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The philosopher Odo Marquard has noted a correlation in the German language between the word zwei, which means ‘two,’ and the word zweifel, which means ‘doubt’ – suggesting that two of anything brings the automatic possibility of uncertainty to our lives. Now imagine a life in which every day a person is presented with not two or even three but dozens of choices, and you can begin to grasp why the modern world has become, even with all its advantages, a neurosis-generating machine of the highest order. In a world of such abundant possibility, many of us simply go limp from indecision. Or we derail our life’s journey again and again, backing up to try the doors we neglected on the first round, desperate to get it right this time. Or we become compulsive comparers – always measuring our lives against some other person’s life, secretly wondering if we should have taken her path instead.
