If nothing tells me what I’m supposed to do with my life, how am I meant to choose?
- Jason Gorbett, MA, MA, PhPrac
- 6 minutes ago
- 5 min read
At some point, the instructions stop arriving. The signals that once guided your decisions — grades, milestones, approvals, expectations — no longer carry the authority they used to. You can still see the options in front of you, but none of them announce themselves as the one. They’re all plausible. None are compelling. And the absence of a clear directive begins to feel less like freedom and more like exposure.
This moment often gets framed as a confidence problem or a lack of clarity. But that diagnosis misses something essential. The difficulty isn’t that you don’t know how to choose. It’s that you’re being asked to choose without an external justification strong enough to relieve you of responsibility. The discomfort comes from realizing that whatever you do next will not be validated in advance.
Earlier in life, choice is often disguised. You move forward by complying with a structure that already exists. The path may be demanding, but it’s legible. You know what counts as progress. You know how success is measured. Even rebellion has a reference point. You’re responding to something — pushing against it or aligning with it — but in either case, you’re not deciding from nothing.
Eventually, that scaffolding falls away. Or it stops feeling binding. You might still have commitments, roles, and obligations, but they no longer explain themselves. You can continue out of habit, or loyalty, or fear, but the reasons feel thinner than they used to. And without a reason that feels sufficient, every option starts to look arbitrary. If nothing tells me what to do, how do I choose?
This is where many people freeze. Not because they lack intelligence or motivation, but because arbitrariness feels intolerable. To act without a justification that can be defended — to yourself or others — feels reckless. You want a reason that doesn’t collapse under scrutiny. Something that makes the choice feel necessary rather than merely permissible. But necessity is exactly what’s missing.
Philosophically, this is not an accident. It’s a consequence of living in a world where inherited meanings no longer command unquestioned authority. Religious, cultural, and institutional frameworks once provided answers to the question of how to live — not perfect answers, but stable ones. When those frameworks weaken, the burden they carried doesn’t disappear. It transfers.
It transfers to the individual.
This is what makes choice feel so heavy now. You’re not just choosing an action. You’re choosing the reasons by which that action will make sense. And there is no higher court of appeal. No final authority that can certify your decision as correct. Whatever meaning your life takes will be meaning you have, in some sense, authorized.
That realization can be paralyzing. It creates the sense that you must get it right, because there will be no one else to blame if you don’t. And so you wait — for clarity, for certainty, for a sign that will absolve you of authorship. But the waiting itself becomes a kind of decision, one that quietly shapes your life while preserving the illusion of neutrality.
The trouble is that neutrality is a myth. Not choosing is still a way of choosing — just without acknowledging it. Time passes either way. Opportunities close. Habits harden. A life takes shape, whether you endorse it or not.
What’s often missed in this moment is that the demand for a decisive reason is itself a holdover from a world where reasons were given. When nothing tells you what you’re supposed to do, it’s tempting to treat that silence as a failure — of culture, of guidance, of meaning itself. But the silence is also an opening. Not to certainty, but to responsibility of a different kind.
This responsibility isn’t about finding the right answer. It’s about being able to stand behind the one you give.
To choose in this context is not to discover a pre-existing purpose. It’s to commit to a direction and allow meaning to emerge through engagement. That doesn’t make the choice arbitrary in the shallow sense. It makes it interpretive. The meaning of the choice is not fixed at the moment you make it; it develops as you live it out.
This is difficult for people who are used to thinking well before acting. Because here, thinking cannot complete the task on its own. No amount of reflection will produce a reason so airtight that it removes risk. The question isn’t, “Which option is objectively justified?” It’s, “Which one am I willing to take responsibility for — not just now, but over time?”
Seen this way, the absence of instruction is not a void to be filled, but a condition to be reckoned with. It asks for a different posture toward life — one that accepts uncertainty as part of what it means to choose at all. Not resignation, but seriousness. Not cynicism, but commitment without guarantee.
This doesn’t mean every choice must be dramatic or final. Most of life unfolds through provisional commitments — paths you take seriously without pretending they are eternal. The problem arises when provisionality turns into avoidance, when openness becomes a way of never having to say yes to anything fully.
Learning how to choose under these conditions is not a matter of technique. It’s a philosophical skill. It involves clarifying what you’re willing to risk, what you’re unwilling to sacrifice, and what kind of story you could live with telling about yourself. These are not questions with universal answers. But they are questions that can be explored with rigor.
If this uncertainty feels familiar, it may not be a sign that you’re lost. It may be a sign that you’ve reached the point where inherited answers no longer suffice. That moment can feel destabilizing, but it’s also where a life begins to take on a distinctly personal shape.
Sometimes it helps to think these questions through alone. Sometimes it helps to do so in dialogue — not to be told what to do, but to examine the reasons you’re tempted to live by. In either case, the work begins by taking the absence of instruction seriously, rather than trying to escape it.
When the guidance you once relied on falls away, it can be useful to have a space where the question itself is taken seriously. I offer conversations where we examine the reasons behind your choices, the responsibilities they carry, and what it might mean to live with them consciously.
Written by Jason Gorbett, M.A., M.A, Philosophical Practitioner
With 30+ years of experience as a writer, teacher, traveler, and student of Jungian depth psychology, myth, and symbols, Jason supports individuals, couples, and facilitates groups using philosophical inquiry, narrative reframing, parts-based exploration, and ethical reflection to support clarity, boundaries, and intentional living.