I stood in the polling booth longer than I expected.
It wasn’t a complicated decision, in theory. I knew the options. I’d read the leaflets, half-listened to the arguments, watched the familiar faces make their familiar promises. I had an idea of what I thought before I walked in.
And then I picked up the pen. And something changed.
Because in that moment it was just me. No noise. No one telling me what mattered or what was at stake or what the wise person would do. Just me, a piece of paper, a few boxes, and the quiet responsibility of having to actually commit to something.
I hovered for longer than I’d like to admit.
There’s something about that hovering that I’ve been thinking about since. Not the politics of it but the feeling of it.
Most of us know this feeling well. Not just in polling booths. In the conversations we need to have and have put off. The careers we’re half in and half out of. The relationships we need to work on. The version of our life we keep almost choosing and then quietly put back down and opt for the familiar.
We hover. Sometimes for days. Sometimes for years.
And whilst we hover, we tell ourselves it isn’t a decision yet. That we’re still thinking. Still weighing it up. Still waiting for the moment when it becomes clear.
But the hovering is a decision. Just not a conscious one.
The noise before a big choice is extraordinary, isn’t it?
Everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a version of what you should do, what makes sense, what the sensible option is. Some of it is well-meaning. Some of it is about them more than you. There are websites offering guidance, reels to watch, books that make both sides seem the right option. All of it lands in the same place, adding weight to a moment that was already heavy enough.
And then you’re alone with it.
That’s the moment that matters. Not the deliberation, not the research or the conversations or the careful weighing of options. The moment when all of that falls away and it’s just you, and the choice, and the pen in your hand.
Research tells us something interesting about this. When people look back across their lives, they regret the things they didn’t do far more than the things they did. The failed attempts fade, but the unlived chapters don’t.
I finally made my decision in the polling booth. I eventually put the mark down. Folded the paper. Walked out into the day.
And I felt something alongside the embarrassment of taking so long. Not the certainty that I’d made the right choice, or done my duty, but something else.
It turns out there’s a reason for what I felt. When we finally make a decision, any decision, the brain releases the load it has been carrying about that choice. The uncertainty ends. The processing stops. And in its place, something settles.
The feeling of having actually chosen. Of being, for a moment, the author of something rather than the passenger in it.
That feeling doesn’t require the right outcome. It doesn’t require certainty or a clear view of what comes next.
It just requires the pen to finally touch the paper. For the choice to be made.
And what is on the other side?
Not necessarily the outcome you hoped for.
Not a guarantee that you chose correctly.
Not the absence of difficulty or doubt or the occasional 3am wondering whether you got it right.
What’s on the other side is simpler than any of that.
The going round and round the options stops.
The internal noise, the weighing, the circling, the same conversation you’ve been having with yourself for weeks or months or years, all of it finally quietens. Not because the path ahead is clear. Because you are no longer standing at the fork, frozen, looking at both directions at once.
You have chosen. And in the choosing, something releases. You can see again. Beyond the decision. Beyond the fear of making it. The view that was obscured by the hovering opens up and life, your actual life, becomes visible again.
And you begin to write. Not the chapter you were stuck on. The next one.
So today, if you are circling around a big decision, a choice that’s been weighing on you, I invite you to take a moment on your own. Go somewhere quiet, and I think you will find you already know what your decision is.
You’ve been circling it long enough. Turning it over. Looking at it from every angle. Having the same conversation with yourself in the quiet moments.
Deep inside you, you know.
It’s time to pick up the pen.
Matt
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