I was gonna
start this entry saying that I would talk about something I had never thought
of before, but that´s not true. So I will start pointing out how it´s funny
that sometimes one suddenly finds oneself translating a vague intuition into a
clear and well structured thought, if such thing even exists. And it´s funny
how that happens at the most unrelated moment, for example, while you´re
washing the salad bowl.
In
synthesis, my thought was: “Life is a bitch”. A bit better developed, it was:
“Life is one and only one, and you never get anything for free”.
Let´s start
with “Life is one and only one”. Yes, it´s rather obvious but, like I said, I
had never actually thought of this as part of a proper thought. Life is one and
only one, and there´s no turning back. What you do, gets done; and what you
don´t do, will unavoidably remain undone forever and ever in the CV of your
life.
And here it
comes the second part, “You never get anything for free”. Life is nothing but a
succession of decisions and consequences. Some decisions are not too important,
and their consequences are not final. As kids, the training is not too hard,
and it´s always kind of easy to distinguish the right from the wrong decision:
good vs bad, I like this vs I don´t like this, you´re my friend vs you´re not
my friend… The right choice will have good consequences and the wrong one will
have bad consequences, which you can anticipate. But as we grow older, it
becomes more frequent this kind of situation when you have to choose between two
options which are restrictive, either this or that, and which you know will
have both good and bad consequences that will change your lifeline forever in
whatever direction: leave vs stay, commitment vs no commitment, one job vs
another job (lucky you if this is your case btw), kids vs no kids, now vs not
yet, push vs let go, try harder vs this is not worth any more of my time and
effort…
Let´s take
the first example: If you leave, that´s great. The CV of your life will say:
“This person left”. This person saw this opportunity and took it. Cool. But it
will also say: “This person didn´t stay”. This person saw this opportunity and
decided to give up some other great things he/she already had.
If you
stay: “This person saw this opportunity and decided that it wasn´t worth to
give up the great things he already had here”, but “This person missed this
opportunity because he wasn´t courageous enough to give up other great things
he already had”.
Commitment,
yes: “This person made this commitment that led to this and this and this great
things”, or “This person lost this and this and this great opportunities because
of this commitment he had made at this point of his lifeline”.
Commitment,
no: “This person didn´t make this commitment, which let him be available for
this and this and this other great opportunities”, or “This person didn´t make
this commitment and lost this chance forever”.
And so on.
Kurt
Vonnegut said: 'The truth is, we know so little about
life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.'
[Let´s be
honest, I haven´t read anything by him yet. I stumbled on this quote only by chance]
And that’s the
thing, right? You will never know whether you made the right or the bad
decision, because there´s no way to compare what did happen next versus what
could have possibly happened, had you taken the other path. Which, btw, didn´t
necessarily go in the opposite direction, but in one of the many other possible
directions. Kind of like this:
If you
decide to take one path, at the same time you´re deciding not to take any of
the others. Because life is a bitch, life is one and only one, and you never
get anything for free. With every decision you make, you are sacrificing the
good consequences that could have derived from the decisions you didn´t make.
So I guess,
at this point of our lifes, my friend, a good approach would be, not to try to
identify what we want (because that´s almost impossible, at least in my case… I
want a lot of things that are restrictive among them), but to identify, above
all the possible choices, what we don´t want to regret. That way, at least, we
can comfort ourselves: “Ok, this turned out not to be what I expected, but at
least now I know it”.
If anyone
has some consolation words for me, THIS is the moment.
