On how we die millions of deaths each day
Each second we make decisions. Some of them are conscious some are unconscious. May it be simple decisions like if we want an apple or a banana or harder decisions like if we want to go to college at another town or at our hometown. Even when we do nothing, we have made a decision. When we just lay on our couch and watching tv. When a big decision is waiting to be made and we do nothing, we have made a decision.
WE CAN NOT NOT DECIDE.
Now let´s think about the opportunity costs of each decision. In the long run it doesn´t seem to really matter if we have eaten a banana or an apple. But it matters if we eat an apple or junk food, one decision leads to good health and fitness the other to obesity and unhealthiness.
When we decide to go to college in our home town and live with our parents, this may lead us to a good degree and a safe job, when we go to college in another town we may have more social contacts, do more risky things and end up as an artist.
When we sit on our couch and watch tv all day we may feel comfortable but if you had gone out you have met the love of your life, a new business partner or find a hundred bucks on the street.
With a decision you, make you choose a life, while you cut off all alternative potential life. So each second we cut off millions of lives we could live, means that we kill ourselves millions of times a day.
Kierkegaard brought the term Angst into English language. According to Kierkegaard humans have, opposite to animals, a freedom of choosing our own actions. This freedom of choice isn´t only a positive thing, but is also terrifying us, which he described with the word Angst.
Now, we have so many decisions that we may fear and with the knowledge that each decision kills millions of versions of us it may not be easier. Angst can be like a little annoying child sometimes. We opt to play it safe most of the times or even let them decide for us, because we fear the consequences of risky decisions. Our information is limited and we never know about the outcome of a possibility. But what we can know, is the possible life to which a decision could lead us, if we commit to it (and succeed).
When we have hard decisions to face, when we are second guessing ourselves, when we don´t know any further, we can always ask ourselves: “To which life will lead me to my decision? Which lives will I cut off?” not as a mentally scarecrow but as a guidepost. The knowledge that we have cut off so many lives to be at the point that we are now can be a very freeing thing. One day, and we will never know, when this day is, maybe even today, we will die a real physical death. So, when we right now have a decision, we may ask ourselves: “When I choose this way now and kill this and that possible life of me, will this be the life I wanted to live, when I die my real, physical death?”
