Monday, February 21, 2011

The counterfactual lives

We have learned in our statistics and econometrics classes to think about the counterfactual of a given situation. What if instead of this happening, something else happened. What if we didn't give the kids schooling what would be the outcome in terms of GDP growth.

Apparently, we internalized this concept very well. And we are now imagining endless counterfactual lives. We spend a lot of time second-guessing our decisions and mentally punishing ourselves for not having made the right choices.

What if I had moved to country A because I really liked their culture, and continued dating B because he was so amazing and maybe I gave up on him very fast, and what if I pushed a little more for a job at C where I would be making a lot of money? Wouldn't my life be great? Or if what if I have stayed at our first job, married our first love and by now have amazing and brilliant kids, wouldn't I feel satisfied?

The problem we are facing now is that we have endless possibilities instead of A, B and C. We could easily move to several countries, we have met pretty awesome people and we could have found many different jobs.

However, our idea of counterfactual lives is very biased. We never imagine that we would miss our culture if we moved to country A, or that B would turn out to be an unreliable womanizer or the fantastic job at C would have given us a heart attack at 35. The grass is always greener on the other side.

We tend to think that from all the possibles lives we could have picked, we chose the a sub-par one.

Are we just non-committal freaks, trying to have all opportunities open all the time? Are we obsessive comparing our lives to others? Are we just trying to improve all the time?

Two thing come to my mind when I think about this:
  • a Tony Judt quote that Meg posted the other day: " Who could do any better in the circumstances? The answer, of course, is 'a better me' and it is surprising how often we ask that we be a better version of our present self--in the full knowledge of just how difficult it was getting this far". 
  • Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind - in the movies, Joel try to erase his story with Clementine. He gives up in the middle. Our memories and our mistakes are just part of who we are.


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