Sunday, November 27, 2011

The hard facts of decision making

Life is all about decisions. From the moment we begin the day right until we retire, we are constantly faced with the dilemma of choosing. The plethora of options seem to make the task formidable. Sometimes gratification, other times responsibility and quite often a mere adherence to the routine. The vacillations of the mind  do not simplify matters in any way. Very often, it compounds the dilemma . The mind after all is the naughty child within that quite often pushes us to the cookie jar to dip in just this one more time. It conjures all sorts of brilliant rationalism and justification for that moment. And this same devil later on unforgivingly assaults the conscience with strictures that dwarf the self-esteem. Life inevitably becomes a  see saw that rocks between hedonism and virtue, pleasure and duty, between self castigation and achievement.
Most of the decisions that we make are fraught with short term implications. And the stakes are not very high as well. The indulgence may at the most add a few pounds, or harden the arteries a bit. Might just prepone the inevitable.. Albeit, the extra pounds could pass off as a testimony to being well ensconced in our career.
There are times when we are faced with crunch situations. The points that have the potential to alter the course of our lives. The stakes could be high not only personally but also for those in the immediate vicinity. As the stakes rise, so does the hesitation. The head and the heart seem to wrestle for supremacy. The left brain keeps a strict debit and credit account of every alternative. The right brain pops up with very intuitive suggestions. The ego cautions one about what “the others” will say. The maverick within recommends the absurd.  Amidst this din and noise, the voice of the soul is totally hushed. Repeated attempts to evoke audibility makes it barely discernible..
This voice needs to be  amplified. It is a high fidelity(hi-fi) source that metes out an optimised option. Fidel to our true nature and personalities. The voice within is the voice that blends the reality with the dream. It harmonises the internal and the external. It is a holistic mix of practicality and possibility. It often gets discounted by seemingly wiser considerations, but wisdom is always in retrospect. The prospective is always speculation.
The feeling of being in total control while  make a decision is honestly an apparition. This is because our decisions are largely circumstance based. The circumstances are largely out of bound even for the most powerful and mighty. A decision is essentially a way out of the maze of circumstances. This maze is a construct that is unique in every situation. We certainly cannot position the maze as per our choice. The impact of the situational maze  restricts our decision  making  to a very narrow  bandwidth  of exercising our choice. Free will is restricted to an excursion on  this  turf  restricted by the circumstances . Priding ourselves about our achievements very often is a trespass of the uncontrolled  domain by our egos. It certainly makes for a heady high, but we must realise that the high is not solely because of our head.