Living with Your Decisions

Well, she finally did it. My daughter chose.

It wasn't easy. There was a daily battle and, depending on the hour you asked her, it could have gone either way. But my baby - my oldest - made her first decision as an adult: she chose her university. Now, for the next year, she will be living with that decision. Right now the strongest feeling is one of relief. No more angsting, no more pros and cons, no more eenie, meenie, miney moe. Later will come the hardest part: the living with it.

Living with a decision is hard only if things are going wrong or if you're unhappy with your choice. Since oldest had two good choices the likelihood of her being unhappy with either of them is slim. But there will always be niggling questions and considerations. The main one being "What if I'd chosen the other way?"

As writers, this is easy for us to deal with - we can always write a scene making the characters go in that different direction. We can read both versions and say - this is the way to go. This is where I want my characters to end up. It would be so much easier if, in life, we had a button to press that showed us where our decisions would lead us. But we live our lives not as writers but readers - life (like a good book) is exciting precisely because we don't know where our life (and the book) is leading. And, as I told my oldest, she's still so young she can change directions a number of times or, if she likes the path she's on, then she can continue with that storyline for awhile. She is the maker of her own fate. But if she believes in destiny then the things that are destined for her will happen no matter what path she's chosen.

Either way, she shouldn't stress. The decision is made and all I can hope for her is that the living with it will be easy.