WHY YOU SHOULD DISREGARD ALL WORDS OF ADVICE ~ Including This One.

Jean-Paul Sartre posed a thought experiment about a young man who was in a fix. This young man was faced with two difficult choices: he could either join the French Army and go to war against the Germans who killed his brother;

Or...

He could stay back home to be with his aged mother, who relied on him for love and support as she grieved the loss of her other son.

The neutral observer may see this as an easy decision. You can only have one mother and going to war could mean never seeing her again. But if you have ever known passion, you might understand why this was no easy decision at all.

If the young man went to war, he would be contributing - however infinitesimally - to a greater cause, avenging his brother's death, and maybe making the world a better place in the process.

If he stayed with his mother, he would be making a world of difference in her life, but his life would make no difference in the world.

Sartre's thought experiment was a response to one of his students who came to him to help them make an important decision. The point Sartre's story was making was that when it comes to making a personal decision, nobody else has the answers besides you.

When I realised that pursuing a degree in Computer Science was fast becoming an albatross around my neck, I was faced with a dilemma similar to that of the young man in Sartre's thought experiment.

Do I leave this lucrative career path for a less lucrative path in Psychology? Was I willing to allow three years go to the bins and extend my stay in the university by at least another year? Would I find the happiness I desired in Psychology? What is Psychology, anyway?

Naturally, I sought advice from every quarter I could think of. Family, friends, family friends, my parents, ...God. Everybody was more than happy to lend me their two cents - some even two hundred cents.

Some people thought happiness was a frivolous thing to base a decision on. Others thought happiness was the principal thing and that there was no better premise for decision-making.

I agreed with the latter.

I made my decision and left Computer Science for Psychology. I didn't know what lay ahead of me but I was excited to find out. To meet new people and gain new knowledge.

In retrospect, it is perhaps one of the three best decisions I ever made.

In 2018, which was my final year in Computer Science, I had a roommate. He was one of the most driven people I have ever met. He had a dream and so rigorously dedicated himself to achieving it that I had no doubt in any fibre in my body that he would succeed.

And succeed he did. He got accepted into the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), albeit on his fourth try. He was in his final year at the university. He had been trying to get into the academy since his first year and was only a couple of months from securing his Bachelor's degree when he finally got accepted.

He was willing to forego his four years in the university to pursue five years of dedication to serving his motherland. I wasn't surprised that he would make this sacrifice. Instead, I was in awe and admired him even more for his bravery.

When he left the room, and the university, for the NDA, I felt a vicarious joy. Seeing his eyes light up at the prospect of being a Nigerian soldier someday as we said our goodbyes reminded me of my own existential dilemma.

Here was a boy my age, leaving behind a four-year degree to pursue his dreams. And here was I, contemplating leaving three years behind to pursue even more uncertainty.

To cut the long story short, my roommate never got to actualise his dreams. He never got to be a Nigerian soldier because three days after resuming at the academy, we received news of his death. To this day, none of us knows what led to his death.

What, then, is the point of this story if the end is tragedy? There is no point. Life is pointless.

But that's besides the point. The point of this article is that there are no right or wrong answers to the question of how our lives should be lived.

If my roommate had stayed behind and completed his university degree, he probably would still be alive today-or maybe not.

Nobody knows. When he was faced with the decision of pursuing a place at the NDA again or simply bagging his degree, nobody could have made the right decision for him, because nobody knew what the outcome of either decision would be.

He pursued what he believed to be the best for himself - he made an authentic choice.

One that only he could have made for himself. And even though that choice correlated with his early demise, it is a decision that to this day, I greatly admire him for.

Before I bought the form to officialise my move from Computer Science to Psychology, I spent many hours wondering if I would meet a similar fate as my roommate. What if this turned out to be the worst decision I ever made? What if it led me too, to an early grave?

Maybe I was overthinking it, and I really think I was, but at the time, I couldn't help but over-philosophise.

In the end, I made my decision and transferred. I did what I believed was best for me, and I did it on my own terms. Anything otherwise would amount to Absurdism.

I still wonder how differently my life might have turned out had I not made the change that I made, but we'll never know. Maybe I'm just over-philosophising again.

I have no regrets, however. Maybe I would have if someone else had made that choice for me because then I wouldn't be living authentically. I would be living according to the whims and caprices of someone who does not have my life any more figured out than I do. Someone who is still figuring out their own life.

So live your life. Make your own choices and live with them. They may be bad choices, or they may be good choices. Their outcomes will tell. But learn to live with those choices, knowing that vou made the most out of the options and the information you had at the time.

And regret nothing, for regret is a useless

feeling.

I would like to close by quoting one of my closest friends, Marvel, who was also one of my roommates in 2018. These his words are what I have lived by since the moment they first resonated with me.

And the irony of living by and quoting another man's words in an article that encourages a disregard for the advice of others is not lost on me. But the title of this article is in itself an irony, so why are you surprised?

Marvel said, "Your thoughts are welcome, but I choose mine at the end of the day," and I wholeheartedly agree with him.

Live authentically.