I often struggle when offered choices, both in the moment of choice, and in consideration of the long term consequences of that choice.
Do you consider yourself a risk taker? What do you actually consider when evaluating risk vs reward opportunities? Is it likely that you evaluate new opportunities based on what you perceive to be earlier, similar choices? Have you experienced regret about previous decisions you have made in such circumstances? Do you reflect and celebrate with thankfulness for choices of remarkable good fortune?
Deeply honest and introspective answers to the questions posed above, and other similar gratitude/disappointment reflections, might determine our general daily happiness/satisfaction sense of well-being. If traced to their origins, such questions and their answers, are likely the reflections of simple Yes/No decisions. They were binary decisions with yes signaling willingness and no signaling rejection. Yes I accept, or no I decline.
I believe that the more often a person says “yes” in FULL CONSIDERATION of the circumstances and potential outcome of an offer, the more likely their life experience will be more robust, satisfying and influential than those that choose to say no in similar circumstances.
Why then, if saying no eliminates any future potential outcome that saying yes may have provided, do most of us seem to say no so much more often than we say yes? Is it because saying no, whether it be a difficult or an easy response, is the one that is most likely to be SAFER, INSTANT, EFFORTLESS, WITHOUT RISK or RECRIMINATION and EASILY PLACED IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR OF OUR FUTURE...?
Yet saying no also immediately eliminates any of the possibilities that saying yes might have offered. As an example, what if you said no to what might have become a life changing yes response. As an adult you may already have experienced the frustration of having said no to something that turned into a huge benefit for someone else that chose to say yes in similar circumstances! For you it may have meant that a lost opportunity became regret, while for the other it became a reward.
We have all said no thousands of times. And every single no has excluded the possibility of what might have been the result of saying yes. Most of our no’s were absolutely PERFECT responses in the moment. Some of them, under certain circumstances, may even have been life saving. No is one of the most important personal choices we can possibly make. No can be a complete sentence, period. My point is that every one of us has probably said no to something because we assumed it would have involved thought, or effort, or attention, or commitment that we simply chose not to make or experience.
Because it was our default answer to a moment of inattention, inconvenience, laziness or misunderstanding, we never experienced what might have been the result of saying yes! No most often expresses as an end of consideration, while yes most often expresses a beginning.
In context of this being a Father’s Blog I have many regrets for having said NO to my children because of a perceived personal inconvenience. Even more frequently I may have said no because I could not see the request, or opportunity, through my children’s eyes or enthusiasm in the moment, so I defaulted to the no of inconvenience when the yes of opportunity could have become a lifetime memory with my child!
I still remember a decision that I particularly regret from nearly forty years ago. I had made plans with a friend to take my son to a game at Yankee stadium. There was great anticipation for weeks before the date, but the morning of the game there was truly miserable weather. We waited as long as we could to leave for the scheduled afternoon game but at about 11:00am my friend called and said he and his son were going to cancel. He thought the game would be postponed anyway. I hesitated for a few minutes before telling my son we were not going to go to the game. I will never forget the tears welling up in his eyes, his plea to go anyway with his naïve childhood optimism that they surely were going to play as scheduled. My friend had already decided to cancel, so I had lost my adult company and my son had already lost the company of his friend, but he still wanted to go. I made the practical and CONVENIENT decision to cancel our long planned adventure. My son was crestfallen and of course a short while later the sun came out, the game was played and my son’s favorite team won in an exciting extra inning game. And we missed it. Although in context it may not have been a big deal, and my son obviously has gotten over it, saying yes at that moment 40 years ago would have replaced a regret I still experience 40 years later.
Of course, Robert Frost expressed this dilemma in his timeless poem The Road Not Taken (always worth re-reading). I am experiencing these regrets in retrospect. Most parents do! The repeating, obvious lesson here is that in life generally, and in parenthood specifically, try to just say YES as often as possible.
In Gratitude, Mickey
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost 1874-1963
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.