One of the weirdest parts about being a human being is that decisions matter. They matter in a lifelong sense. They matter in a short-term sense. They matter, more often than I’d like, in an eternal sense.
And yet, who knows what a choice will mean? What choice did I make today that will matter in five years? What choice that I make in neutral will compound into the pavement upon which I walk my journey? Does it matter? Of course it matters, I think, but how can it, if I can't know, really (usually) what I'm choosing? And yet, I am responsible to my choices, good, bad, and ugly. Deep down, I want to be. I'm glad to be where I am, and looking to the future is only frightening about ten percent of the time.
More often than not, the choices I assume are insignificant are the ones that triggered the changes that lead to a new life a year or two or several down the line. At the same time, those big, high-pressure, life-altering, written-in-stone decisions (like, for example, my college or my major) turned out to be choices with plenty of room for revision. In fact, most of the bigger decisions I've made were the culmination of smaller ones, of doing the best I could with the information I had and re-assessing when the information changed.
Maybe that's all that really matters -- making the best choice with the limited information that's available and remembering that things change. Data changes. I myself have changed. Decisions I make today, sometimes daily, are choices I wouldn't have been able to make even a year ago. Now, with all the new data, there are new questions. Going forward, it's not my job to make all the choices based on perfect answers. It's my job to give it my best shot and move forward still believing that there's mercy to go around, that the journey is unfolding in precisely the right timing, that there are still moments of grace that pepper my life and the lives of everyone I touch. Maybe, most importantly, I can choose to be that kind of moment. As for the rest, I can wait to revise on the road.
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Photo by Peter Doran on Unsplash