I have a complaint to lodge with the universe.
This complaint comes at the conclusion of many months of chronic indecision and an eleventh-hour major declaration: I’m too privileged. In my life I’ve held in my possession too much opportunity, talent, money, curiosity and success. I’ve been exposed to too many inspiring stories, met too many charismatic people, had too many riveting conversations about too many disparate and fascinating subjects.
In short, my life has been too good. I’ve been too lucky.
No, the above is not a satirical jab at the bellyaching of the average upper-middle-class college student. I’m not mocking myself and my fellow Duke students—I’m actually right on board with the self-pitying sentiment of the overprivileged.
In fact, I volunteer myself to lead the march of the lucky and whiny.
A word to the skeptical: I don’t mean to sound like just another trivial brat, and I know the seemingly ridiculous nature of my objections. We should all presumably want more choice, more freedom, more room to breathe and to explore and to “find” ourselves. But there’s a sense in which too much room breeds indirection. Sometimes the lack of restrictions becomes very similar to a lack of guidance.
The much-glorified freedom to choose may not be all that freeing after all.
The persistent problem of intelligent yet indecisive, gifted yet worried college students is the abundance of choice they have in their own futures. In high school, we were all patted on the back, told we had oodles of potential and sent on our way to higher education—where our potential would supposedly translate into real skills and lifelong passions. Our prospects were inspiring when we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed youngsters destined for great things.
Once we step foot on the hallowed cobblestones of Duke University, however, an unanswerable question greets and haunts us well into our first few semesters of collegiate life: Now what? Now that we’ve shown ourselves to be adequately clever and decently competent, how are we supposed to select the ideal path from the vast array open to us?
Jad Abumrad of WNYC’s “Radiolab” characterizes this anxiety as “choice angst.” It’s the unsettling fear that accompanies a decision when the stakes are high, the options are vast and the choice isn’t obvious. When we are forced to pick an identity out of a seemingly infinite list of possibilities, we’re plagued with the doubt that we will likely make a mistake and end up less happy than our capacity would have allowed us. We feel lost in an immense and jumbled sea of opportunities.
After all, the selection of a correct answer from a handful of alternatives is much easier than from a greater variety. And as rational creatures, humans don’t like to miss out on things—we especially don’t want to forego our chance at the greatest possible future fulfillment. Picking only four classes from a catalog of hundreds is difficult. Picking only one area of nominal interest out of a list of more than 40 is difficult. Picking one post-graduation path out of countless professions? Yep, pretty gosh-darn difficult.
Thus the insecurity, thus the worry, thus the major-hopping and department-dabbling and future anxiety.
On “Radiolab,” psychologist Barry Schwartz blamed this indecision on our perception that we live in “a world in which everything is available.” Regardless of whether this is actually true, it’s definitely a point of pride of every institution of higher learning. And though I’m duly impressed by the buckets of diverse opportunities dumped in my lap by Duke on a daily basis, I also acknowledge the apprehension with which I sometimes view my own as-of-yet undetermined future.
So, my complaint with the universe isn’t an impassioned petition for redress so much as it is a recognition of the fact that even super-privileged, intelligent and promising people can have psychologically legitimate concerns.
When I compare my prospects with those of my parents at the around the same age (in Maoist China, they had little hope of a college education), I know that my life has been and will likely continue to be more secure, comfortable and prosperous than theirs. I’m grateful—really, I am.
But I stand by my right to feel doubt. Specifically, I stand by my right to feel choice angst without also feeling guilty for being privileged and ungrateful. In a Maslowian sense, self-actualization is every individual’s greatest concern, even those whose other, more basic needs are satisfied. It is on this level that any individual—even one to whom the most extensive amount of opportunities has been granted—may find herself at a loss.
Shining Li is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every Tuesday.
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