Who loves to decide, except maybe judges, between things. You can always choose one or the other, never both, and regardless of your decisions there’s one path you’ll never know – and this is how you end up with “what-ifs”, letting a past decision creep into your brain and flowering into doubt, regret and other thoughts and feelings that no one likes to experience.

You’ll always find excuses for yourself and for your decision, you’ll try to rationalize them as much as you can, despite them maybe not being the rational decisions you’d objectively choose if confronted with them removed from the context. Yes, you’ll lie to yourself and block out the memory of the decision, of the crossroads you at one point crossed one way or the other, but it’ll always eat you inside if you let it.

Back when I was younger I kept saying that you should never regret something you’ve done willfully, regardless of what it might be, because at that point you took the decision that you felt was the best, and past-you knows better than future you, despite the saying that hindsight is 20/20. It’s harder now to abide by what past-me used to say, but I remember it and try to adhere to it, and remember that whatever I’ve done by my own volition I’ve done because I thought it was the better thing.

Decisions are easy when you’re choosing between good and bad, but they’re hell when you’re choosing between good and good, you have to analyze more things that are subjective, you have to analyze possibilities, take into account what fears you may have that are influencing you, think of how well you’ll sleep at night with walking on a different road and leaving everything behind as-is, even if you’re maybe not satisfied with how the paint dried on the fence behind you – and know you’ll never be able to redo that paint job.

The future is ours, and knowing what we know now – we’ll still fuck ourselves over if presented with the opportunity.

Tonight, tomorrow and the days after I’ll sleep with the decisions I’ve made and I’ll keep in mind it seemed the best one, and I’ll even go the extra mile and remember why I chose what I did – so as not to regret anything.

 

TL;DR – Just do whatever you think will make you sleep without regrets at night, even if it will. You chose whatever you did because you felt it’ll be lighter on your conscience, and the future has enough crossroads.