The Ripple Effect of Everything You Do

Defying perfectionism and the binaries of right/wrong or better/worse decisions.

I’ve been anxious for no reason the past few days, and concurrently having heart palpitations—yesterday, I realized that the magnesium supplement I’ve taken for the past few days is messing with my heart rate, and that my mind has capitalized on the opportunity to generate anxiety and a string of reasons for why. (I could be wrong, obviously, but my theory has already shaken out to be true.)

This realization more easily came because of all that I’ve been reading and thinking about lately. (You can read last week’s post “The Science of No Free Will” for more context.) In short, I’m contemplating just how many things we do not have control over, which includes most of what our bodies do, all day long. And yet, everything we do or don’t do has an effect on something down the line in the future.

The Illusion of The Perfect Choice

Since I can remember, like age 10 or 11, I’ve run into this piece of berating perfectionism in me; this perpetually unsatisfied desire to get things “right” and make the correct decisions. The illusion of perfection still does limit me, although not greatly; that said, perfectionism can be absolutely crippling, or send people frantically running the hamster wheel all their lives. More and more, I can recognize how perfectionism presents in me as self-destruction, and it rears its head far less frequently than it did during my adolescence.  

Where the illusion of perfection does still rear up is in the realm of decision making. Despite all the therapists who say “there are no wrong decisions, you always learn something”, and other such platitudes geared toward neurotic people, I still keep trying to believe that there is a right decision; there are right/wrong choices; or, at the very least, there are better/worse options. I always want to choose the correct, better option; I want the path of least resistance with the most ease, even through challenge. When I strip it all down, I’m just afraid of doing it wrong.

(If I really think about it, that does sound like a boring, unattainable life. And thus, perfection is rendered an illusion that I don’t really want, once again.)

I guess I think that if I make correct decisions, I’ll really believe that it was the right decision, and that this will be the confirmation. The problem is that this rarely happens: I’m only pretty sure about a decision, some of the time, and I can’t count on these odds improving much.

In contemplating how much is out of my control (like what a little magnesium powder will do to my body), I’m coming more organically to a different orientation on decision making: ‘right/wrong’ and ‘better/worse’ binaries don’t make much sense anymore. Aside from making ethically or morally bad decisions (which is an important point), the concepts of ‘right/wrong’ and ‘better/worse’ might be…fictitious. My thoughts were further clarified by this podcast interview I listened to called, “If Life Is Random, Is It Meaningless?”. The conversation was between an economist and a political scientist, Brian Klaas, who wrote a book called “Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters”.¹ 

The main point Klaas made is that no matter what you decide, you aren’t able to know what kind of ripple effects that decision will have. Decisions that feel good or right may lead to terrible results later on, and vice versa. “Our best and worst moments are inextricably linked”, Klaas says, and he’s right: everything that’s happened, good or bad or neutral, are all linked in the continuum of your life (and of those lives that came before yours).

Even though we don’t know where one decision might eventually lead, everything we do matters and has an effect on the future, even if that effect appears insignificant. If that is true, then there isn’t any right or wrong decision to make, and the relevant question we might ask ourselves is: how can I act most honestly? Focusing on our own integrity and the little slice of life we have agency over is really all we’re able to do, anyways. The ripples aren’t up to us, but the stones are.

Considering how what I choose will inevitably affect my life in some way, but that there’s no way I can know how it will affect me, takes some pressure off of all those little decisions I think I can be making perfectly. It stops being about about trying to get it right, because I cannot get it right. What’s going to happen is what’s going to happen; all I can do is focus on my sliver of agency and act with integrity.

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Perhaps instead of fixating on whether our decisions are right/wrong or better/worse, we can practice deciding from a place of curiosity and experimentation. There will be terrible and wonderful things we experience over the course of our lives, and most of it is due to factors we cannot control. What you’re doing now is neither right or wrong, better or worse than the thing you didn’t choose instead. It’s just like this now. And tomorrow will be like it is then. 

To round out with a little Ram Dass wisdom: “Being here now is the best preparation for when you are [in the future] or when [the future] is here now.”

So, be here now. Focus on here now, and don’t worry too much about what the ripple effects of this moment are going to be. You’ll have to wait and find out.

Maggie

1. It must be said that my dad sent me this interview; I don’t typically ingest economists, but exceptions can be made.