An extra 'Little bit of Zen'

"The act of picking up and opening a book masks the counter-gesture that occurs at the same time: the involuntary act of not picking up and not opening every other book in the universe."

Pierre Bayard  -  'How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read'

I think this idea returned to my mind just now because I gave this book as a Christmas present to a crush of mine a few years ago (this is probably why I have such a limited love life...).  Bayard is a French literature professor (and philosopher and psychoanalyst?!) who achieved a modest popular success 15 or 20 years ago with this playful, elegantly witty little treatise on how reading maybe isn't all it's cracked up to be (I disagree with this central thesis; but he plainly wasn't entirely serious about his propositions to that effect).

One of most thought-provoking of the observations in his book is the disturbing reminder above that reading is inextricably linked with non-reading - that every positive choice we make inevitably contains within it a much larger number of (often regrettable) rejections and omissions. 

This is the essence of opportunity cost. And that, of course, is central to the game of Fantasy Premier League - as to all else. Every player we pick in our starting team leaves out three players on the bench; every player we choose to transfer in leaves hundreds more unselected. We have to try to simplify these decisions to make them seem less daunting, less intractable, less impossible. But I think most people tend to overdo this, to radically over-simplify their selection process - too readily dismissing alternative options that should at least be given a moment's serious consideration. We should not let the multiplicity of possible choices stun us into hopelessness and inertia, but rather try to see it as an impetus to choose more carefully.