Decisions can be difficult. When looking at alternatives, sometimes there’s no clear winner. There will be trade-offs regardless of your choice, so it can be hard to pick a direction.
I find it interesting that the etymological roots of “decide” mean to “cut off,” having a linguistic connection with words like suicide, genocide, or homicide. But instead of dealing with cutting off (killing) people, a decision deals with cutting off options. It’s choosing one to the exclusion of another and moving forward.
When a decision is made, and one path is chosen instead of another, it can have a freeing effect. No longer do you have to continue to evaluate and weigh the choices in front of you. You’ve decided, and now it’s time to move on.
The challenge is sometimes we think we’ve decided, but we are still weighing all the options. We haven’t really cut them off or let them go. And so the weight of making a decision never really leaves. It’s when we finally say no to some options in order to say yes to another, that we start to experience the freedom that comes from the act of deciding.