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I’m facing a situation right now that has many possible outcomes. It’s causing me to think in all sorts of directions. I was thinking about it last night (in the shower, because that’s the only place I am allowed to think), and my brain went something like this:
I wish I had a crystal ball.
No, crystal balls are no good. I wish I were psychic.
Yes! Like Alice in Twilight.
The girl who plays Alice is pretty good, but Jasper doesn’t get enough to do in the movies.
My mind is a very twisty place.
In the Twilight saga, Stephenie Meyer created a psychic that makes sense. Alice Cullen can see the future, but only after decisions have been made. Unlike most mythologies, which will have you believe that the future can’t be changed, in Twilight, the future changes all the time. Just like in real life.*
Decisions change the future. Choosing to turn left instead of right means you might avoid or cause an accident. Leaving a few minutes early might mean you miss a call that would have changed the course of your day. Even these little choices can change the world.
That’s why it bothers me when people berate themselves for not knowing the future. The idea that “If I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently.” However, if you did do things differently, then perhaps you wouldn’t know what you know now, you wouldn’t have your child, you would end up worse off than you would have before.
I could say, for example, that we never should have chosen the facilitator we used, as they turned out to be unethical and overpriced. But if we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have Jack.
The point is – you don’t know what’s going to happen next. You can educate yourself and make choices based on that education. But you can’t sit around and beat yourself up because you didn’t have all the information that you had at the end. At some point, you have to say, “No, I didn’t make a good decision, but that was then, and this is now.” You can’t spin endless possibilities in your head, too paralyzed to even make a decision. Pick one and stick with it, as long as it seems to work. All you can do is your best with what you know and have right now.
