I leave Wednesday. I've got six months and a list of about thirty countries, and every place I pick is twenty-nine places I don't get to see. I spent weeks trying to build the perfect route. Then it hit me: there is no route where I don't miss out on something. Whatever I choose, I'm settling. So I picked Lisbon and booked it.
Here's the thing nobody wants to hear. You're going to settle. In everything. Not because you're not good enough. Because your time is finite.
There are eight billion people on this planet. The odds that the person you end up with is the single best person on earth for you are zero. Somebody better exists. Somebody always will. Same with your job. You'll probably outgrow every job you take in your twenties, and there is always a better career out there. Same with where you live, where you travel, what you do with a Saturday. Endless options, one life. You cannot have all of it, so at some point you stop and pick, and picking means missing out on everything else.
Most guys hear that and think the answer is to not settle. Keep looking. Keep the options open. And that guy doesn't end up with the best girl or the best job. He ends up with nothing, still scrolling, comparing everything real to something imaginary. The better one out there isn't real. What's in front of you is.
So the question was never whether you'll settle. You will. The question is whether you can accept it.
Because that's the whole lesson. Full acceptance that you are going to miss out on things, a lot of things, no matter what you do. Once you actually believe that, choosing gets easy. You stop asking "is there something better" because the answer is always yes and it tells you nothing. You start asking "is this good, and do I want it," which is the only question you can actually answer.
One more thing, because this is where most guys get stuck. The "better option" in your head has no flaws. That's not because it's better. It's because you've never lived with it. The girl you have snores and gets moody on Sundays. The girl you imagine doesn't, because she isn't real. Real things lose to imaginary things every single time. So stop comparing what you have to something that only exists in your head. Compare it to the real options you actually had in front of you, and you'll find most of the time you chose fine.
Lisbon isn't the best first stop in the world. I'm missing out on twenty-nine other places by going there. I've made peace with that, and Wednesday I'm on the plane. That's what settling looks like when you accept it instead of fighting it. It looks like a happier life.
— Noah Danenhower
P.S. What's the thing you keep not choosing because something better might be out there? One line. Reply.