You Can’t Choose Your Way Out of Being Human

A lot of people out there wind up living roughly the same life all the way through. They stick close to the place they were born, they marry their high school sweetheart, and they step into the family business once their parents start aging.

I am not one of those people, despite being someone whose ultimate goal in life has always been peace.

So, I’ve made a lot of choices in my life — big ones. The kind that require dismantling everything familiar and building it all back up again from scratch. I’ve moved from state to state, changed careers, ended relationships, started new ones, and reinvented myself so many times that “starting over” might as well have been my hobby at one point.

And I’ve done it all for the same reason most of us do — to try my best to live a life that feels true to who I am. To follow my heart and make sure I chase the dreams that whisper to a person at night, promising meaning and fulfillment if you're just willing to be brave and take the leap.

So I’ve leapt. Over and over. And I'm still not living the stable, problem-free life I hoped I'd be.

I’ve been radiant with joy, and I’ve been deeply, darkly, existentially depressed, sometimes in the same week. I’ve felt proud of my choices, and I’ve regretted them, and then I’ve regretted regretting them. I’ve been happy, unhappy, grateful, resentful.

In other words, I’ve been a very imperfect human who's really just doing the best she can.

And I suppose the reason "regret" doesn't last long when I think about my endless patchwork chain of life choices is the understanding that if I’d made different ones, things would’ve turned out largely the same. A wild cocktail of glowing gratitude and “fuck my life” and everything in between.

So, I don’t really believe in “good” or “bad” choices anymore. Just choices, each one its own bittersweet recipe of gain and loss along for the ride.

The Myth of the Correct Path

Most of us are raised to think of life as a branching tree. Choose well, and you’ll climb upward into light and happiness. Choose poorly, and you’ll tumble into misery, financial ruin, and possibly also a weird rash.

But in reality, life is a lot more like a tangled ball of yarn somebody's cat has been playing with all damn afternoon. Whichever strand you grab, it’ll lead you somewhere interesting, irritating, occasionally beautiful, and definitely not what you expected. Every individual choice opens a new world of both joy and suffering.

Follow your heart to a new city to chase your dreams? You’ll gain adventure and lose your favorite diner. Stay put? You might keep your comfort and stability, but also catch yourself scrolling through apartment listings in Lisbon at midnight.

For the most part, there are no purely good or bad decisions. Only trade-offs.

You can make the most logical, responsible choice in the world and still feel lonely. You can make the wild, spontaneous one and still end up folding endless piles of laundry, wondering what your life could’ve been if you'd just done that one thing that one time.

So, maybe the real question isn’t, “Did I choose right?” It’s, “Can I make meaning out of what I have chosen?”

The Ghosts of Unchosen Lives

If life's taught me anything at this point, it's that every decision births a tiny haunting. The jobs we didn’t take, the people we didn’t date, the cities we never lived in. They love to follow us around, whispering, "Hey, what if?"

And it is so easy to mistake those whispers for regret, when really, they’re just the echoes of possibilities that once existed and no longer do.

Even when you know you made the right decision — like not marrying the college ex who thought showering was a personality trait or taking some soul-destroying job you were offered once upon a time — you can still hear the call of the road not taken. Totally normal. Totally comes with the territory of being human.

I spent most of my youth actually pursuing some of the crazier opportunities I've been offered in life, just so I wouldn't have to wonder "what if" now that I'm in middle age.

But sometimes I still see those ghosts.

So, instead of trying to silence them (because that truly doesn't work), I sit and consider them once in a while. I let them tell me stories about other worlds that could have been before sending them home politely. I don't owe them a place to stay indefinitely, but sometimes I find value in allowing them to stop in for tea.

The Spiritual Bit (Don't Worry, No Incense Required)

Spiritually speaking, the “right choice” myth is just perfectionism in a robe. It’s the idea that life is a divine obstacle course and that with enough intuition, journaling, and unwavering spiritual alignment, we can somehow unlock a path free of discomfort.

Tried it. Can confirm. Doesn't happen.

Every sacred tradition eventually brings you back to the same conclusion. Light and shadow are twins, and joy and pain are part of the same current. Trying to make only “happy” choices is like trying to eat only frosting. You’ll eventually get sicker than you ever imagined you could be and start resenting cake.

