Hi, I'm Sam,
They say there is no point crying over spilt milk. It is possible to take the sentence as face value but as a known overthinker, I've always had to dive deep into phrases like that. No matter our age bracket, after getting to the age of being on our own, our lives will be full of choices to make. Some choices birth unimaginable rewards while some come with their fair share of consequences which in turn lead to lessons learnt, but the annoying constant is finding yourself with options to choose from and not choosing any of the options is also making a choice which will probably come with its own consequences. Sometimes I feel like none of the available options will produce anything I think I desire in the moment but what I need and in that moment I just have to deal with the feeling of picking an option with a less terrible outcome.
Its very easy to identify bad judgement when you're not the one making it. When I listen to someone tell me about a situation, I find it easy to spot the holes, the should-haves and what-not, but when its about me and my decisions, I find out that I am selectively blind to a lot of obvious things and the things that I am not blind to, I try my best to make them not look like what they really are. And this blindness is not usually intentional, it can be me making excuses for so many inexcusable things, or me thinking that I am trying to focus on the good or sharing benefits of doubt like I am Santa claus in the middle of Christmas. The current of making or not making bad judgement begins to flow in unfamiliar patterns, I can go from "I will never do this", "this can never be me" or "I shouldn't be doing this" to "oh, I can't believe I just did that" or "this isn't as terrible as I thought it was" to realizing how bad the judgement was and going back to my initial stage of "I will never do this" but with so much more grace and drop the pride that comes with "can never be me" because at some point, it became me, I liked it because of course it was meant to give a temporary thrill that lasts only but few seconds but somehow feels longer and finally realize how bad it was but with grace enough to know that it can be anybody and whoever it is at the moment will eventually realize the path and cross over to the brighter and easy to live side.
There are decisions I've come to admit that I made really late in life. I've tried my best to ignore them but acknowledging that I made those decisions late does not mean that they're bad decisions or that I regret making them late. As much as I believe that things happen at a moment in time that they're supposed to happen, I still know that some decisions are best made early and at the right time. It might work out whenever you eventually muster the courage to make the decision but that won't take away from the fact that you should've decided on that earlier than you did. Sometimes I wonder how well the decisions would've come out had I made them earlier just by seeing how good making those decisions are now or are they working out now because this is when I'm supposed to be making them and will they be riddled with holes and mistakes had I made them earlier?
Accepting that a judgement was bad does not take away the lessons learnt or the repercussions of the decisions. It has happened, the weird phase in interaction has also happened and as time keeps moving, so will I and everyone involved or heard about it. The evergreen memory of a bad judgement is not to keep me stagnant in a place where I feel inadequate to make better choices but to always remind me to be on the right side of plans and decisions and to always remind me that actions really do have consequences and as such to be careful and pay close attention to my choices before making them.