In one of my favorite songs, from my favorite band Vampire Weekend there is a line that says “Nobody knows what the future holds/And it's bad enough just getting old/Live my life in self-defense/You know I love the past, 'cause I hate suspense” Obviously, the abstract and capricious idea of the future is cause for apprehension from many people. Even more of an anxiety provoker, though, can be the thousands of choices we make on a daily basis. Because although the future can be volatile, we are solely responsible for the verdicts we make and their results.
From the moment we wake up, our brain is assessing a multitude of factors in order to achieve the best possible outcome. What clothes to wear, breakfast to eat, which way to style your hair; the list goes on. And sometimes, more often than we’d like to admit, we don’t always make the right decision that would lead us to our expected result. Amidst these less-than optimal outcomes, there is rarely an occasion in which we willingly make a choice that will lead to the worser result. The problem is that in the instant of our decision making, both choices might look equally good, making it that much more difficult for us to reach the “right” conclusion. So if we’re constantly being faced with decisions in which nothing is guaranteed and either option appears to be good and you are not a trained risk assessor, how are we supposed to decipher which choice is the right one.
Life would be perfect if we could always defer to a pro-cons list with every decision. But maybe the point of it all isn’t to continually be able to choose the perfect choice. In the same way that we are supposed to learn to accept the obstacles and disappointments that life can throw our way, learning to adjust from our poor decisions can be a useful skill in the long run.
