The Decisions We Did Not Think Through

Our best decisions are not always the ones we thought through the most.

Sometimes, they are the ones we simply started.

No spreadsheet.

No exhaustive list of possibilities.

No careful rehearsal of every imaginable outcome.

We just began.

In hindsight, we may dress them up as deliberate. We may find reasons for why they made sense, construct a neat little story around the decision and convince ourselves that we knew exactly what we were doing.

Sometimes, we did not.

Sometimes, we jumped.

Without looking.

And somehow, we landed.

There is something uncomfortable about admitting this because we have been taught to celebrate the carefully considered decision. Think. Analyse. Evaluate. Consider the consequences. Then act.

And rightly so.

But there is a point where thinking stops being preparation and becomes postponement.

We keep examining the door because we are afraid of what might be on the other side.

We call it wisdom.

Sometimes, it is simply fear wearing spectacles.

There are decisions that require counsel, patience and careful thought. There are consequences that deserve to be considered before we move.

But there are also moments when we already know enough.

Not everything.

Just enough.

Enough to take the first step.

Enough to begin.

And perhaps that is the distinction we sometimes miss.

A decision does not always become wise because we thought about it for a long time.

Sometimes, it becomes wise because we were willing to move, learn, adjust and keep going.

The road itself can become part of the answer.

Some of the best things in our lives may never have survived the interrogation we subject our possibilities to.

They survived because, at some point, we stopped asking what if?

And started asking,

What happens if I try?

Maybe courage is not always the absence of uncertainty.

Perhaps it is simply the willingness to move with incomplete information at times.

To jump.

To discover that the ground is there.

Or, if it is not, to learn how to build wings on the way down.

Nugget

Not every good decision arrives fully reasoned.

Some decisions become good because we had the courage to begin before we had all the answers.