Our high school guidance counselors were lying. So were our mothers, our teachers, and the police officer who came to teach us about drugs and safe driving. Every single one of us told us the same lie over and over again:
One wrong decision can ruin your future.
Wrong. With the exception of the decisions that can kill us (and there are, admittedly, a few of those that we should rightly be warned about), there is nothing we can do today that will permanently prevent us from having some version of happily ever after.
Does that mean that our actions don’t have consequences? Or that some decisions we make can eliminate some opportunities from our lives? Or that something we do today can make tomorrow and the next day more difficult?
Not at all.
Having unprotected sex at 19 gave me a son. Permanently. Starting smoking at 17 gave me an addiction to cigarettes that would be very difficult to conquer 13 years later. Possible? Yes. Harder than if I had never smoked? Immeasurably. The Doritos and Snickers I had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner three days ago will show up on my butt. (Oh, look, they’re already there!)
The choices we make today matter. However, they are not, thankfully, the last choices we will ever make. Every single day we wake up with a new chance to make decisions. We are constantly set before new crossroads, new turns in the road to take or not take.
Thank God.
I used to think that every decision was The Big One. I was terrified of choosing wrong. It’s so much easier now to take risks and move forward knowing that if something doesn’t turn out the way I’d hoped, I’ll get another opportunity down the road to pick a new path.
As long as you’re not dead, you have another chance to choose something new.
Hurray for the choices that don’t kill us.
About Britt Reints
It’s also good to know that sometimes when there is a choice to be made, it doesn’t mean that one is right and one is wrong.
Twitter Name: Unknown Mami
Well said!
Twitter Name: missbritt
I always think this ‘attitude’ you describe about teenagers who drop out of school (and I’m a teacher)
Some people just NEED to take a break from education, try some dead end jobs, and then see the need or find the desire for learning themselves. Some of the most interesting AND successful people I know have studied later in life, changed careers totally, tried different unskilled jobs (and sometimes loved them enough to carry on doing ‘unskilled’ stuff even with a high education)
Helen
Sometimes I think it’s parents and other adults that need to be reminded that, even though we don’t agree and we KNOW the path currently being chosen is the harder one, it isn’t necessarily the end of the road.
Twitter Name: missbritt
If we never make a bad decision, how are we supposed to learn? I spent far too much time taking the “safe” route, which, not surprisingly, got me nowhere because I wasn’t listening to my heart.
It’s never too late to change as long as you’re still alive.
Twitter Name: msmegan
And I just tried really hard not to choose if the decision seemed too important.
Twitter Name: missbritt
LOVE this post. I can be a very anxious person and it is good to realize that every decision is not the end all be all. “Hurray for the choices that don’t kill us!”
Twitter Name: coolwhipmom
I’m not normally anxious, but when I DO worry, I make up for lost time in a big way.
Twitter Name: missbritt
Love this! You’re completely right, and I’d do well to remember that not every choice, not even every BIG choice, is some huge,scary, final decision.
You know I love you and normally agree with you — but today this post just falls short for me. There are some choices that, despite the ability to live a happy life (and I do) — will hurt. Forever. I’m a positive person. I’m an optimist. I am a glass half full girl. But I hurt today. And I always will, no matter how much joy I have in my life on a daily basis, no matter the conscious decisions to focus on that joy. The pain will always be there.
To be fair to you, this is a post-visit day for me, so I likely shouldn’t have read. But I did. And here I am.
Twitter Name: FireMom
“Does that mean that our actions don’t have consequences? Or that some decisions we make can eliminate some opportunities from our lives? Or that something we do today can make tomorrow and the next day more difficult?”
I’d say that the decision you’re talking about falls in that category, much like my decision to have a baby at 19 does.
The thing is, it affected your future, but that one thing doesn’t define it entirely. It wasn’t your last chance to choose is all I mean.
Twitter Name: missbritt
It doesn’t affect my ability to choose apart from that, no. But it does affect many things that are even barely tangibly connected to it. Things that no one would have guessed would have been attached to the decision are thus affected by that decision. And sometimes, that’s just hard to deal with.
Twitter Name: FireMom
I can’t even imagine. I’m so sorry you’re hurting today. xo
Twitter Name: missbritt
AMEN!
Twitter Name: hellohahanarf
I’m always telling our 16yo that she’s at the age now where decisions she makes CAN AFFECT the rest of her life, but that’s different from what you’re arguing against above.
Twitter Name: themuskrat
A couple of months ago I realized that there is no “right” path. It’s an amazingly freeing piece of knowledge.
Twitter Name: elizabethbarone
There are decisions that will affect you for the rest of your life, they will close certain doors for you, doors that you will never pass by again as you travel your path. Other doors on your path will present themselves and they may or may not be the doorway to your bliss. It’s about understanding that it is about the journey and finding bliss no matter what’s behind the door….
Twitter Name: Lisa Yates
there is nothing we can do today that will permanently prevent us from having some version of happily ever after.
Well said. even if things dont go exactly as planned, or we had something devastating happen in our lives whether from our decisions or somebody else’s, there is still happiness to be found. Some version. just a different version than we planned.
great post.