Making Bad Decisions (It's Secretly OK)

DISCLAIMER:

Music I'm grooving to right now: "My Girl," The Temptations

I always come back to this song when I'm in need of something to sing. I don't know why. It's not like it's even in my range. But somehow, when I want to sing and my mind is blanking and I haven't heard anything good on the radio recently (or at least anything I know the lyrics too), I sing this. No clue why. Just a quirk of life, I guess.

Anyway, I guess this song is kind of my "I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing-with-my-life-right-now" jam. Because somehow when I sing it, I'm always in this place where not only do I feel like I have no idea how to begin to make any decisions pertaining to my larger life plan, but I am literally without anything to do at the moment as well. Or maybe it's just kind of a mind blank moment. One of those limbo-like times where you're completely zen, and also bored out of your mind.
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I realized today (or perhaps it's an ongoing realization) that nothing in my life is ever going to be perfect. Perhaps I should rephrase. Nothing in my life is ever going to be the way I imagined it.

I have this thing (and I don't know if it's a universal thing, but I'm hypothesizing that at least some people who read this are going to get what I'm talking about) where I place a lot of importance on decision-making. I do this over and over again. I tend to think that somehow, if I get a Very Important Decision right, everything will work out perfectly. My life will, all of a sudden, be fixed. I can finally live in that world I've been imagining, where I don't procrastinate, and where I somehow know exactly what I'm going to do with the rest of my life, and where I'm not incredibly awkward around everyone I know.

Let me be clear: this is a world that does not exist.

Periodically, however, I find myself in a place where I believe this delusion. I find myself in a place where I buy into the fact that a Very Good Decision means that the Very Good Consequences of this decision are permanent. Where I buy into the fact that there can be Very Good Cosmic Permanent Consequences to a probably ill-informed decision.

Think of it this way: You're thinking about what college you go to. You think "I'll be there for four years of my life, so it's probably important that I get this right." Ok. Fair enough so far. If you're spending a lot of time there, you at least want it to be at a place you like. It's important. There are some more issues with this way of thinking that we won't get into right now, but let's overlook that for now.

If it was just a matter of liking the college, there wouldn't be so much pressure to get it right. In our world, it's not just a matter of liking the college. We hear our whole lives that the college we go to will determine our job prospects. Our starting salary. Our ability to achieve. We hear it from parents, from counselors, and most of all, from the media. Rankings matter, because the "better" college you go too, the more employable you are. And the stakes become even higher.

And then there are even more considerations. Will you be happy there? How many students does it have? What's the student to teacher ratio? What percentage of student's graduate? All these things are apparently incredibly meaningful factors in the decision-making progress. All of a sudden, this is a make you or break you kind of problem.

Of course, if you get it right, your life will be solved! Hoorah! There won't be any homesickness, you'll get straight A's, you'll make friends right away, there will be no adjustment period, all the problems that you've learned to try and deal with throughout your whole life will just disappear. Poof.

To this I say (and I know what I'm talking about, because I still think like this): "Yeah right." Or in layman's terms: That's bullshit.
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All these decisions we have to make. What college to go to. What to major in. What classes to register for next semester. They sound important. They sound like they might help us...or hurt us. They sound like our path to the future. You want to know the real secret? There's no way to know. There's no way to tell what decision might change the rest of our lives, or what decision might just put us in a bad mood for a day or two. In fact, I'm not even sure that there is such a life-changing decision. What moment could be so important that it alters every moment after it...permanently? What decision could possibly be so important that it will mean more than any other decision we might make?

The truth is, no decision is more important than any other decision. In fact, one could argue that every decision we make is pure chance. It's all based on completely arbitrary criteria, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. It's all very well to say "I wish I could go back in time and tell my past self that they were right about this...or wrong," but no matter how much we might wish it so, there's no way we can know what the right decision or the wrong decision is ahead of schedule.

Think about it. We spend so much time trying to get as much information as possible, so we can make the best decision possible. We spend so much of our lives doubting instead of acting. We spend so much of our lives living in fear, living in the shadow of the decisions we have yet to make. And all because we place so much importance on them.

I think we do this because it's easier. I think it's a way of absolving ourselves of responsibility in our own lives. By placing so much weight on a single decision, we make it impossible for us to ever take charge of our own circumstances. We make it impossible to empower ourselves to change our own lives. If something goes wrong--say, for example, you start having a crisis of faith in your school because you didn't realize how little attention they paid the English department-- you say to yourself, "Well, there's nothing I can do about it now. I made the wrong decision." You think, "I might as well just curl up in despair now and accept what I can't change." Again and again you think "There's nothing I can do."

The truth is, there IS something you can do. There's ALWAYS something you can do. There's always a way back from a bad decision, and there's always a way forward.

I speak to everyone out there like me when I say to you, yeah that sucks. It sucks to know that you have responsibility for your own life. It sucks to think that if nothing is changing, it's because you're not doing anything to change it. It sucks to think that you have to do things for yourself to make anything happen FOR YOU. But that's the way it works. That's the way life works. And it turns out, that's a good thing.

If one decision could make or break us...if one decision could change the rest of our lives...we would have no other choice but to live with the consequences that decision every day, for the rest of our lives. If a Very Good Decision means that the Very Good Consequences are permanent, then the opposite is true too. A Very Bad Decision means that the Very Bad Consequences would be permanent. It means that my decisions would stay with me. Even the bad ones.

And that would really be a shame because right now, I think that no decision I make can ever be well informed. There's simply no way way we can just not make mistakes in our life, no matter how long we think about it.  9 times out of 10, I think that the decisions we do get right are just luck.

I had no idea that going to Raleigh Charter would change my life the way it has. At the time, I had no idea whether or not it was a good decision or a bad decision. I went because my mom thought it was a good thing for me, and I trusted her. In a way, I kind of went because I trusted someone else enough to make the decision for me. Do I regret it? No. Because it turned out to be fantastic. Might I have regretted it? Maybe. But luckily, we don't have to live with all those bad decisions we make forever. We have a choice.

Life is forgiving. Every day, we have a new chance to stand up and do something for ourselves--even if it's as simple as re-making the decision to get out of bed and go to class. To look up something on the internet you're curious about. To read a book. Every day we have the chance to make our lives better.

The people I admire most in this world… They’re the people who practice 3 hours a day because they know that’s what it will take to get what they want. They’re the people who’ve decided they’re going to spend all their free time doing something they love. They’re those super-annoying people you know who are always doing these incredible things, like volunteering for political campaigns, or writing novels, or making their own films. They take charge of their lives—they lace up their boots, roll up their sleeves, and get to work. They don't know how to quit. 

It's not easy, doing this. It's not like you can just make one decision, one day, and be done. You have to keep trying. You have to keep pulling yourself up, every day, pushing yourself to where you want to be. It's not easy.

But it's worth it.