Some things you get lots of chances to try, fail, and try again. Other items, however, are big Lifetime Decisions. Examples:

• marriage/family — though the divorce rate has risen over the years, mistakes are expensive and unæsthetic, to put it mildly
• career — there's more job mobility now than there used to be, but it's still hard to make radical changes
• studies — with increasing depth and complexity in most fields of knowledge, it's tougher to be a renaissance man (or even a wanna-be know-it-all)
• health — years of smoking, obesity, inactivity, etc. are difficult to recover from

The punch line? Take care and think thrice before deciding, especially when you don't get many do-overs!

^z - 2010-03-05