Reflections on decisions and the path not traveled

Kierkegaard planteó una idea incómoda: cualquier elección que hagamos traerá consigo algún tipo de arrepentimiento. Cada decisión abre un camino, pero también cierra otros.

Perhaps one of the biggest traps of adult life is to look at the paths we leave behind and start imagining them as if they had been better.

• The relationship we didn't have.

  
  

• The city we didn't move to.

  
  

• The business we didn't undertake.

  
  

• The trip we postponed.

  
  

• The person we let go.

  
  

• The version of ourselves that, in our imagination, would be happier if we had taken another direction.

  
  

With the passage of time, the unlived acquires a dangerous characteristic: it seems to have no problems. We don't know their arguments, their losses, their disappointments, their boring days or their consequences. We only know the edited version that our imagination builds. Therefore, we can romanticize a life we never had.

The unlived always seems simpler

When we look back, memory doesn't always work like a target file; sometimes it becomes a creative storyteller. We took a possibility and filled it with what we wished had happened:

• "If I had stayed with him..."

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• "If I had accepted that job..."

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• "If I had had the courage to leave..."

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• "If I had started earlier..."

But there is a question that we rarely ask ourselves: how do we know that life would have been better? We don't know. That story was not lived. And that is precisely why it can remain intact. Real life is not linear; sometimes what happens to us seems surreal. He has wrong decisions, tiredness, conflicts, losses, diseases, changes of opinion, people who disappoint us and others who surprise us ☀️.

What we did not live did not have the opportunity to show us its complete reality. We don't know what that relationship would have been like when the differences appeared, that job when the demands came or that city when it stopped being new. We only know the version we build from a distance. And, often, that version is made of possibilities, not facts.

Choosing also means giving up

However, we have learned to think that a good decision should leave us alone. As if having chosen well meant not asking ourselves again what would have happened differently. But a decision may have been appropriate for us and, at the same time, imply a loss.

We can value a profession and recognize that we need another stage. We can deeply love a place and, yet, feel that the time has come to leave and not be ready to move. Not everything we left behind was a mistake. Not everything that didn't start was a mistake. Sometimes it simply did not correspond with the person we have become.

This takes on a particular dimension after the age of 50. Because at that age, many people begin to look at their lives with a new question:

What would have happened if...?

It's a legitimate question. What can become a trap is to stay living inside her.

After 50, we don't need to recover as many lives as possible

Perhaps it is not about repairing every decision of the past. Not even to show that all our choices were perfect. It is about stopping demanding perfection from a life that, by definition, had to be chosen between possibilities.

Because while we live one story, other stories remain without living. And some will continue to cause our curiosity. That's also part of being human. The important question is what we do with that curiosity.

We can turn it into permanent nostalgia or use it as information. Perhaps that life we imagine is not telling us: "you should have chosen it." Maybe he's telling us:

"There's something of that possibility you still want."

And there everything changes.

If for years you imagine what it would have been like to live near the sea, you may not need to move to that specific city from twenty years ago. You may need to incorporate more sea into your current life. If you often remember that project you never started, you may not need to rebuild the past. You may need to ask yourself what project you can still start. If you idealize a relationship that didn't happen, you may not need to find that person. You may need to recognize what kind of bond you want to experience now.

The unlived can then become a compass, instead of a condemnation.

Life can't be corrected backwards

There are decisions that we cannot undo. And perhaps therein lies a deep part of adult freedom: understanding that we do not need to undo them to keep moving forward. We can't go back to the exact moment we chose. But we can look at what that election taught us.

We can recognize what we no longer want. We can discover what we still want. We can make room for something new. Because even the decision we question today is part of the person we are now. And maybe this is a kinder way to relate to regret:

Not only to ask ourselves what would have happened if we had chosen differently, but what we can choose today with what we now know.

After all, life does not offer us the possibility to try all its versions. We chose one. We live it. We lost some possibilities. We found others. And we continue.

Perhaps true freedom is not about finding the decision that we will never regret. Perhaps it consists of accepting that each choice has a cost and, even so, daring to choose again when our life asks us for a new direction.

Because the life we don't live can be beautiful in our imagination. But the life we can still live has something it will never have:

The possibility of happening.

Living life from the vision that Everything is Perfect is the path to a fuller life.

August 30 de 2026, Isabel Ruiz - Mentora Humanista - Life Meaning Counseling 🦋🦋🦋