In life, you have to take risks, not knowing where they lead, if they will pan out. Quite often they don’t. But all of them build gratitude for what does work.
Whenever I see people wrestling with a risk, I always say “go for it”. The worst that can happen is you learn something you could not have found out any other way. You don’t have to wonder “what if”.
To the extent of my recollection, I have no “what if’s” in my life. Certainly, there have been many cases where I could have been smarter, perhaps should have been smarter, might have chosen different words or silence, or generally might have done things differently.
But there are no large chances I refused to take. I have set sail into the unknown many, many times. I prefer dry land, but I have not found any yet which was congenial to the home and world I want to build. So I keep seeking my own Promised Land.
My terror is awful sometimes, so too my confusion, my fatigue. But my Faithful Three hold me up: rejecting self pity, persevering, and being curious.