To the Indecisive Woman

I’m curious about the degree to which indecision plays out for women. I often see women second-guessing themselves, the lives they’ve chosen, and the roads they never walked down.

We’re storytellers and gossipers, and there’s a reason for that. Stories help us survive. They expand our perception of what’s possible. We hear about women who left their unfulfilling marriages, changed career paths at 40, moved across the country on a whim, stayed single despite cultural pressure, or had a family on her own when everyone said it’d be too difficult. We see what other lives could look like.

And of course, there’s something powerful about that. But I wonder about the downside, too.

What happens when knowing all of the possibilities makes it harder to choose one?

We’re suddenly faced with every road we could take. Do I marry this person or stay single? Do I stay in this career or make the leap? Do I stay here or move across the country? And underneath every decision is the possibility that the road we didn’t take might have led somewhere better.

There’s an illusion that the choice we didn’t make could have a happier ending than the one we did.

And I think that can keep us stuck.

Because if we can’t know what’s waiting on the other side of a choice, how do we risk making it? How do we tolerate the possibility of regret? How do we choose one life when we know there are so many other lives we could have lived?

Maybe the hardest part isn’t making the choice.

Maybe it’s the illusion that the life we didn’t choose would have been better.