FEBRUARY 4 ― So you were born to be someone great. A great life is just waiting beyond the corner for you to seize it and start living it. You can feel this truth in your bones.

You’re sure that someday you’ll leave your mark on the world, something that lives on after the dust from your bones are gone.

As you grow older, you often feel like you’re on the verge of embarking on something wonderful, not sure what, but something and it’s wonderful. And as your age count gets higher, concern creeps in: did you miss the opportunity already? Are you just another faceless person destined to live unremarkably after all?

If this sounds somewhat familiar, trust me, you’re probably not alone. Many people probably feel the same way in some form or another, asking themselves: What am I on this Earth for? What meaning can my life impart on society that would transcend the human lifespan and memory?

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That’s a more long-winded way of saying most of us probably have a problem deciding our life purpose, for lack of a better term. We all want to do exceptional things in life that would give us a sense of accomplishment. So we can say to ourselves that hey, I did not waste my life for sure.

There are so many possibilities when it comes to doing exceptional, meaningful things in this vein. Write a few amazing books, or dedicate your life to helping the homeless and starving, or find a cure for Zika. The range of options vary for each of us depending on natural talents and physical limitations, but the point is we all have some sort of choice.

Can you choose?

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But there’s the catch right there: we have to choose. And in choosing something, anything, we have to give up the rest of our options. More, we have to give up a lot of the things we may think of as life essentials because anything worth doing in life has opportunity costs ― the bigger the accomplishment, the higher the costs probably.

This revolves around time and opportunity cost. First, choosing something specific to pursue means letting go all the other options. You want to be a chess legend? Maybe forget about being a football legend at the same time, then. Probably won’t have enough time in life to accomplish both.

And in an age where life possibilities are infinitely greater for us compared to the days of our grandparents, committing to one thing at the expense of so many others can be a paralysing thought. Because we’re scared of what we may miss out on with the other options we’re putting aside.

Second, getting to a level where you can do exceptional things often requires immense sacrifices. And that price tag may not be something many people are willing to pay.

Because to do exceptional things or acquire an exceptional skill that allows you to do meaningful, exceptional feats, you first need to learn how to do it and then practise until you’re so good that you can go and do great things with this skill.

In Outliers, Malcom Gladwell argues that the general threshold to rise to expert level and beyond in anything is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice ― although some contest this, the general idea remains (if you’re a natural genius who can manage elaborate feats at first try, please turn away from this article).

But are we always willing to pay our dues to get there? Not necessarily.

Price to pay

Take playing chess, for example. There are self-help books aplenty out there if you want to learn how to play from zero. If you want to become the next Garry Kasparov, no one’s stopping you from spending every waking hour absorbing chess patterns and thinking about positions and solving chess puzzles and playing at tournaments.

But that’s hardly a realistic proposition. If you’re a kid or teenager, you probably have the school to go to and then your family and friends to spend time with. Maybe TV or Playstation time cuts into potential practice time too. If you’re older maybe you have work to reckon with or a girlfriend or maybe wife and kids. Or ageing parents who need care.

And that is why some feats and skills are exceptional in the first place ― natural talent aside, not everyone has the capacity to put in enough effort to get there, whether due to a shortfall in personal discipline or other limitations. Some accomplishments are exceptional because of the exceptional personal sacrifices they take to happen.

We know this. So we may postpone the beginning, so to speak, of pursuing our dreams towards what we think is the meaningful life we were destined to have. So we don’t have to sacrifice so much just yet. Maybe later, once we’ve had a bit more of other things.

But most of the time this is us deluding ourselves. The sad truth here is most of us just refuse to accept that we are unable to ― or unwilling to ― make the necessary sacrifices to fulfill what we think is our life’s destiny, so we kick the decision-making down the road.

The world is too big

We simply can’t have it all. Yet we still, stubbornly, want it all. Because what’s life without a steady, high-flying job plus a lovely wife and perfect kids plus an exceptional skill that puts you in the history books for having accomplished amazing feats with it plus maybe some RM2.6 billion in hard-earned personal wealth in the bank, waiting for your next charitable endeavour if you could only find the time, right?

So we refuse to confront the truth that we simply can’t by saying we can, but not yet. And in doing so we just set ourselves up for an even bigger agony down the road, a few years older and with less time to make so many sacrifices to accomplish what we think will give our life meaning.

At which point we probably would postpone things again.

So how? Here’s a thought: What if we woke up tomorrow and realise that hey, there are so many things we can do in this world that no human can possibly do them all, ourselves included?

The world is too big to have every single thing. Steve Jobs left a great legacy, but to his first daughter he was a missing parent. Bill Gates didn’t get married till he was older. Life is too big to have it all at the same time and to get something we often need to give up other things.

But happiness and fulfillment need not necessarily be impossible regardless. Happiness and fulfillment comes in many, sometimes unexpected, ways. Look beyond short-term pleasures and find what you already have in life that brings meaning and happiness ― family time, good friends, your kids or feeding the homeless on Saturdays, maybe.

And don’t sacrifice these things lightly. Because sometimes a great life isn’t necessarily about what great things you accomplish or what mark you leave on the history of the human species, but what possibilities you give up in order to do more of what really matters to you.

*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.