Most of my friends are incredibly indecisive. Even the simplest things take hours to figure out, like where to go to eat that day or which movie to watch. God forbid you ask them a question that requires a really important decision — you would probably grow old and die before the choice was made. I’m pretty sure the phrases “I don’t know,” “I don’t care,” and “Doesn’t matter to me” would have about 500,000 plays if iLife kept track of phrases like an iTunes library does with music.
Make no mistake, I’m just as guilty of this indecisiveness. I tend to play it off as being so laid back that I would be down with doing anything or going anywhere, but most of the time it’s because I just don’t want to piss anybody off by making a decision they won’t like or support. Ultimately, I believe that’s why most people are terrible at making decisions — we live in a time where everybody is so conscious of everybody else’s feelings that nobody wants to make a decision that they will regret somewhere down the line.
Most of the time, though, making a decision doesn’t even involve your friends. The choices we make mostly impact our own lives, and a lot of the time people are paralyzed by that fact, causing them to remain just as indecisive as always. It is even scarier to make decisions about your own life because when things go wrong, there’s no one to blame but yourself. You can’t yell at your friend and say “Well if you didn’t want In-N-Out you should have spoke up!” (Obviously hypothetical because no one would ever turn down In-N-Out and if they do you shouldn’t be friends with them anyway.) At the end of it all, you only have yourself to blame for the choices you make.
Honestly, regret itself is an interesting concept. To regret is literally to feel remorse over something that you no longer have control over. The decision has already been made, the consequences already felt, but for some reason the human mind loves to torture the person that houses it. Why is it that everybody somehow thinks about the perfect decision 3 days later when they are alone in the shower and have already fucked up?
I say all this because I constantly regret things I do. I’m a classic over-thinker. I have excellent observational skills and pay very close attention to detail. I analyze situations based on body language and dissect a person’s diction to see if I can understand the secret behind what they were really trying to say. I torture myself on a constant basis wondering if what I said or did was the right thing. Some things I am comforted about quickly; other situations can take me months or years to get over.
I’m beginning to see now, and I’m going to say this eloquently, regretting the choices you make is stupid. You can’t change the past. You can only learn from it and grow, as my boy Rafiki so perfectly stated some 20 years ago. (That’s right, The Lion King is 20 years old. Everybody can go weep in a corner about the loss of their childhood now.)
I’m trying to change. I’m starting to realize that I have a good head on my shoulders. My over analyzing of every situation allows me to make good decisions the first time and it really isn’t even that bad when things go wrong. But I think the biggest reason why I’m starting to regret my life choices less and less is this quote:
“Never regret anything because at one time it was exactly what you wanted.”
Never feel bad about the choices you make. Because the truth is, regardless of whether it was a snap decision or something you thought about for months, whatever you chose to do was exactly what you wanted. Life is too short to be filled with regrets. Do what you want to do and hold nothing back. Live free, love hard, laugh loud. Let the decisions you make build you into the person you’re supposed to be. At the end of the day, you need to be comfortable with the decisions you make in order to not be an insomniac every night . All I know is that I’m sleeping soundly tonight.
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