How have I NOT posted this delightfully melancholy quotation before now? It comes from Søren Kierkegaard, and you can find it all over the Internet. I'm sure you've seen it before.
The thing is, I remember figuring this out on my own many years ago ... possibly even before I'd heard of Kierkegaard, and certainly before I ever encountered the quote. I knew people who regretted major decisions in their lives, turning points where they were sure (in retrospect) that they had taken the wrong path. And I remember thinking, after I'd known them for a while, ...
All this regret is silly. In the first place, if you could go back in time to The Day you made that Big Decision, you would once again be the person you were back then. You'd think the way you thought back then. You'd have the same priorities you had back then. And so you'd end up deciding the same way all over again.
What's more, even if you did happen to pick the other choice, you'd always second-guess yourself just like you do today. No choice is ever perfectly blissful. No road is ever perfectly smooth. So you'd run into problems and difficulties (just like you do today), and I guarantee you'd start telling yourself, "If only I had made The Other Choice back on That Day (meaning the one you really did make in reality), then everything would be fine now!" 😀 In the long run you'd just be trading one batch of troubles for another, and it wouldn't be any better.
Then one day I read the quote by Kierkegaard, who said the whole thing so much more elgantly.
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