To Do, or Not To Do?
“I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
First, a little confession. I don’t actually know much about the book I just quoted above, hehe. I simply adopted it from goodreads.com to give a little “blink” to this page. By the way, I just found a new way to say that I’m not good in English — I think it’s way cooler — it’s “sorry for my plain English”, LOL! (I found it on Muammar Hafiizh’s November 2020’s post, go check it out! It’s a damn great introduction!).
Lemme starts with an update on what’s been going on in my life. I officially graduated college last Octobest (I named it since it was the best October I ever had) and have recently filled out a survey about my office preference before being positioned as a civil servant. It didn’t take long for me to complete it, as I already had a target in my sights: in which place can I develop myself better?
Being one of the first few to submit the survey early while everyone else was still deliberating and communicating their choice with their family, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t discussed with my Ibu, okay? I just took a head start and already did it beforehand!
As the placement survey period went on, some of my friends said to me that they have regrets from their time in university. Most were regretting about how they didn’t study hard enough, or how they didn’t participate in more event committees. Some even cried after sending in their office choices, and I don’t blame them for it.
A few also asked me, “Why did you submit your choices so soon? Why before the last simulation results?”
“Don’t you have any regrets submitting the form before checking the simulation results?”
Friends, if you’re reading this, I would like to tell you that I don’t need regret(s) in my life anymore.
There’s just no time for regrets, as nothing will change even if I spent all day thinking about them. If regretting can somehow alter reality, I’m sure no one would bother fighting tooth and nail to pursue their dreams. They’ll just be sulking around until everything will magically turn out just fine. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way out in real life.
Of course, having some regrets in your life is completely fine. I think about them too, sometimes. It’s in our nature, and a necessary part of being alive. Without regret, how would we learn from our past mistakes? We’d just be stuck in our current position, not taking the chance to improve.
Like the quote I started with, most of the time, we will end up having regrets anyways, whether we decide to do it or not. It’s about what you do next that determines the outcome. Are we going to continue doing our best for our future? Because the real threat, is falling into a cycle of regret and not doing anything to end it. Deciding how regrets affect our lives is all in our control and reflects how we deal with every situation.
My take on this dilemma, is to just do it! Whatever happens next, at least you won’t have to live with the regrets of not doing it!
Love, Jiilaan.
As a little extra parting gift, here’s a TedXYouth-Cooper Vardy Video, Enjoy!
