You can’t optimize your way to being a good person
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Over the past several years, I’ve spent ages agonizing over every decision I made because I felt like I had to do the best possible thing. Not an okay thing, not a good thing — the morally best thing.
I stopped working on a children’s novel because I began to suspect it wouldn’t be useful to anyone. I berated myself for not meditating every day even though I know it makes me a kinder person. I spent a year crying over a breakup because I feared I’d just lost my optimal soulmate and was now doomed to a suboptimal life, one that wouldn’t be as meaningful as it could be, one that fell short of its potential.
I thought maybe it was just me, an anxious elder millennial with a perfectionist streak. But then I noticed the same style of thinking in others.
