I... I am right now needing to make some decisions. Or rather, it’s pretty obvious what should be done, what’s best. I don’t really have to decide much besides processing the more emotional side of it.
Because of that, I was pondering what’s right and what’s wrong in the situation. Funny enough, the best decisions I’ve ever made weren’t that well rationalized. They weren’t what everyone would expect, but they certainly were right for me.
Which brings us to the point where there is no objective truth. There simply isn’t. We live our own realities, we are the protagonists of our histories, and no one has the same POV we do. No one has ever felt or lived the same way you have. Therefore, there might be some understanding, but never full acknowledgment.
Oh wow, what about science? Well, yeah, there is science. And if you haven’t been under a rock and have been to some corner of the internet, you probably heard of flat earthers. I’m not debating if anyone is right or wrong, but they believe in what makes sense to them, just like you and me. That goes for the law as well; there are man’s laws, rules we made and agreed to follow for the better, but I’m pretty sure if you turn on the news, you will hear otherwise. That reminded me of what Carnegie says about Two Gun Crawley or Al Capone in his book "How to Win Friends and Influence People"; they just have their own reasoning for their actions, and that applies to all of us.
Probably the only thing that is pretty truthful are emotions. You know, that raw emotional surge that comes now and then? That. Even if you are ashamed of it, try to ignore it, hide it, or lie to yourself about it because for some reason you cannot or should not be feeling that way, you still felt anger, or sadness—or anything, really—towards someone or something, and that was pretty true, whether you approve of it or not. It just might not be reciprocal to the other part involved.
All of that to say that it’s fine to rationalize over a situation, it’s fine to keep others’ expectations in mind, but in the end, it comes down to you. Because you are the one living your life.
And how to know if something is right or wrong? As I said, I don’t think my best decisions were the most rational ones, like architecture. Pretty rational for the circumstances I had at the time, but not the right one for me. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be taken from it. I have actually learned a lot from the whole experience, from the bachelor itself to the decision-making aspect of it— but please note, the “me” part of it is where the gold lies.
Choosing architecture or otherwise is not bad or good on its own, but it wasn’t for me, and I knew that. I just wasn’t mature enough—or maybe too mature in other senses—for that decision.
It is about what you want to live, what you want to experience, and it doesn’t matter if it is not going to be forever. It doesn’t matter if its results are going to be carried on with you or not, if you change your mind halfway and go right or go back. What matters is that at that moment you want that to be part of your life, and you are living that fully, consciously. You take responsibility for that action and embrace its consequences.
What matters is that it aligns with what you want to be and to live right now.
It’s okay if you want to be the next boss b*tch, and you are fully working yourself to the bone for that. That in itself is not right or wrong; other people might say so, but if it aligns with you, you won’t be that person that says, “I wish I had worked less and dedicated that time to (...)”. You will be loud and proud of what you’ve done, even if whatever didn’t turn out how you expected, because what you did was true to you at that time.
That also applies to relationships. If you cannot be fully yourself, you are just fitting your actions to match that situation. No matter how wonderfully that dynamic goes and looks on paper, you know deep inside that it is not “you” living that. It holds no actual value to who you are, what you want to live or in building the future you want.
This goes for unconscious decisions as well, those we make because everyone "does so like that", or at that moment in their life. You are just on autopilot, doing what everyone does, forgetting that you have needs, wants, and expectations for how you want your life to be.
Don’t overthink it too much. What would actually make sense to you right now given what you want to build for yourself?
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