Lucid Paralysis

Sometimes I think about that National Geographic documentary I saw as a kid. The deer frozen before the lion, motionless while death watched from meters away. The narrator explained in a deep voice: "When it can neither fight nor flee, it freezes." Something clicked inside me. A recognition so profound it almost hurt. Like suddenly finding a name for that state I was in after reading an unfair proposal from an investor or facing a room full of men questioning my products for women.

Thirty-eight years living in an intermittent state of paralysis. Not always, but far too often. Stillness when the body craves movement, silence when the throat burns with the urge to scream. My brain doesn't shut down from incompetence, but from seeing too many edges, too many consequences, too many possibilities in every decision. From the black and white I saw in my youth, I now only distinguish an infinite palette of grays.

Imagine this. You discover that a public transportation app has a biased algorithm. The data is clear: minority neighborhoods experience longer wait times, less efficient routes, and subtly higher fares. The evidence is right there on your screen. The system everyone praises as "neutral" and "efficient" is perpetuating inequalities under layers of elegant code.

The right thing to do seems obvious. But then you think about the consequences. Reporting means putting fifty jobs at risk, losing investor confidence, perhaps even facing legal battles your small business can't afford. The faces of your colleagues, their mortgages, their families—it all flashes through your mind as you stare at those damning charts.

What would you do? Sacrifice the concrete for the abstract? Immediate justice for tangible good? Between these two options, many of us are paralyzed, unable to move forward in any direction, trapped in that gray area where every decision seems simultaneously right and wrong

As a child in Algiers, I played at being a hero. The schoolyard transformed into a battlefield where I always knew what to do. With a stick for a sword and a bucket lid for a shield, I faced dragons, dictators, and digital demons. Moral certainty was my superpower. Defeating evil seemed as simple as breathing.

Every imaginary blow landed perfectly, every enemy fell without resistance. There were no dilemmas, no gray areas. Only good and evil, bravery and cowardice. I ran with the certainty of someone who had never known uncertainty, convinced that all it took was wanting it badly enough to be invincible. The bucket lid was my infallible shield, and the stick in my hand, a sword capable of defeating any injustice. Even the shouts of my friends, arguing about who was winning or losing, seemed like background noise. Because in my mind, I always won. I was always the hero.

I wonder when I stopped seeing so clearly. When dragons became complex systems and digital demons lines of code with invisible consequences. When childlike certainty gave way to this adult paralysis, where every battle seems to have victims on both sides.

Adulthood is the slow disillusionment of discovering that real monsters don't come with labels. They hide behind algorithms, behind funding, behind corporate decisions that seem reasonable. Sometimes even behind my own well-intentioned actions. Like that app I developed to help women feel safe, which ended up being used to harass them. Irony like a knife in the back.

I've been told so many times that I have "a knack for tough decisions" that I almost believe it. No one sees the moments of paralysis, the sleepless nights, the choices weighing like stones on my chest. The tech world celebrates quick action, "move fast and break things," while I drown in possibilities, calculating impacts, assessing collateral damage.

I've been mulling over the idea that maybe freezing up isn't so bad after all. In a sector where everyone praises "move fast and break things," where every week there's a new trend, a more powerful AI, a more immersive metaverse, isn't this paralysis actually useful? That instinctive resistance to deciding without thinking. That inner brake that tells us to "wait." While tech gurus preach speed as the supreme virtue, I suspect there's wisdom hidden in these moments of doubt. It's not cowardice; it's the last human bastion against the algorithmic simplification of everything complex. A small victory of nuance over the binary.

Does anyone else get paralyzed by looking at too many angles? Three sleepless nights reviewing the same data over and over.

It's not fear, it's excessive vision.

While others move forward decisively, I remain suspended between all the possibilities, trapped in that gray area where every decision seems simultaneously right and wrong. The tech world rewards quick action, but who celebrates the necessary pause, doubt as a form of respect for complexity? Sometimes I think this occasional paralysis isn't weakness, but lucidity.

If my eight-year-old self could see me now, she might be disappointed that I haven't found the hero I imagined myself to be. But I would tell her that I found something more valuable than certainty: this ability to hold onto contradiction without breaking. In a world obsessed with answers, I learned the value of asking the right questions.