More Learnings from Richard Powers: Playground
Richard Powers’ Playground explores what it means to be human through interwoven life stories, unexpected connections, and rich scientific and philosophical themes. One storyline follows the mayor of Makatea, a small Pacific island. Didier faces a pivotal decision. Should he allow foreign investors to use the island for a futuristic floating city project? This would bring economic growth, healthcare, and education. Or should he resist yet another wave of exploitation? Another threat to Makatea’s fragile marine ecosystem and increased deepens dependence on foreign capital.
His wife offers a striking perspective: “Impossible decisions are really the easy decisions. If two choices are impossible to choose between, it means they have equal merit. Either choice can have your belief. It doesn’t matter which you choose. You shed one chooser and grow into another.”
Powers captures something fundamental about decision-making here. When two options are both compelling yet lead to vastly different futures, the choice is not about finding the single correct answer—it is about choosing who you will become. As I’ve written before, relentless search for the “right” choice can get us stuck and grind us down.
Hard Choices and Human Agency
The philosopher Ruth Chang describes such dilemmas as “hard choices” precisely because the options are neither better nor worse, yet not equal. The usual tools of cost-benefit analysis or value trade off won’t settle the matter either. We might be tempted to think that we could flip a coin, but that would feel arbitrary and unsatisfactory. We wouldn’t want to base a life-changing choice such as which job to take or whether or not to have children on a dice roll. Instead, Chang argues, this is an invitation for human agency to unfold. We create reasons for our choice and, crucially, own them.
Inhabiting Your Choice and Creating New Conditions
Returning to Playground, the mayor’s crisis mirrors what many of us face in pivotal decisions. We fear regret, we anticipate trade-offs, and we hesitate. Chang provides an uplifting take on the dilemma of hard choices: If all the choices we had to make were clearly ‘solveable’, if there always was a ‘right’ choice, then life would be boring. Even worse, it would be practically predetermined: As rational beings, of course we would always take the option that offers more value, go for the better option, select the ‘right’ choice. In a world where all choices are clear cut, where it is obvious what the better option is, we essentially would automatically take the better action. We would be purely re-active.
Hard choices, Chang says, give us an opportunity to really seize our agency; to actively shape who we want to become and where we want to go. So the next time you find yourself stuck between two seemingly impossible options, ask yourself: Who will I become if I choose this path? More importantly, what intention am I bringing to this decision? Once you decide, inhabit that choice completely. It’s not about eliminating doubt—it’s about creating conviction and shaping the conditions of your future with mindful intention.
