(Pandemic Diary - day 51)

From my journal: 18 April 2020 (Saturday)

They’re not the same things at all. They’re a progression of the status of a thing, and I think it’s important to understand this progression, in the interest of simplification and living a conscious and deliberate life.

We confuse and conflate options and obligations at our peril.

We start with an idea (I might like to enter that race, go to that show, meet with that person). Most of us have hundreds of ideas each day, more than we can possibly consider. Some we act on immediately (I should have a drink of water) and some we discard immediately (I should punch the accelerator and see how fast this car can really go). Most of the rest just flit by us into the void, forgotten.

But some of them stick with us and progress into a more deliberate part of our thought processes where we consider them and decide about them, and in some cases act on them.

Ideas that you take action on become (or give you) either an option or an obligation, and the distinction between the two is where we get confused.

Your ticket to that show, the race you entered, the book you ordered... they give you the option of attending the show or running the race or reading the book. They do not obligate you to do any of those things. They preserve an opportunity, extend the period of time you have for making a decision. They only become obligations when you commit to them, when you tell someone ”yes, I’ll do that” or “yes, I’ll be there”.

For me, the struggle is to recognize that my options (especially ones I’ve paid cash for) are still just options. We’re susceptible to the sunk cost fallacy that says we have to do something because we’ve already paid for it.

It’s true in non-monetary transactions, too. I’m thinking now of all these great email newsletters I’ve signed up for, all the news sources and so on. It is easy to slip into the feeling that I must read them all, especially when they’re sitting there in my inbox (I badly need to update my filters). But the truth is, I have no such obligation. I can let them go by unread for days or months, or I can choose to open them and read if it seems right to do that. An option, not an obligation.

I think I want as many ideas as possible, as many potential options and obligations as there are. The more ideas I have, the better the odds that some of them will be good ideas, and that there might even be some great ideas in the mix.

But then I want to be able to cut hard on those ideas, to screen them down, pan them out, cull them so that only the worthy ones make it through, only the ones that are worthy of conscious, deliberate consideration.

Because while options are good (far better than obligations), they also bring a psychic weight with them, and the freedom they give us is a burden as well as a gift. They should be chosen carefully (and choices are hard).

There’s a direct and inverse relationship between the level of the best things in my life (like my happiness, my creativity, my productivity) and the number of obligations I allow myself to incur.

This is the land where the good is the enemy of the best, the place where you must have that deep and burning Yes that lets you say No to everything else. It’s a hard, hard place for an empathetic or community-minded or charitable person to function well in, because we want to help, we want to do our bit and be part of the world (and increasingly we have a great Fear Of Missing Out).

But each obligation we incur eliminates all other options for that particular period of time and that portion of our strength and attention. It limits our freedom of maneuver, confines us to a smaller and smaller space.

And in that space we're controlled by others, obligated to be there at a certain time for a certain thing, unable to make our own decisions, because we already made the decision to commit to something, to them.

Of course not all obligations are outward-facing. We can (should, must) make obligations to ourselves. But those should be carefully selected, too, because they are the most important, the most potentially limiting or elevating. They contribute immensely to the nature of our being, who we are and who we can become.

Infinite ideas, carefully selected options, few obligations, and most of those obligations owed to yourself alone — that is the recipe for a good life, I think.