Why I Read

for all the lives I could not live

I have found that one of life’s greatest fundamental frustrations—as well as one of its greatest terrors—is that I have only one life, and that every choice I make is finite. I have made certain decisions that have led me down certain paths, and whether I am happy or not with the path I am on is not so much the point; the point is that I did not choose any of the centillion other paths that I could have gone down. I did not choose to research octopuses or become a carpenter or live in Taipei. A well-known researcher told me, while I was attempting to decide my next moves, that the field of social psychology would be poorer if I did not pursue it. Well: I didn’t become a social psychologist, and I don’t know what would have happened if I did.