I can see why some people are tortured by choices. Not by what to eat in a restaurant, or what to wear in the morning -- although, come to think of it, some can get pretty worked up by those seemingly minor questions.
We often feel we would have made better decisions with hindsight. ("If I had known that, I would have..." or "In retrospect, it would have been better to...?") Yet I would posit that the consequences of any major decision are so vast that knowing them beforehand would only paralyze us more.
18 years ago I decided to move to France to be with my future husband. Of course, if a voice had told me "You will be happy there and have two beautiful children, but if you stay in the USA you will be killed in a car accident at the age of 33," the decision would have been all the easier to make.
But what if a voice had laid out several equally attractive and fascinating life paths? How could I have ever made a proper choice?
It's likely a good thing that most life-changing choices are made relatively rashly, with little understanding of how overwhelming their consequences will be.
(Read more decision-oriented Sunday Scribblings posts here.)
4 comments:
That was a huge decision that sounds like heaven but we tend to ponder the what if's not matter what.
It is rather amazing that I can agonize over which color sweater to buy but decide in an instant to move to Ireland...
Sounds like fun, we said... and off we went!
I absolutely agree. I tend to agonize over the little things, but when it comes to major life decisions I've never had trouble just trusting my instincts and have no regrets doing so.
It's so true, the huge decisions are often the easy ones - congratulations for being so spot on!
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