The price of elsewhere

The grass is greener wherever you decide to water it.

Oftentimes, in conversations with mates, we find ourselves circling the same familiar struggle: decision paralysis. Two options. Sometimes more. Each carrying its own promise, its own imagined future, and its own version of what it might become.

Before entering into this article, I would like to also acknowledge that having multiple options is a privilege, that many people around the world do not have such opportunity to make choices for themselves.

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When it comes to making decisions, there's a playbook: we make pros and cons lists, carefully weighing outcomes. We research, rationalise, and replay scenarios in our heads. We seek advice from a friend, a partner, or someone whose emotional distance makes their perspective feel objective and grounded.

And then EVENTUALLY, a decision is made.

With it comes a small sense of relief. Just a quiet comfort of knowing the choice itself is no longer unresolved.

But, that relief rarely lasts.

Once we step onto the path we’ve chosen, I have seen that our attention begins to drift toward the one we didn’t take. We wonder how it might be going. We imagine what could have happened. We picture alternative versions of ourselves living parallel lives that seem smoother, happier, or more aligned. In areas like:

• When we have a full-time job, we wonder what it would be like to work for ourselves. When we do, we miss the stability of a paycheck.

• When we live in an urban city, we dream of space, nature and quiet. When we live outside it, we miss the energy and movement.

• When we’re single, we imagine the comfort of partnership. When we’re in a relationship, we miss our independence.

• When we’re climbing the ladder, we long for balance. When things slow down, we worry we’re falling behind.

Do any of these thoughts look familiar?

For a film that explores the human nature of opportunity costs, I highly recommend to watch The Worst Person In The World.

The irony is that we often become more generous with the unchosen option than we ever were while deciding.

Meanwhile, the path we are on - the one we actively selected - comes under harsher scrutiny. We notice its limitations. We question its pace. We compare how it feels to how we thought it would feel.

Doubt creeps in, and I would say it's not because the choice is wrong, but because we remain mentally divided. This habit quietly pulls us out of the present.

We move forward, but with one eye constantly looking sideways.

The challenge, then, isn’t choosing perfectly. It’s choosing fully.

There is strength in staying on our track. In resisting the urge to constantly compare. In recognising that every decision contains both gain and loss, and that no single path grants access to all possible outcomes. Allowing ourselves to experience what we’ve chosen honestly, without mentally living somewhere else at the same time. We stop asking “What if?” and begin asking “What is?”

Back in high school days, we studied this Robert Frost poem, and I think it holds true, more today than ever.

By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

There’s something beautiful about simply watering the grass in front of us.