Binary

Life is all about trade-offs and choices. Most of life is about bit by bit finding better replacements for one tiny piece of your life at a time – straight upgrades, with no drawbacks. They exist, they just have costs. Often the cost is the time of discovery; sometimes it’s the effort to earn the upgrade. But one way or another, we pay juice to improve our existence.

But then there are the other kinds of choices. Not easy choices between a good and a bad option where the only cost is figuring out which is which. But the genuinely challenging choices between two bad or – often more difficult – two great choices.

My middle child faced a serious dilemma tonight. Having cleaned her plate during dinner, she (by family law and custom) was entitled to one desert. But alas, there were two delicious options! Two treats were available and she had to pick one. She was nearly paralyzed. I even suggested that she could take a half portion of each, but even the sub-decision of “do I trade half of this for half of that” was agonizing.

Both because I don’t want her to over-indulge in sweets and because this was a good lesson, I held her feet to the fire on the choice and didn’t let her cheat. We may be able, with sufficient moxie, to have anything – but never everything. Learning to choose between equivalent options is surprisingly difficult. But eternally necessary.

In the end, she found the greatest solution – time. She can take half of each tonight, and save the other half of each for tomorrow. If the horizons stretch long enough, we can make all the choices we like.