Tag: decisions

gray areas

In life there are things I consider as black and white; right and wrong. There is absolutely no gray area in between. For example, it is wrong to murder and though I watch dozens of gory films where they slaughter each other 90% of the time, I still won’t consider doing the act myself. Another thing (and I don’t mean to judge anyone with this) is I consider pms or pre-marital sex wrong and even though I long to have sex I will never do so unless I am actually married (so I guess I should hurry up and get married – just kidding!). Also I believe lying is wrong and even in the most scrutinizing moments I would rather remain silent than tell a lie against a truth that could implicate or hurt.

Yet there are also some things in life that are gray and never clear; leaving us with the discretion to figure out whether it is right or wrong. This is true for most things like the opportunities we chose to take or the life decisions we chose to make. Just as I believe that God gave man free will and intelligence to determine which of the countless opportunities he presents to him is for his best, then so I believe that one will never know if such gray areas are right or wrong unless one tries them out.

On Monday I plan to submit my resignation letter (finally!) and at the same time submit my resume to the adjoining company. Of course I still do not know if it is a right or wrong decision since basically the other company may very well fall into the BPO category even if it is a non-voice and completely different job description (med transcriptionist). I do not know if I will save myself from the current stagnation I am experiencing by jumping to this company – I probably will for the first 3-6 months while everything is a novelty to me but beyond that I cannot really tell. I do not know if I will do myself a huge favor by actually getting out of this company I am in before I receive my first 13th month pay.

But one thing I do know. My soul will never rest and will never be satisfied if I don’t try the other path. I am at a point in my life wherein I am free to try anything I chose to do; wherein I have no financial obligations to anyone except myself and wherein if I get into a tight financial spot I can still count on my parents to bail me out. Lucky me right? So why should I waste this golden opportunity stagnating myself in a company or in an industry wherein loyalty results to only miniscule salary increases and wherein jumping companies (otherwise known as piracy) is encouraged – for higher salary or rate that is.

So maybe I am making a right decision. Maybe not. But who can tell unless I make the decision, right?

 

Gray Matter of the Spinal Cord (the "butterfly" in the middle)
Gray Matter of the Spinal Cord (the "butterfly" in the middle)

On Dreams and Regrets

I am a dreamer. I guess like everybody else, I dream of being rich and famous; of travelling to exotic locations in the world; of having my own mansion with my own majestic view of the valley and my own swimming pool. I do have days when I like day-dreaming of things that does not hold a hint of seriousness for me in the sense that they are not really part of the goals I want to achieve. Or in other words, they are impossible for me, since for me, they are just that – dreams. I also have days wherein I dream of things I do want to achieve such as a fulfilling job, a loving husband and well-raised kids. These are my goals in life which I would further break down into details in terms of short, mid and long term goals. Now these are the kind of dreams that I know are possible because I will make them not just dreams but reality as well.

Then there are those days when I dream of what could have been; when I think of past events in my life wherein a different outcome would have happened had I made a different decision or did a different thing. I guess we all have our moments when we think about the what if’s in life. What if I didn’t go to that school and pursued the kind of education I have now? What if I didn’t lend that so large a sum to that person and instead have invested the money some other way? What if I remained in my own social niche and pursued something else instead of totally uprooting my life to pursue what I am doing now? What if I had taken that offer to go to this place? This company? This country? this university? There are days when we dream of all the what if’s of life.

I think it is alright to dream of the what if’s. To dwell on them, I believe is a different matter entirely. Dwelling too much on the what if’s of life makes us wish that it was that other option we’ve taken or that other decision we’ve made. It makes us wish for it so hard that we become unhappy with the choice that we have now. And this is what we now call regret.

Regret, I believe, is a normal part of life. It is normal for any sane individual to have regrets in life and I believe this is something that we cannot really avoid. I think that without regret, we won’t learn any lessons and we won’t improve as a person. There are indeed times when the other decision would have really been better; when the grass is really greener on the other side of where we’re at. At this point, if we regret the decision we’ve made that led us to the not so green side of the grass, then we can learn from the experience so that the next time around, we would know how to distinguish which grass is indeed greener.

Then again, after we’ve learned the lesson that led to us having regrets, then it is thus befitting that we live with the decision we’ve made or the path we’ve taken. The grass in the other side may indeed be greener, but who said that we cannot make the grass where we’re at as green or if not even greener than the other side. It all boils down then to what we do with the decision we made – whether we decide to live by it and do the best we can to make the most of it or if we forever wallow in regret and wishful longing of what could have been thereby forgoing the actual choice we made.

I know this is a hard truth to swallow. I have my own bagful of regrets I could share. I admit I have my own moments wherein I wished I could have done something else, decided something else, said something else, tried something else. But then at the end of the day, the ultimate loser will be ourselves if we let our minds wallow in self-pity over what could have been; if we stressed ourselves over what we could have done.

Bottomline is: let’s just simply make the best of what we have now, learn from the reason why we are having regrets over this one, and do our best the next time around. J I know it’s better said than done but we could at least try.