness in the world. How many people live in a constant state of disappointment and regret because they can’t bring themselves to turn their back on a commitment, be it a marriage, a career path, the city they’ve chosen to live in? Satisficing in situations where all your decisions have already been made may be a fine strategy for avoiding regret, but if it keeps you from acting on choices that still remain, it sounds like a recipe for disaster.

At least within the context of my own experience and the lives of close friends, people seem to be least content when they’re trying to stick to old decisions rather than making new ones. Now, perhaps if you can genuinely convince yourself that your choices are as good as any other, you’d be able to escape that feeling. But, I can pretty much guarantee that that’s not a state I’ll ever be capable of achieving. At least for me, the choice is between settling for something that I don’t actually enjoy (and *knowing it*) and being willing to change my life plan at a moment’s notice in pursuit of what I actually want at any given time. Given those two options, I’ll take the later any day.

In any event, though, it’s quite a thoughtful post. I’m happy to see all the new activity here since I last stopped by. It’s always a pleasure to read what SL has to say.

And even more beautifully ended.. “May be all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets”!!

Thank you