Vanilla and What if?

I have always been a vanilla girl. Whenever I go to Cold Stone, I stick with vanilla because it is the safest choice. It is not that vanilla is the best, at least not now that I have not tried other flavors. It is just the only choice that leaves me with no regrets. What if I try that mint flavor and it tastes awful? What if I waste my money? I think about all the possible outcomes before even making a decision, calculating, overanalyzing, and convincing myself that sticking to what I know is the best option.

Risks are hard to take. I have spent half of my life listening to people say, "Take more risks. Step out of your comfort zone. You never know what you are missing." Boy, it's hard. Still, I have realized something. Playing it safe does not actually protect me from regret. If anything, it creates a different kind of regret, the what ifs, the maybes, the lingering thought that I could have experienced more but chose not to. The truth is, comfort is easy, but it is also limiting.

Maybe next time, I will try something different. Maybe I will go for mint, maybe orange, or maybe I will hate it and go right back to vanilla. But at least I will know. At least I will have let myself try. Life is not about always making the right choices, but about allowing ourselves to make choices in the first place, even when we are not sure how they will turn out.

All my love,
Olamide from MANI