suggestions lead to indecision

 You've probably heard the phrase before (～￣▽￣)～

This phenomenon has been documented first-hand by me on 21st January 2025, but it is by no means an amazing discovery. Just as a variety of options leads to "choice paralysis", or indecision, so do a barrage of suggestions. "You should buy that sweater", "Oh my, that would look amazing on you", "Honestly, this looks great". Sound familiar to you?

In English class on 20th January, we were in the library because the it was an afternoon and our teacher had wanted us to be comfortable during her lesson. She asked us to analyze the essay questions in our newly-bought English revision books. We not only had to analyze the questions and identify the text type, but also write out the structure of the essay. My team was assigned the 2024 paper, which was the most recent paper. I was excited and got to work eagerly.

When Jane, one of my team members was stuck on her counterargument paragraph for the question she was analyzing, she asked me for a better counterargument. Delighted in having my assistance requested, I sprang up and said, “Spending time alone is not valuable because it is less productive. People work better in teams, therefore time spent alone should not be valued.”

Personally, I felt like my suggestion was very logical. You can imagine my surprise when she decided to reject my suggestion and use another counterargument instead.

The following day, our English teacher asked us to criticize another group’s answers. It was akin to peer-reviewing! Like the nerds we were, my team lashed out at the students who worked on the 2014 essay questions. I even went so far as to mock their “insight” in the conclusion, writing “What insight? ‘Oh, the best things in life are free!’” For your information, the statement in the question itself was “The best things in life are free”. For better or worse, my teammates felt like that was a step too far, even for us, so I ended up removing that comment and replacing it with something more “rational”.

However, the students who worked on the 2014 essay questions also had to critique my team’s work. When Jane exclaimed that her work had been criticized, I scrolled down to our section of the document and smiled smugly to myself when my work had zero comments. To add insult to Jane's injury, the criticism had been about her “weak counterargument”. Ah, right in the guts!

Anyways, another occurrence of the phenomenon was during dinner, when I urged my younger brother to spice up his music presentation slides by incorporating an interesting narrative about one of his favourite fictional characters: Sun Wukong from Journey to the West! In my mind, I had envisioned a presentation deck that resembled the pages of a children’s book, with playful and appealing pictures of the monkey king alongside text in a big, cute font. Was this because I had recently read one sentence of a Chinese children’s book, titled 书本里的蚂蚁? I do think so!

Sadly, my suggestion was shot down yet again. The reason? “I don’t even like music,” my brother groaned.

I expressed my frustrations to my mother on the way back home after dinner. She dropped some interesting wisdom into my empty skull, like always.

“Just because you give suggestions doesn’t mean that other people must take them,” she started. “For example, if I were to offer you a can of coke right now, would you drink it?”

I shook my head. I was an avid hater of Coca Cola and most other soft drinks.

“Exactly. However, your suggestions may serve some other use. They may allow others to think of their own ideas that better suit their situation or temperament.” She looked at me, her eyes twinkling in the darkness of the night. “Don’t ever stop giving suggestions; you’ll never know what spark it could ignite.”

At that, I thought of neuronal pathways firing as Jane and my younger brother were listening to my proposal. Those electrical “sparks” would continue, be it on the same track or not, long after I had concluded my argument.

The possibilities are endless,

I remember reading somewhere,

there are so many neurons in the brain that any train of thought could branch out in a thousand different ways. And that, these spontaneous “jumps”, is the driver of innovation. Logical leaps that nobody could make, would make, if they were thinking “straight”.