At every moment in time (at every millisecond) we almost have infinite choices:
- Wash the dishes;
- Walk the dog;
- Have a nap;
- Start a business;
- Ad nausea…
And we need to choose.
Even if we don’t choose, we have still chosen.
At that moment in time (and at every millisecond), that choice sends us on a certain trajectory.
If also we have an opportunity cost.
One door opens, and a whole lot of other doors close.
Other trajectories close off too.
We are on a zig-zag path.
It’s like a big choose own adventure story but with no predictable ending!
And we make this decision based on information we have at the time.
If we had more information, we may make different choices.
Hence why hindsight is said to be 50/50.
But it’s never really 50/50.
The problem is we will never know how life would have turned out if we made a different choice.
It’s totally impossible to know.
Why?
This is because every moment we make infinite choices.
Infinite multiplied by infinite means infinite futures.
And as we only can control ourselves, multiply this by 7 billion people in the same situation, and it’s so random.
This brings Chaos Theory into a new light.
Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics, and it is focused on the behaviour of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions.
So no need to regret anything: you have no way of knowing how it would have turned out.
You never know in retrospect.