On Making the Best Decisions in Life
On Making the Best Decisions in Life (Spoiler: You Can’t!)
By Yashaswini Sharma
Plenty of us reading this are either in our late teens or early twenties, and most of us (age no bar) are paralysed at the thought of making a decision. Which subject to major in? Which university to attend? What job pays the most? What political party has our best interests in mind? Which brands to choose to buy from? What can we do to avert doomsday? There are questions galore in every which way, and there is nothing more paralysing than the existential dread of making a choice.
I made the wrong choice once, six years ago while picking my major at university. I decided to go with the socially sensible option to study medicine, which would’ve ensured a financially secure future for myself. This is the one and only decision I’d love to take back if I could, but alas, life goes on, and one must find ways to deal with the aftermath of their commitments.
I’ve been thinking a lot about decisions, consequences, and regrets. I’ve analysed different options and thought in painstaking detail about the path life would’ve led me if I had made just a slightly different choice. But it is a great way to torture oneself, to ruminate and live in the past.
Then last August, I went to Kashmir. Surrounded by the Himalayas on all sides, the juxtaposition of misery led to an existential crisis. Why couldn’t I have made the right choice at sixteen? Why am I sticking with this wrong choice?
One morning, we decided to go to a viewpoint whose name I cannot remember for the life of me, but that morning, that place changed my life. It was a lush park, green and misty. In front of me, a mountain; at the base of the mountain, a vociferous river. I stood face to face with the rock, taking in its form and the random spurts of green on its facade. The thought came to me quite suddenly—that mountain had stood still for centuries, millennia even. What difference did it make if I made one wrong decision? How does that past have any control over my present? The answer was simple: It does not, and it should not.
What I realised that day has become a mantra for my life. Do not worry for more than a minute about something that you will not care about the next day, week, month, or year. The caveat here is that you should only control what can be controlled by you. You cannot influence the outcome—you have to let it go and let what will be, be.
This zen-like approach to life does not come naturally. We are taught to worry, to second guess ourselves, but no matter how hard we strive for perfection, there will always be missteps and regrets. What I realised that day, standing in front of the ancient mountain, was to simply let it go. On a cosmic scale, these little mistakes mean nothing—and that’s a good thing. It is a facet of Absurdism that rejoices in the inherent lack of meaning to life. If nothing matters, then your mistakes mean nothing! If nothing matters, then everything good that happens is a wonderful stroke of luck! Rejoice and make decisions, because what is meant to be will eventually find you.