The key to making it through in one piece isn’t to somehow escape suffering. It’s to learn how to suffer well. It's to figure out how to laugh through it, make art out of it, and keep showing up for your life even when the universe feels like it’s ghosting you.

The Practical Stuff: How to Choose When You Can't

Now this is the point where I stop armchair-philosophizing and attempt to get into actual, usable advice, because “suffering beautifully” is great until you need to pick between job offers or decide whether to move in with someone whose main hobby is breathing loudly.

Assume every choice will contain both delight and disappointment

I get how grim that sounds on the surface, but it’s actually kind of liberating. Because once you stop hunting for a perfect option, you can focus on finding the authentic one instead — the one that aligns with your values, your energy, and the type of life you actually want to be living.

Trade fear for curiosity

Most times I've felt genuinely indecisive in my life had nothing to do with uncertainty. It was more about fear of regret. But it's helped to stop asking, “What if this goes wrong?” every time and start asking, “What might I learn?” more often instead.

Life is an adventure I don't always want to be having, but I try to embrace it as one all the same.

Pick the one you can actually live with, not the one that looks good on paper

You are ultimately the one who will have to live the consequences of your decisions, not your parents, boss, or Instagram followers. So, fuck people's self-serving, misaligned advice. A “sensible” choice that leaves you feeling dead inside is still the wrong fit.

Don't wait for absolute confidence to come to the party

Because it loves to pull no-shows. Confidence usually shows up after the leap (if at all), not before. But self-compassion is important regardless of which decision you make. Trust yourself to clean up the inevitable messes later. And when you look back years from now, accept that you did your best.

How to Actually Live with Your Choices

So maybe you’ve already made your choices. You’ve picked the city, or the partner, or the career pivot, possibly a long time ago. You were probably even excited at first, because fuck yeah, new life. But eventually, even the brightest fireworks fade, and you’re standing in the dark, wondering whether you’ve ruined your life.

Welcome to the human experience.

Stop scanning for regret

Take it from someone who was apparently born melancholy and still has to consciously fight against it nearly every day of her life. You’ll find regret if you go looking for it. Brains are like hardened gossips who love to nitpick.

Ask yourself, “What’s working about this decision right now?” and focus on that instead. Even a 10% satisfaction rate is something you can build on.

Give every choice a season

Don’t evaluate and impose your final verdict on a situation too soon. Just like plants, new decisions look like absolutely nothing for a while. But there's almost always rooting going on underground that you can't see. That rooting is a necessary part of the process.

Accept the periodic freakout

I don't care how great your life eventually turns out. There will be 2 AM moments where you’ll doubt every damn decision you've ever made, including the big ones. That doesn’t necessarily mean you chose wrong, though.

I've learned over the years to process those moments by writing them down, possibly talking to someone I trust about it, eating a snack, and waiting 48 hours. Things usually recalibrate once perspective re-enters the chat.

Remember that you can always rechoose

Nothing is permanent until you tattoo it on your face, and even then, you've still got a couple of fringe options to consider. Life is flexible. It leaves more room than you think to pivot, evolve, or — barring any other solution — pack up and start fresh.

So, What Is the Key to Happiness Then?

I don't claim to have all the answers, as I still have way too many days when my life is absolute clown shoes for that. But it's worth considering that maybe happiness isn’t about minimizing pain, but rather maximizing participation.

If you can show up for your life — like... really show up — even when it’s inconvenient, unglamorous, or mildly disappointing, you’ve sort of already won. Because you’re doing what most people never even really consider. You’re actively inhabiting your choices instead of perpetually auditioning for a different version of yourself.

Whatever you choose in life? You’ll be happy, and you’ll be miserable, and you'll be everything in between. And that’s just the way it is.

You’ll cry over some long-gone version of your life you didn’t pick, and then you’ll laugh so hard you choke on your drink later that same week. You’ll wake up some mornings in awe of your blessings and other mornings asking the universe about its return policy.

And that’s life. That’s the tweet.

But the longer you live, the more you will eventually realize there are no wrong paths, only different flavors of experience. For that reason, I've long ago stopped trying to eat around the bitterness and started noticing how it brings out the sweetness instead. It's really all any of us can do.