“When faced with uncertain decisions, small or large, I’m able to ruminate to a point of making no decision at all and staying stuck in a state of limbo. I feel myself coming up against various crossroads and what feel like ‘life decisions,’ and I would love to find a way to remove some weight from these. Can the natural world offer any wisdom on how to go through life without being paralyzed by these thought processes?” —Reader query

Every moment of our lives is a crossroads at which we can never truly know where the paths might lead, whether they will point us toward peril or paradise. While rumination might feel like a uniquely human problem, biology has spent 4 billion years endeavoring to solve it, life attempting to answer the question: How do you act when you don’t know the future? Arguably, every species alive today has had some success in charting an uncertain path.

When a colony of Temnothorax ants needs a new home, scouts go out and judge potential sites by basic factors such as light, entrance size, and so on. Then, remarkably, a quorum occurs: When enough scouts independently gather at one location, the entire colony moves sight unseen. Rather than deliberating the ideal choice, they trust the scouts. In biology, this is known as satisficing: making an adequate choice quickly rather than a perfect one through infinite analysis.

When deer forage in the woods, they are faced with a consequential decision every second: keep their head up to look out for danger, or lower it to feed. Both are necessary, so both is what they choose. They engage in a vigilance trade-off, oscillating between feeding and alertness, dancing between worlds. It doesn’t eliminate risk, but it mitigates it—and allows the deer to sustain themselves without fear of danger dominating their every action.

There are as many examples of decision-making in the natural world as there are species living in it—and few happen in isolation. Octopuses probe their surroundings, relying on their senses to gather information and arrive at a conclusion. Many migratory animals trust the wisdom of their ancestors as to the best route forward; others follow a magnetic pull. Some birds and fish move in unison by focusing only on the movements of their immediate neighbors and community.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz found that happiness has less to do with the quality of our choices than with whether we keep revisiting them. “Maximizers” weigh many options and often achieve better outcomes, yet dwell on the road not taken and feel less satisfied; “satisficers” choose an option that is good enough and close the mental loop, reporting greater happiness. I don’t think either way of being is right or wrong, nor do I think those are the only two options for a life. 

Years ago, a teacher introduced me to the third path. The logical mind constantly invents binaries to better understand reality. When faced with even the simplest decision, we divide our options into “this” or “that.” Instead, she suggested getting in the habit of asking ourselves: What’s the third option? Practicing this has revealed to me that the answer is often both, neither, or another way altogether. Over time, I have learned to make a home at the crossroads. 

Try as we might to convert unstable circumstances into certainty, none of us knows what will happen next. To live at the crossroads is to make peace with liminality, to revel in the luster of twilight and transition. It means lighting the torches not to keep darkness out but to invite mystery in, so that you may wander the unknown and discover how liberating it is to no longer need the answers. In surrendering the search for keys, new doors open before you.