I had been struggling with the same issue. The opposite (“our choices don’t matter”) is depressing.
However, two things help me:
The first is “Optimistic Nihilism” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRqu0YOH14) - a view very close to Zen/stoicism. The second is that ALL choices matter, but their impact is finite and subject to randomness. I used to think that all of my choices were forever and set in stone. While technically correct, it misses that the future changes only a bit. We might be tempted to think that “the grass is greener”, or “I should have bought Bitcoins”, but it is like “I miss I didn’t join my friends when they went to a cassino”. Moreover, it is FAIR that a finite effort results in a finite result.
If on your last day, you want to spend it with loved ones, and say, in nature or with music, then that's how you should be trying spend your life in general.
It's a heuristic, no a literal instruction book.
And some things you do are not for survival, yet they continue to be the right choice if you’re not living your final day. Like mending your favourite t-shirt. Cooking a meal was an example which just happens to overlap with survival. The point stands.
> If on your last day, you want to spend it with loved ones, and say, in nature or with music, then that's how you should be trying spend your life in general.
> It's a heuristic, no a literal instruction book.
What’s the point in saying it, then? If it amounts to “in general, you should try to spend your life the way you want”, don’t (effectively?) all living creatures do that by default without being told?
If it’s literal, it’s impossible to follow. If it’s figurative, it’s meaningless. I used “platitude” deliberatedly:
> a remark or statement, especially one with a moral content, that has been used too often to be interesting or thoughtful
I try to live my life so that when my last day comes, I won't want to suddenly have been doing everything different, and try to correct at the end. That's what it means. Some people have a harder time finding that path, and need to remember to check in with themselves more often.
That’s OK. This is just a discussion on the web we’re both likely to eventually forget. Were we speaking in person, I’d find it valuable to discuss it further, ramblings and all.
Worth noting that of the two points I expressed in my original comment, I find the other one to be the more interesting of the two.
> It seems like you feel like you life a life where you are happy with the choices you make. Not everyone gets this.
I feel confident in saying the answer to the first sentence has no bearing on my opinion on the matter. By that same token, I also agree with the second sentence.
> Some people have a harder time finding that path, and need to remember to check in with themselves more often.
Fair enough. Someone said “it’s never your successful friends posting the inspirational quotes”, though (assuming it’s true) that could just very well be because those are precisely the friends who don’t need external reinforcement.
I feel that given more time and a better setting to discuss, one or both of us might begin to tweak our view. I would have enjoyed that. Thank you for a constructive (though brief) conversation.
The thought may be freeing to you, but many others become paralysed by it, obsessing about “the right choices” at every moment.
An alternate view: it is because we only have one limited life that our choices don’t matter. We and everyone our choices touch will die, and nothing will have mattered. Depending on your situation, that thought can fill you with dread or be profoundly calming.
> Make the best of every minute you have, and live it as if it were your last.
That is both impossible and (I’d argue) unhealthy. I wouldn’t waste my last minute cooking a meal, yet I need to spend an hour doing it now to survive another day. “The right choice” and living every moment as if it were the last seldom overlap.
The Simpsons had a great joke on the platitude: https://youtu.be/lkAaQQal2ck?t=20