Chocolate Or Vanilla ?

I was thinking recently about the choices we make and wondered about the differences between children and adults. It seemed to me that children's choices are often simpler - chocolate or vanilla, where as adults we choose from more complex variables - French vanilla, vanilla bean, chocolate fudge brownie, chocolate marshmallow and so forth. I think that it's not that children can't taste the difference between flavors - it's just that they are satisfied with fewer options and are maybe less jaded than adults. On the other hand, I enjoy the spectrum of a rich and varied palette made possible through experience, experimentation, and a wide variety of choices.

Thinking about choices led me down a another path. When we choose 'X', in effect, we un-choose 'Y'. By selecting any given flavor, trip destination, political candidate, career, etc., by default we de-select other options. Life doesn't really offer us control groups - once we begin down a given path, we can never quite replicate a different choice or direction from the same starting point. Even if we retrace our steps, literally or figuratively, change has occurred and the new direction is ultimately different in more or less subtle ways. And, since time moves forward in an apparently linear fashion, it seems that decision making is as much about what we don't choose as what we do.