On being perpetually undecided

I have always wondered if those who are quicker at making decisions know something that I do not. Maybe they understand the world a bit better and hence are better at weighing their options and quicker at arriving at a decision? Or maybe it’s just a me thing?

I am indecisive about almost everything. What do I want to eat? What do I want to do this weekend? Where do I want to go? Even when I plan a trip, I can barely bring myself to plan anything beyond getting there and getting back. I book my tickets, and leave everything in between to chance, or to a version of myself who will somehow figure it out when the time comes. I’ll cross the bridge when I have to is my thing perhaps?

I think - “think” part of it comes from the fear of missing out. Every time I choose something, I am also choosing not to do something else. A weekend spent exploring a new place is a weekend I could have spent resting, meeting friends, or discovering something closer to home, or just doing absolutely nothing and couch potatoeing. And whichever I choose, there is always the possibility that the alternative might have been better.

Perhaps that is what makes deciding so difficult. It is not always that I don’t know what I want. Sometimes, I want too many things. And I find it difficult to accept that I cannot experience all of them, at least not at the same time. Every option has its own appeal, its own version of how the day might unfold, its own promise of something I might enjoy. But for every reason to choose something, I can come up with just as many reasons not to. I can convince myself of how wonderful an experience might be, only to turn around and imagine all the ways it could go wrong. How am I supposed to choose one when I can imagine myself being happy with so many, yet find equally convincing reasons why each might turn out to be a disaster?

Then there is the possibility of regret. What if I make a choice today and wish I had done something else tomorrow? What if, in hindsight, the other option was exactly what I needed? I seem to want the freedom to choose, but also the assurance that I will never have to wonder what would have happened if I had chosen differently.

The funny thing is that I don’t always try to resolve this indecision by planning everything. When it comes to travelling for example, I do the bare minimum. I book my tickets and leave the rest to chance. Or I just instantaneously get out on the train on the weekends and then get down on whatever stop that looks enticing. Perhaps it is easier to postpone the decisions than to make them. Perhaps I like the idea of keeping my options open for as long as possible, or at least that’s what I keep telling myself. There is definitely something appealing about not knowing exactly where I will end up, about leaving room for a place I hadn’t thought of visiting or an experience I hadn’t planned for.

But keeping my options open comes at a cost, too. Sometimes, I wonder if I end up experiencing less because I spend so much time thinking about what I could do, or because I leave things until the last minute. Sometimes, I spend so much time finalising plans that I end up not doing what I had initially set out to do, only to find myself drained from the whole process. If that makes sense? I want the spontaneity of having no plans and, somehow, the reassurance of knowing I haven’t missed anything, and the possibility of doing whatever I set my heart to.

I don’t know if this is something I need to work on, or if it is simply the way I have learnt to navigate the world. I don’t even know if the people who seem so certain are any less afraid of making the wrong choice. There are times where I have made a decision and owned up to it…but they are very few and often the very big-picture ones. Everything else in between is postponed to the last possible moment!

But I keep coming back to the same question: do they know something I don’t? Or have they simply accepted something that I am still struggling with that no matter how carefully we choose, there will always be another possibility we didn’t explore, another road we didn’t take, and another version of how things could have turned out? Another maybe even better version of me?

Perhaps what I am looking for isn’t the perfect decision. Perhaps I am looking for a way to make a decision without feeling that I have lost something by making it.