What You Choose VS. How You Do It

Why is that? What is that? Suddenly, a thought:

I've been thinking that life has way too many choices-for-the-sake-of-making-choices. A "choice" is only the instant of picking one thing among many to 'do' — but I wonder if we're spending too much time, too much life, on that instant.


Think about it: we pour a tremendous amount of time and effort into making good choices and into having good options to choose from. So most of our life, I suspect, is spent on preparing-for-something rather than actually-doing-something.

I think the cause is performance-centrism, relative deprivation, or the hunger for recognition. So we prepare for 'the' good choice, and we then have to 'choose' the best way to prepare in order to prepare better. In the end our days are packed with choices-for-the-sake-of-choices.


Another reason we pour so much of life into choices — into preparations for better choices — is responsibility. If a good choice has to yield a good result, then when an unwanted result comes, we can blame the failure on a wrong choice, instead of facing a process that requires patience, perseverance, and effort.





Somehow, alone.
Somehow, at forty.
Looking back on the days:

honestly,
weren't there more moments where what-you-do and what-you-choose mattered less than how-you-do-it —
I'm left with that quiet ache.