I am currently facing a crises in choices i need to make. i’ve been here before and i did the most stupid thing, not choosing any and let the drift take me. This got me thinking regarding the choices i make and these are my thoughts.
Firstly let’s go through the boundaries of any human. We are mortals. We leave the world at one point or another no matter what we do. We are also stuck to arrow of time, we can’t freely move in time dimension even when we are travelling in it. We experience it moment after moment with no way to go back or front as we wish.
Let’s ask the question “How to choose?” .we weigh the options we got, to find the best one, but what if the options are not comparable?, what if it’s a Hard choice?. Ruth Chang in her ted talk , given an insight of these hard choices. when she was young she had to choose between becoming a philosopher or Lawyer. She chose the safest of option to become a Lawyer and later learned she doesn't fit in it. She at least chose to become a Lawyer and later realized she made a mistake and then changed the career. What if she did not choose any?
You might ask , how can we not choose any. Let me explain, When i was in college (i am doing engineering) i wanted to be a musician and wanted to join music clubs, i also like business and wanted to pursue that. I had to choose between giving my free time to music or learning the business tactics. since i do have time after doing college and can go into both music or MBA it might not seem a hard choice now, but at that point it’s a hard choice for me. Finally i chose to not to choose. if i had chosen the music by now i would’ve been pretty good in it. If i had chosen business, i would’ve started a startup by now. but i chose not to choose and what i got is nothing. Now i am neither a musician nor a Business man, i am programmer now and it’s not my choice. I drifted along with anything and it got me a job in programming. I am a good programmer but i know i will not be totally satisfied if i continue to do this for the rest of my life because it’s not my choice. I am not satisfied and the weird thing is i try to fill this void by creating new programs and see them run(Seeing the code i made being used, just makes me happy) and this is where the things get complicated. You might say i chose to become a programmer without consciously taking a decision but NO. I say i stopped living the moment i chose to not to choose.
It’s a weird situation where you ride a roller coaster of emotions.if I did make a choice at that time, i would’ve been more satisfied even if i failed, since it’s me who made the decision and made mistakes, i might feel bad for the decision but i still feel satisfied. Now i don’t feel anything. This situation may not be only due to that one choice but this habit of not choosing at all.
That brings us to now. I now have a choice to be in job or to start a startup and for last few months i did chose any, i let my life continue as it is without concluding something. I don’t wanna do that mistake again, But how should i choose?, What factors should i include? Consequences of this action cannot be seen before hand to weigh the option. Will it be perfect if i am able to see the future, where i can see the consequences of my actions?. I say no. I remember a movie which explored this angle. It’s called MR.NOBODY, in the movie the main character has a ability to see all the timelines for the choices he make. It all starts with choosing a parent who he wants to be with when they split up. We were shown all the timelines for every choice he makes thereafter, and everything has it’s own challenges. Finally at the end he decides to choose nothing and that’s when he become Mr. Nobody. He runs away from choices and stops living. In real world i saw few people who are scared to choose and create a safety bubble around them
Few years back i went around and started asking a question to elderly people. I asked them “What do you regret the most?”. All most all said that they regret the chances they did not take. Until now i used to think that they regret wrong choices they made , but now i understood they regret not taking a choice and letting it go. There are few people who failed in achieving their dreams but they did not regret that.
So to answer the Question “how to make a choice?” I don’t know, But i know this now, “There’s now right choice”. So if you are someone like me , take sometime and decide what you want. At the end we still die no matter if you take a choice or not,you still travel in time without getting it back,you can’t escape that. That’s the price for being a living creature. So don’t let a choice pass by you.
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