Overcorrecting
Or how you know you’re lost.
Throughout the binge drinking days of my 20s, a common refrain was “I’m never drinking again”. Of course nobody actually meant it. Throbbing headaches would fade, giving way to the promise of the next night out. Pints chased by Jägerbombs while Kesha Tik tok’d. The cycle continued. What I didn’t hear during those years was “hmmm maybe I should drink in moderation” or “perhaps it’s worth having a think about why excessive drunkenness is so normalised in our culture…”
I’ve seen that tendency to overcorrect play out in multiple scenarios. At work, one slow quarter prompts an overhaul of the entire company strategy. Heartbroken by the end of a committed relationship, the dumped updates their Hinge profile to “ethically non-monogamous”. The serial sedentarist signs-up for a marathon. Sometimes overcorrecting can be beneficial or temporary. Like spontaneously booking a sun holiday in the depths of winter. An infusion of Vitamin D and a respite from the daily drudgery reminds us that, on balance, our life is quite a good fit after all. It just needs a few tweaks or time to let the initial pain dissipate. However, when an event elicits a particular type of panic, one which makes us think “I must do the complete opposite”, it may be a sign that we are lost. Abandoning course being the refuge of those who no longer have faith.
Lately, I’ve been grappling with that temptation as I contemplate next steps. I’m no longer motivated by the drivers which led me to where I am today. I’ve been wandering through the cave of disenchantment for some time now, at peace with the darkness, but desperately looking for glimmers of light, hoping for any sign of which path to take.
Do I stay on my current trajectory - same city, same job, same lifestyle - making incremental changes as I chase alignment, or do I forge ahead into a radical new direction, mentally burning the boats, refusing to accept the parts of my life that no longer fit come what may. But in which direction? Knowing what you don’t want is not the same as knowing what you want. Choices are rarely that binary. Optionality is its own curse.
Logically - Rationally! - I know the most sensible choice is to embrace the incremental approach. To experiment, as I’ve preached to anyone who would listen over the last few months. It’s what I would recommend to a friend. And yet, I keep coming back to this quote, “If you want a bigger life, you’re going to have to take bigger risks.”
Am I in danger of over-correcting and throwing the baby out with the proverbial bathwater? Maybe. The thing about writing while in the messy middle is that there are no neat conclusions. But of one thing I am certain. You can’t think your way into knowing what you want. You can only feel it by interacting with life. So for now, I choose to keep an open-mind, open-heart and follow my intuition.
“Optionality is now a curse.” A couple weeks ago, one friend of mine said something along the line of people like us are used to optimise for optionality, which hit me deep. I think ultimately it is a contemplation on optimal choices. But optimal compared to what, what is the standard, how can we compare things when we can only choose to live in one. So on your point of overcorrecting, I am not sure if you can really know because you will not live your so called not over corrected path once you choose another. Even if you go back to the original path in a later stage of your life, the circumstances and who you are as a person would have changed, so it would never be an apple to apple comparison.
Sometimes you can't gauge it as an overcorrection until you get to the end of the swing.