Your Power to Choose Is Unlimited

BY OLIVER BURKEMAN

​

Everybody knows the feeling of being unable to make a certain life choice, how-ever much you'd like to, because circumstances simply don't allow it. Maybe you think you can't end an unhappy marriage because of the emotional impact on yourself and your loved ones, or that you can't leave a disappointing career because of the financial cost.

​

On a more mundane level, you might feel that you can't spend half an hour working on an exhilarating creative project, because there are too many emails to be answered or too many household chores that need completing.

​

These are valid concerns. But the truth, though it often makes people indignant to hear it, is that it's almost never literally the case that you have to meet a work deadline, honor a commitment, answer an email, fulfill a family obligation or anything else. The astounding reality-in the words of Sheldon B. Kopp, a genial and brilliant American psychotherapist who died in 1999—is that you're pretty much free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

​

Consequences aren't optional. Every choice you make comes with some sort of consequences, because at any instant you can only pick one path, and must deal with the repercussions of not picking any of the others. Spending a week's holiday in Rome means not spending that same week in Paris. Avoiding a conflict in the short term means letting a bad situation fester.

​

Freedom isn't a matter of somehow wriggling free of the costs of your choice—that's never an option. It means realizing that nothing can stop you from doing anything at all, so long as you're willing to pay those costs.

​

Unless you're being physically coerced into doing something, the notion that you "have to" do it just means that you don't want to pay the price of refusing to do it. After all, it's perfectly possible for you to quit your job with no backup plan. You could book a one-way ticket to Rio de Janeiro, or rob a bank, or tell your social media followers your honest views.

​

The economist Thomas Sowell summed things up by saying that there are no solutions, only trade-offs. The only questions to ask about any choice is what the price is, and whether or not it's worth paying.

​

This can come as a revelation and a liberation to the anxious among us, by reminding us that most of the potential consequences we face aren't really worth agonizing about. If ignoring an email causes its sender a flicker of irritation, or if your in-laws frown at your approach to parenting, the correct response might very well be: So what?

​

Laura Vanderkam, who has interviewed many working mothers for books on how to manage work and family life, frequently hears versions of the same refrain: "I can't relax in the evening until the children's toys are tidied away!" But the reality, of course, is that you absolutely can relax with the toys not tidied away. "There is no 11 p.m. home inspection, with someone coming round to see if all the toys are picked up," notes Vanderkam. You need only be willing to pay the price of relaxing in such circumstances, which is a less-than-pristine home

​

Of course, the consequences of any given choice might be vastly more severe for some people than for others. There are employees who would get fired if they ignored a few emails, or spouses who would be violently abused for a toy-strewn house. But even these grossly unfair realities don't change the fact that choice is a matter of weighing the trade-offs.

​

If a path you'd love to take is genuinely likely to leave you destitute, or seriously harmed in some other way, then you probably shouldn't take it.

​

But for most of us, if we're being honest with ourselves, the temptation is often to exaggerate potential consequences, so as to spare ourselves the burden of making a bold choice. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed that there's a secret comfort in telling yourself you've got no options, because it's easier to wallow in feeling trapped than to face the dizzying responsibilities of freedom.

 

Once you approach life as a matter of trade-offs,

it's easier to dare to say no to things.

​

Once you begin to approach life as a matter of trade-offs and consequences, it's easier to say no to things you might not previously have dared to turn down. Some people are naturals at this. "Oh dear," the English comedian Peter Cook is said to have responded when invited by a friend to have dinner with Prince Andrew. "Checking my diary, I find I'm watching television that night."

​

At other times, though, you'll decide to go ahead with an unpleasant obligation because you understand the cost of saying no and don't want to incur it. For example, if a friend asks you to help her move this weekend, you may decide that the stress and disappointment you'd cause her by refusing is a price you're unwilling to pay. Notice how different that is how different it feels-from grudgingly saying yes because you "have no choice," then resenting it for days.

​

Whatever choice you make, so long as you make it in the spirit of facing the consequences, the result will be freedom-not freedom from limitation, which is something we unfortunately never get to experience, but freedom in limitation. Freedom to examine the trade- offs-because there will always be trade-offs-and then to opt for whichever trade-off you like.

​

 

This essay is adapted from Oliver Burkeman's new book "Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for a What Counts," published Oct. 8 by Farrar Straus Giroux.