Regret and Hard Choices

Abroad forces you (or at least me) to really think about things easily avoidable back home. For me, this means questioning why I'm really here and what I want out of life. Life has an infinite number of possibilities, an infinite number of paths. Mine led me here, to a room in France with a beautiful view of the mountains and friends I love with all my heart, to dedicating an entire year to just studying French. But sometimes I wonder what else might have been, had I had a different biology teacher, or stuck with piano, or been born to different parents. In the multiverse, there are an infinite number of possibilities, and I wonder who I am in all of them.

I love what I do. I love learning new languages and meeting new people. I love studying the world and the social and international dynamics at play. I want to do good for the world, but that's not as easy as it sounds. Because how do you ever know what is best way of doing good? If I were a computer engineer, made a lot of money, and donated it all, would I be doing more good than if I worked at the NGO that received the donation? If I were a scientist studying gene therapy, would I be doing more good than if I were working on-the-ground in humanitarian aid? I love what I do, but sometimes I feel like it's not enough.

How do I forgive myself for all the things I did not become?

When I hear day in and day out that eight years of progress are being reversed one-by-one by someone who was elected to office by fear-mongering, when I hear about global warming and that we're past the tipping point, when I hear about the thousands of people fleeing violence and that a Nobel Peace Prize winner is not speaking up, I lose faith. I doubt. I wonder if any of it is worth it. And I idolize the hard sciences.

I think about the people who will one day save us from the burning Earth and take us amongst the stars; the people who will find cures for deadly diseases that politicians cannot stop from spreading; the people who invent more and more machines that decrease the unequal home labor of women. And I think, what am I doing? Is it all in vain? Did I choose wrong?

In the Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath offers the metaphor of a fig tree:

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet." 

I recently was presented with a choice, an opportunity to study abroad for a 3rd semester, but it meant losing so many things back at AU. I chose to stay at AU, but it wasn't an easy choice. I've started to realize now that every decision I make to gain one thing means losing another and I feel that no matter what I choose, I will regret my decision.

I find myself asking the same question again and again: How do I forgive myself for all the things I did not become? How do I live with the regret of all the things I did not do, with every choice I make, and how do I keep on making those choices?