We’ve all heard that our biggest regrets don’t come from the risks we take, but the risks we didn’t. I’ve lived by that as a code, and it’s one of the reasons why for as long as I can remember I’ve obsessively collected experiences, places, and people to be a part of my life. I take on my days like a vacuum cleaner to a shaggy rug, like the world is my oyster platter and it’s happy hour on someone else’s tab. Being this way is exhilarating and exhausting. It plays out in big ways, like my temptation to jump at most opportunities to go to a new part of the world, or to dive into new projects simply out of sheer wonder of the subject. It also manifests in small ways – at restaurants, I always want to order last so I can pit the delicious dishes against each other in my brain, finally order one under pressure, and almost surely change my decision as soon as I hear it come out my lips. Despite coming off like a stereotypical gemini, my thirst for trying new things has generally played to my favor. I’m super happy being who I am, where I am.
But every decision has its cost-benefit. When I take a risk, packed into it is the assumed consequences of foregoing what else could have been. I moved to New York with iLL-Lit in ‘09, only after massive amounts of soul-searching about whether I really wanted to live so far from my family and friends. We took a big risk. We were met with shitty landlords, rats in our basement, being perpetually broke, stolen computers with music we had worked our asses off on, and plenty of wondering if this was in fact a risk we shouldn’t have taken. When Dahlak and Nico moved back to California, I was again faced with a tough decision — do I follow suit and continue dedicating my full time to the band like I had for so many years, or do I move to Beijing with Lovely, and live out that dream of residing overseas like I’d been contemplating for so long?
Choosing the latter has set me into an unreal life (not like touring the country with a funk band wearing giant Lego heads wasn’t). I’ve met people I’ve never imagined meeting, gone to places I never thought I’d be, and embarked on projects on a scale that I never fathomed before. But in the frequent moments when I contemplate my couldawouldashouldas, they show themselves not so much in missed leaps I didn’t take – the kind that are idolized in those TED talks about seizing moments and maximizing potential – instead, they’re in the paths I left behind when I switched tracks toward newer pastures.
Obsessing over whether you really made the right life decisions can be a full-time job, but it’s a completely irrational mental exercise. I say this because the solutions demanded by regret can only be achieved with the stuff of science fiction. How can I be sure that I truly spent my years barking up the wrong tree, other than to employ some psychic power to catch a glimpse at an imagined alternative reality? If then, I do find things to regret, do I fix that by hopping in my nonexistent time machine? And if I do manage to go back in time, when I get there do I magically clone myself so I can seize all the missed opportunities while still making sure I salvage the lived experiences I’m content with? And then what? I return to the present moment and just bask in all the money I’ve made or recognition I’ve garnered or success I’ve achieved, I guess.
But that’s the thing about commitment – you lock yourself in, even if briefly, to the track you’ve chosen. Some people fear commitment because the thought of the indefinite can be frightening. But I think what really brings us unease are all the other things that could happen but won’t. The flaw here is that we think holding off on commitment means that all the possibilities are at our fingertips, but that’s where they remain – at our fingertips and never within grasp. By refusing to commit, we think we’re seizing every moment, when in reality we’re grabbing at everything but taking hold of nothing.
My chronic indecisiveness means that I’m perpetually aware of the slew of missed opportunities that I’ll never know. But instead of ruminating on that, I’m trying to remind myself to appreciate the fact that such a wealth of possibilities is available to me in the first place. It’s an unearned privilege that not all have. Honoring the privilege of choice means fully embracing what life has provided, even there’s a chance it might not be the absolute best hypothetical outcome offered by the multiverse.
If I’m fortunate enough, I’ll be seeing many phrases in my life ahead that I will one day reflect on, wonder about, reappraise. There will be risks I’m on the verge of taking before deciding not to, and I’ll take chances that I’ll wish I hadn’t. I’ll keep working at my job wondering what life could be if I was doing something else, and when I finally do leave, I’ll wonder if I walked away from the career of a lifetime. I’ll continue traveling, longing to see and live in places I’ll never step foot in. And when the fateful times come when my loved ones leave this earth, I’ll wish I hadn’t ever moved or traveled at all. I’ll wish I stayed in the house I grew up in and spent everyday holding them close, never distracting myself from professional accolades or public recognition or internet attention. I’ll look at those who lived slow, seemingly unadventurous and uneventful lives, and wonder if I couldashouldawoulda followed that path. And then I’ll do what we always do regardless of how our existences transpire – I’ll live with it.