Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out. - Philip Pullman

Will considered what to do. When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed. At the moment all Will's choices existed at once. But to keep them all in existence meant doing nothing. He had to choose, after all.

Eve was tempted not by wealth or love but by knowledge.

I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you say, I'll always be thinking about it, and if I end up doing that, I'll feel resentful because it'll feel as I didn't have a choice, and if I don't do it, I'll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else.