How do you know what you want?

How do you decide?

I always thought it was crazy to make 17 year olds decide what to do with their life. Make University choices. You can't ask a 17 year old what they want to be, how would they know? No life experience, no idea really of who they are even though they may think so. Yet they have to decide what they want to study, something that will affect the rest of their lives. Me? Back then I thought, 'Oh, well I'm good at Art, Music and Drama, so hey, I'll do Contemporary Arts.' No more thought than that. If you asked me now, it'd take a year to decide, and I still wouldn't be sure I'd made the right choice.

And then, what about the fact that the choices you make affect your life in so many different ways, a lot of them in ways you wouldn't begin to dream of even when you make them? If I do A, then B will happen. If B happens then C may occur. And what if you bring D, E, and F into the equation? Then what happens? Then how do you make the right choices? What if you never even knew D, E and F existed until the opportunity had presented itself and gone, until it was possibly too late? Until you couldn't rethink your choices, because they were out of your hands? And what if those things will continue to be in your life until the day you die even though you didn't choose right at the time?

Can you go back?

Can you re-choose?

Is this fretting a form of existentialism?

I tell you, it's a minefield.

And one I am still finding it difficult to navigate.