Choosing creates new options

We often imagine the future as a fixed menu from which we must make the right selection.

Before committing to walk 3,000 kilometres across Japan, I could have travelled somewhere else, started another project, stayed home or kept waiting for an option that felt more certain.

As long as I did not choose, every possibility appeared to remain available.

Then I chose Japan.

The decision closed some options. I could no longer use those five months for something else.

But it also changed what was available.

I began learning Japanese. Planning the route introduced me to places I had never heard of. I arranged a preparation trip to Fukuoka. Sharing the project connected me with people I would otherwise never have met.

The decision generated ideas, questions and possibilities that had not been waiting somewhere on the original menu.

They did not exist yet.

This is what we often miss when making difficult choices.

We compare the possibilities currently visible as though choosing can only remove some of them.

But action produces new information. It develops capabilities. It changes our circumstances and brings other people into our lives.

It also changes the person who makes the decision.

The Perspective Shift

We cannot choose our best future from a complete set of options because that complete set does not exist.

Some possibilities are created only after we commit and begin moving.

I still do not know where the decision to cross Japan will lead.

But I already know that waiting for the complete menu would have kept some of its most interesting possibilities from ever appearing.

How big is your future? Perhaps part of it does not exist yet.

Walk your talk,
Franck

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