Buyer's Regret

It happened when my daughter was three, maybe four. 

A friend had organised tickets for an ‘Angelina Ballerina’ meet-the-author session.  It was magical.  The girls went in their ballet dresses and hopped around the room (in that uniquely dainty-clumsy four-year old way ) led by a ‘proper ballerina’.  There were pliés galore and undoubtedly some ‘Good-toes-and-naughty-toes’ exercises too. The author read stories and talked to them about Angelina like she was real (well, isn’t she?).  And at the end, of course, The Book Table.

‘Just choose one,’ I said.  It would be signed and treasured.  My girl deliberated for a long time – torn between two equally lovely options.  Every time she’d made her choice and we got into the queue, she would gasp a ‘No!’ just before we reached the cash desk and quickly turn back to swap for the other.  Eventually, tummies rumbling, we got strict.  ‘Just choose one,’ I repeated, a little less gently than before.

She chose one.

‘Sure now?’

She nodded.

We bought it, then wandered Brighton’s twisty south lanes to meet the others for lunch, followed by a stroll along the beach, then home with our visitors.

My daughter struggled to settle that evening.  Eating a kitchen supper with our guests we wondered what on earth it could be.  When she came downstairs for the tenth time I sat on the stairs, holding her shaking body close to me.

‘Please, tell me what’s wrong’.

She wailed.  A pitiful, sobbing wail, trying to get the words out in between gulps.

“I...I...chose...the...wrong...book!” she spluttered before dissolving into tears again.

She chose ‘the wrong book’? I had no idea buyer’s regret was possible at four years old.

I had no idea, but I did get it. Because I’m the same. I have been there. I mean, less so about Angelina Ballerina books (without wishing to belittle the enormity of that decision!), but for so, so many other of life’s choices, I find myself wracked with indecision, then regretful of the unchosen option.

Why do we find decisions so hard? Maybe because, understandably, we want things to be the best they possibly can. We are still yearning for some perfect, unblemished version of life that probably doesn’t exist in this broken world. And yet, these things we choose, they can still be good. They can still be a gift from God, to be grateful for.

Some of my life choices have been ‘eureka moments’, immediately obviously right: my marriage, finding the right uni course after a disastrous first decision, going for a short but significant work stint in Mexico and, related to that, moving to a local job that would later make family life easier and which aligned with my interests (despite it being somewhat career-sacrificing). Other choices in life haven’t come so easily - tossed around on the waves of uncertainty. Often, I lacked assurance that I would make a wise choice. I held my ‘Yes’s in tentative hands and grieved the ‘No’s. So, although completely different, I understood my daughter’s struggle.

The thing is, she was never going to choose the right book that day, because there was no ‘right one’. Sometimes, there just isn’t.  Sometimes there is an obvious right choice, but often we have to choose between equally good options. And, although there isn’t a right one, we always have a tendency to be more aware of what we have missed than what we have gained. But perhaps, instead of agonising, we should be grateful, thank God we have two or more good things to choose from. Because it’s a gift to have a choice.

Still, we find we want the other option. Or maybe both. But saying yes to one thing normally means saying no to something else. You want to be sure that the ‘yes’ is worth it.  And we have become so used to thinking we can have it all that we forget the power and value of choosing just one thing. We overlook the contentment of knowing the thing we chose has its own value. The contentment of not constantly looking over our shoulder at the other options.

Of course, sometimes we genuinely might not choose the ‘best’ thing (me, every time we order Chinese. Just ask my family!). We have to accept that. But nine times out of ten, we can live with it, look for the value in it despite those pop-up feelings of ‘what-could-have-been’. And if it’s something that really matters, it’s rarely too late to turn around.

As for my girl, at the time, whichever book she chose would have been ‘wrong’ because it was forcing her to let go of the other, and ultimately, both were equally beautiful. But she came to love the one she chose. And maybe that’s the way to find peace with the smaller choices we make, the ones that leave us kicking ourselves, the ones that made us let go of something else we wanted.

Find the value in what we have chosen. Find our way to gratitude.