The inevitable doesn't have to be
We ought to think long and hard before we do something that can’t be undone. (SDASM Archives)
In the 1997 film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Austin Powers and his sidekick, Vanessa Kensington (played by Mike Myers and Elizabeth Hurley, respectively) are operating a steamroller for reasons I don’t recall. Meanwhile, a security officer stands in the path of the slow-moving steamroller, facing his inevitable death.
The gag, of course, is that this guy has all the time in the world to get out of the path of the steamroller, but he doesn’t.
I think of this bit surprisingly often because it is the perfect metaphor for most of the poor decisions I’ve made. While I was doing the thing, however well-meaning it was, I knew I shouldn’t have been doing it. I saw a mile away that it wasn’t going to be a good idea, and yet I didn’t course correct.
Can you relate? This is how powerful our habits can be and how paralyzing our concern over what others will think. Not only do we get stuck in patterns of behavior that aren’t serving us well, we let others’ opinions encourage us to continue down a road we know will be harmful or deter us from doing what we know we should.
In one “steamroller” moment I can recall, I felt totally trapped by an incipient decision. I was in my head, rueing my choices and ruining a beautiful evening. I wasn’t present to enjoy what I was actually experiencing — I was in the future and the past simultaneously, experiencing a nauseous mix of regret and worry.
In that moment, the only option I could see was to stoically carry the burden of my foolishness, accepting its consequences. But as I continued to work through — and talk through — the problem, I realized that I would only be compounding my errors if I persisted with the path I was on. I needed to make changes, and I had the power to do that — I wasn’t actually trapped.
My mother has often said that no decision, short of murder, is truly irreversible. You can get all the way down the aisle in the fancy dress and change your mind. To do so might be painful, but it’s not fatal. To stay with a course of action that has your whole being screaming, “Nooooo!” is worse.
Even if you’ve already begun executing on a decision, new information may come to light that changes its context and challenges you to reevaluate. Sometimes, the most compassionate thing to do, or the most expedient, or the wisest, is to change your mind.
Our brains do a great job of filtering the world for us. Due to the impossibility of processing all of the sensory inputs available, we tend to see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. It’s no wonder, then, that we make decisions that are automatic, based on what we’ve always done. It’s no wonder that we freeze when presented with a situation that appears to be beyond our control, unable to shift out of our routine to process what is happening.
However, if we want to live more consciously — if we want to lead our lives with intention instead of being a victim of our circumstances — we have to pay attention to the options that we may have overlooked or dismissed. To get better results, we might have to do things differently than the way we’re used to. This can feel just as wrong or agonizing at first as making a decision we know is the unwise one, but eventually we learn to navigate more confidently through this wider range of possibilities.
Those of us with the gift of freedom — to eat what we want, wear what we want, say what we want, live where we want, and do what we want — have the joy, the privilege, and the burden of being responsible for our own choices. If we don’t like what we’re getting, we can choose something else, no matter how stuck we feel. It’s an option that’s always available if we choose to seek it out.
