“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, and you will regret it either way.”
-Soren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard’s message here speaks to a modern phenomenon: we are deeply afraid of making the wrong choices. Ultimately, whichever path you choose, you will come to later regret it.
Perhaps you accept a job offer and later wish you had chosen a different career. Maybe you dedicate years of your life to getting good at a sport only to drop it after college. Maybe you date someone for a very long time only to discover they weren’t your long-term partner after all. It is not the idea of failure itself that makes us afraid to commit; it’s the fear of what we might feel when it does occur.
So how do we make meaningful progress in our lives? How do we fight back against the debilitating fear of committing to the wrong thing? Carl Jung offers us an interesting insight into this dilemma:
“The world is full of people suffering from the effects of their own unlived life. They become bitter, critical, or rigid, not because the world is cruel to them, but because they have betrayed their own inner possibilities. The artist who never makes art becomes cynical about those who do. The lover who never risks loving mocks romance. The thinker who never commits to a philosophy sneers at belief itself. And yet, all of them suffer, because deep down they know: the life they mock is the life they were meant to live.”
-Carl Jung
Our lives are made up of small choices. Each decision to take the path of least resistance ultimately pushes us towards a life of suffering, regret, and cynicism. We often hate others because they decided to do things that we were too afraid to pursue, and this makes us resentful. Jung’s insight here is that choosing to pursue a life of art, love, and belief comes with inherent risks. You may experience heartbreak, embarrassment, or failure along the way. But the payoff is worth the gamble.
So take risks, you might just find happiness on the other side.