One of my favourite bands, if not my favourite, will forever be Abba. Sue me. I sometimes refer to it as my guilty pleasure, but in all honesty I don't feel any guilt about it. The themes they explore in some of their songs, although they sound so pleasant to the ear, often touch on subjects I find difficult to cope with. Perhaps that's why the other day I played  "I Wonder (Departure)" on repeat. (As a matter of fact, for some added inspiration, I'm listening to it as I write this.) The chorus goes something like this:

I wonder, it's frightening
Leaving now, is that the right thing?
I wonder, it scares me
But who the hell am I if I don't leave it?

It’s only four lines, but there’s so much I can say about this. For a start, in the first line, I see reflected a sentiment that I’ve often felt myself. With any sort of “departure”, it can feel something like placing your bets and hoping for the best. To call it “frightening” is the understatement of the year. It’s crippling, and not only in the present but also in thinking about the past. One might wonder what could have happened just as well as they might wonder what will happen in the future. Was that the right choice? Is this the right choice? Trying to answer these questions can lead to a rabbit hole of speculation that doesn’t leave you with much room to move.

The second line (quite beautifully sung, I might add) touches on this idea: “is that the right thing?” That’s the doubt we all feel about important decisions, and that doubt carries us back to where we began in the third line: “it scares me”. The structure of these first three lines brilliantly captures exactly what it feels like to cope with this sort of prudential anxiety: a positive feedback loop of hypotheticals none of which, despite feeling rational, are sufficient to make any difference.

This is, however, not what the song is about, and this becomes clear in the fourth line: “who the hell am I if I don’t leave it?” Immediately following that line, we’re told:

I, I'm not a coward
Oh no, I'll be strong
One chance in a lifetime
Yes I will take it, it can't go wrong

What the hell would any of us be if we didn’t make any of these decisions? We wouldn’t seem much of anybody, trapped by our doubts and anxieties, and the only way we can hope to escape this death-trap is to break the cycle, setting doubts aside, and make our choice. This is, of course, not an apology for reckless decisions, nor is it a slight against people suffering from these anxieties. I experience them. It’s not even a roadmap to success. It is, however, a reminder that we all go through this, and that the risk is certainly worth the reward. This is not simply because you keep moving, but because the best life you can live isn’t going to be lived from the comfort of an armchair. After all, if Frida hadn’t stopped wondering, we might not have this beautiful song, and “without a song or a dance, what are we?”