The constant need to make decisions
Lately, I’ve had a never-ending laundry list of things to fix.
I just need to fix my mental health, then I’ll forever feel at peace
I just need x amount of income to pay rent this year
I just need to heal my grief and then I’ll feel better
I just need x amount of experience to graduate and be able to do x,y,z
No matter how many problems I fix, I always have more. As if it’s like when you attempt to fix a leak in your sink, only to realize your shower curtains need to be changed, your toilet seat is cracked, and you need to remodel your entire bathroom.
When I start to reflect at the end of the day, I think to myself that maybe I made some impulsive decisions that were not the best. If I didn’t change the shower curtains, I wouldn’t have water leak out of my bathtub. A round mirror seems impractical now instead of a square mirror. Maybe the sink was fine the way it was. The bathroom looked ok.
The older I get, the more I realize I will always have problems (keeping in mind that I am still quite young at the time of this post). I will always have to make decisions. I will never always have the right background to make a decision. Some may be easy, some may require patience, some may require major risks, and some may require years before I get to a decision. And even when I do have an answer, I may realize I have a whole new set of problems to solve.
But it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. There is no way I’ll ever know if I did something “right” or “wrong”. Things just are the way it is. Some decisions may have saved me from something drastic. Some may have found myself to find people I feel most connected with. Some made me realize I hate a certain idea I thought was for me.
I will never know. No matter how old I get, I just have to deal with what I have right in front of me. Deal with what I chose for myself. Accept the decisions I made and make do with whatever I got right now, aka “be present”.
I’m not even sure why I felt like writing this post. I had an idea in my head, but the longer I calculated the decision of me writing this, the less I would remember what I even wanted to write about. Maybe I’ll regret it in 2 years, but maybe somehow I’ll find people who relate and it helps someone going through this.
I’m trying to practice looking at my problems as less of a thing to fix and more from a place of curiosity. When it comes to heavy emotional processing, I remind myself to choose to just sit with it, not fix it. Letting it come and go. Letting go of my expectations and being curious about the possibilities that could come, rather than calculating everything that could go wrong. Making it a habit to let my curiosity leap forward, rather than fear. Trusting myself that no matter what comes, I can process it and decide what to do next from a place of calm and grounding.
It’s like that famous saying on every dollar tree journal — one day at a time.