What I have learned of life while being at ice cream shops

Ice cream shops were always a disturbing place for me.

I don’t mean anything related to diet or healthy eating. None of that. It was for a much simpler reason: I’ve always had a hard time making choices.

And ice cream shops are kind of like the final exam of choosing. I’d constantly feel pushed against the wall.

For starters, too many options. One too many colors. Far too many delicious flavors. Some of them, citric; other some, sweet. A gigantic amount of toppings and sides!

I’m jealous of people that are able to walk in and order just chocolate ice cream. No topping, no other flavor to mash in together, no sides. Just plain chocolate flavored ice cream.

Whenever I walked into an ice cream shop, I’d be overwhelmed. I wanted to savor them all. But it was biologically possible, obviously, my body wouldn’t handle that much ice cream. I also had limited resources, financially speaking, so I was, in way, obligated to choose not to regret potential outcomes.

That fear of regretting my choosing would make me think quite hardly. “If I choose this one, I’m going to regret not having picked that other one…”

Outcome #1: I’d end up regretting whichever I had chosen.

Outcome #2: I’d always leave with the feeling that that experience could have gone better.

Then I stopped thinking of all possibilities. I stopped trying to pick the perfect flavor, to choose perfectly.

Nowadays, I don’t even think of going through everything. I glance at the first one that wakes my hankering for it, and that’s the one, I stop overthinking. I just trust it wasn’t mere chance what led me to choose that flavor as the first option.

I do the same when going through menus at any restaurant.

My life got much simpler and I don’t have to waste energy on making these kinds of choices.

And what does it have to do with life?

Everything! Life is the biggest ice cream shop in the world.

It’s the field of infinite possibilities.

You may spend your whole life trying to figure out which flavor is the one you can call yours. You can run millions of analysis trying to minimize errors. You can experience different situations and submit yourself to self-acknowledging processes to find out which flavor you were born to savor.

And if you overthink about it, you will regret your choices. It’s always possible to have chosen better.

That goes for work, home, relationship, shopping, books, products, diet, events, trips.

Be in peace with whatever your choices are. Every choice is merely a choice.

There is no such thing as the perfect ice cream for you. There is no such thing as the perfect choice.

In the end, all that counts is to be able to savor that which you picked.

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Special Thanks to Gabriel Galo