On Being Alive: When Our Options Don't Look Very Appealing...

It happens every day. We make choices to do thing, or not do things.

Write a blog post, or watch TV?
Go to the gym, or walk the dog at the dog park?
Chicken or pasta?

In most cases, we likely have what we feel are reasonable choices. That's not to suggest they are necessarily easy choices... they might sound "equally appealing." or each choice may result in our having to forego something.

Regardless, we do our best to make a good choice, and we move forward.

But what about those situations — and goodness knows, I have faced plenty of them! — in which the options we are presented with all are ultimately going to result in negative outcomes?

You might wonder, but yet... that does happen!

From a psychological standpoint, we're generally "wired" to minimize pain and/or discomfort. But what happens when that's not an option?

Most often, these kinds of choices involve major life decisions. Maybe it's an illness. You can do nothing, and slowly succumb to worsening pain that will gradually kill you. Or you can do "something" and will get well, but perhaps lose a leg, or an arm, in the process? How do we choose? How do we even think about choosing?

Of course, it doesn't have to be that dramatic. Maybe you're in a sticky financial situation, where you can either choose to wear yourself down slowly by working 80 hours a week, OR you can lighten your load by taking a loan... in the knowledge that if anything goes even slightly wrong, you'll lose your home that you had to put up as collateral.

As an old saying goes, sometimes we end up having to "choose the lesser of two evils."

On my own journey through life, my obvious answer has always been to do my best to not put myself in situations that only had unappealing choices. But the thing is, we don't always get to choose our situations... sometimes those situations arise as a result of choices made for us.

For example, I ended up with a work endlessly vs. sketchy debt situation because a trusted employee of my company — many years ago — had been embezzling from me, and it landed me in trouble with the tax authorities before I could put a stop to it.

As I said, I had no idea that my trusted manager was a thief! And she was very clever and sneaky about it.

It would be tempting to just stomp our feet and declare that the situation was "not fair," but much of the time life is not fair. And we were never made a promise that it would be fair!

For me, these "impossible" choices typically boil down to a decision of whether I want to face immediate and severe consequences, or face lesser consequences drawn out over a long period of time.

There's no "right answer," and everyone has their own things. Just make sure you chose what fits YOU, not what you are being pressured to choose!

Thanks for reading, and have a great Sunday!

How about you? Have you faced any/many seemingly "impossible" choices? How do you decided which way to go? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

**(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2023.11.05 00:56 PDT
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