Settling Without Closure
When it comes to booking flights, trains, or a place to sleep each night, I’d say I’ve gotten quite proficient at it this year. After all, I’ve had a lot of practice. Now that I know the best websites, optimal filters, and strategies to save money in various ways, you’d think this process might have become easier for me, or, at the very least, less time-consuming. Unfortunately, this isn’t exactly the case.
I may now feel more confident in my ability to find the best options, but that hasn’t made me better at picking from any of those options. Are options objectively good for their inherent value, or only relative to other choices? Making a decision between five home stays with very middling reviews, or five apartments with exceptional testimonials can be just as difficult, even if any of the apartments would be clearly better than any of the home stays, in a vacuum.
I felt this decision paralysis and ultimately, frustration, when trying to find accomodation in Hoi An for a large group. You see, every single option I’m sure would be incredible. Great reviews. Nice rooms. Cheap. Very cheap. But none without a flaw. Perhaps there was a construction site nearby, or noisy motorbikes, or a leaky shower, or firm mattress. There is always something. We want to rent bikes, but the place that had the best location couldn’t rent out enough bikes for all of us. Those with free bikes weren’t in the best location.
It’s all nitpicking. Simple to acknowledge in hindsight, but aggravating in the moment. I feel, incorrectly, that with all the practice I’ve had now, I should be able to find that perfect accomodation, every time. It doesn’t work like that, though. Once the standard has been set that high, it doesn’t matter that all of the choices are amazing. If they’re all equally amazing, I’ll still pour many stressful hours into it, looking into every tiny detail.
In the end, it is a deeply futile exercise. The opportunity cost will be a heavy burden. Even after I spitefully settle on picking something, resigning myself to the world of finite imperfection, I tend not to feel great about it. Like I should just go back and check one more time, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
Nevertheless, being forced to make decisions that I don’t feel fully confident in has brought valuable lessons. I have to sit with the idea that uncertainty, and future anxieties, will always be there in some form, no matter what I choose, nor how foolproof that decision seems. Equally, closure doesn’t always arrive. I’ll never truly know whether I picked the right option. Even if the room is great—what if one of the others I discarded would have been spectacular?!
Of course, the context of booking accomodation is both a very privileged, but also microscopic, example. It doesn’t really matter all that much. But, any game of comparison never produces many winners, or at least, many people who feel satisfied. There will always be more to strive for. Higher stakes, higher standards, or different criteria entirely.
Wherever you’re hoping to have it all figured out, closure probably won’t arrive. The allure and guilt of paths you decided not to take will always sit with you. So, embrace the limitations of finitude. You can never sample the limitless possibilities. Trust yourself to just pick something, and go with it. The effort required to chase 100% certainty and assurance, versus say 80%, yields heavily diminished returns, but a whole lot of stress, at least in my experience. Again, though, this advice is far easier to write about than apply to my own life…
