CHOICES- WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO

Sometimes things go south. You’ve made your bed. Now you have to lie in it. You don’t see that coming despite having stacked up your contingencies and analyzed every micro detail before you made ‘that’ choice.

Ironically you make a choice because it seems right or it’s the best available alternative at that very moment in a linear world.

Imagine if we were to live in parallel universes traversing through an endless continuum of time and space. Our lives wouldn’t be defined by the choices we make since we wouldn’t have to live through an unforeseeable (hopefully finite) amount of time to know the net results of our choices. We could redefine or even reverse our choices if, at the moment of making a choice, we become aware of the future our choices create. That way, we could create an endless loop of starting all over again, every single time, no matter how poor our ‘initial’ choices were. A point of ‘NO RETURN’ would never exist.

Eleanor Roosevelt quoted ‘ In a sense, by the time we are adults, we are the sum total of the choices we have made’. Indeed that is true, but our lives are also the result of the choices we ‘did not make’ or simply put ‘inaction’. There are two possibilities that precede every choice and therefore dictates every subsequent outcome- To Do or Not.

If you were to ask me what could be the one thing that you could master to make life easier, I would say, it is the art of making choices.

No one wants to make a bad choice, not unless you are at the brink of insanity or willful self destruction.

Making a choice (or not) especially with primordial consequences is almost often like walking a rope dangerously dangling over a deep violent river.

You could stand on one end and decide not to walk at all, or you could take that leap of faith, place your foot, your arms hanging above the whooshing wind, hoping you would live to see whatever it is at the end of it.

Sometimes it’s the Hudson’s choice.

At a fundamental level, (not necessarily in the same order) choices are

i. influenced by our experiences and learnings (good and bad), everything that bottles up in our subconscious mind from the time we were born.

ii. the precise timing of that ‘event' (the event that elicits one to make a choice) in a scale of linear events. Choices would be a lot different, if the sequence of events were to change.

iii. Information available at the time (extent, source) and how we perceive it. A slightly different way of looking at things could yield very distinct choices.

iv. your mental readiness to accept at least that which is apparent with a particular choice.

v. Your priorities and objectives (which keeps shifting) with time.

vi. your predominant pyschological trait for making and accepting choices (are you a rational thinker driven by the insatiable need to plan and control outcomes or do your decisions come from the heart and you are more likely to go with the flow?)

That’s why choices that work for one person would not necessarily work for another.

No two individuals are the same, or at any given point of time, in the exact same situation with the exact same experiences, information or mental make-up.

Having a choice does not tantamount to having something rigged in your favour, although that’s a common misconception. The word ‘Choice’ in itself is abstract and neutral, it is the process of choosing and deciding sometimes under less than desirable circumstances that makes the whole act so volatile, yet definitive with staggering consequences.

Some of the choices we make can veer our lives towards a completely different outcome.

Some work out, some don’t.

Unfortunately, in the world we live in, choices are not seen as an extension of a person and by that virtue undeniably redeemable. Rather, they become personified with the one making them. Choices become us. We become our choices.

Unless we invent the time machine to leap in to the past or develop prophetic abilities to discern what awaits us, sometimes we would have to learn to live with the choices we make, forgive ourselves if things don’t work out (after all, worse things happen at sea) and pray that we get the wisdom to make better ones.

Till then, be a little less judgemental.

Be kind.

 

 

The Patron

The kenspeckle sign board in a somewhat oddly large frame perched shakily at the entrance of the café obscured by the flailing branches of an old chestnut tree. From five blocks away she could see some of the paint had been washed out. She wondered if it had been there long enough or if it was some local painter’s last shoddy job before his makeshift workshop was abruptly closed down. Occasionally, she would hear the hungry purring of the cat who refused to leave the empty sidewalk once adorned by miniature water impressions by the city’s struggling artists. 

If it weren’t for the pyramidical mount of resolute steel rising above the copious grey skyline or the rain mercilessly pounding what was left of the fragile earth, she wouldn’t have believed she was in Paris. Some days, she felt it weren’t the teenagers, lips awkwardly locked as far as public intimacy would allow , on Pont des Arts or couples feeling up their gnarled bodies on a cramped ride on the Seine, rather it was the showers that lent the city its timeless magic.

She stepped out, would the air drift of Jean’s chocolate mushed croissants dolloped with a generous amount of butter? No one wished her a boisterous ‘Bonjour’ as she passed by the old baker known for his remarkable talent for fitting crisp baguettes in to thin take away bags. Was the solo busker who gratuitously drew afternoon hordes of hustling Parisians for his experimental renditions of international hits, all along, a fantasy? She trotted down the forbidden path, an annoyed cyclist, instead of the warning bell, would remind her where she was. A marked up map of her favorite landmarks beetled from her half folded hands, perhaps someone was lost in one of the city's many boot cut alleys?

The tables, cigarette stubs wedged in its cracks, were rolled upside down, almost blocking the cafés entrance. Would frivolous tourists pour in now that there were no locals with cacophonous French to deter them? Would it fade away in to the dozens where coffee was not about history, art or culture, but just another item on the menu.

She peeked through the dusty window for the lone table with a single red and black chair characteristic of classic Parisian decor, wondering if she would ever see that man who sat there every evening reading. Had he noticed that she had been there too, every day at the precise time, and while she dug in to the cinnamon laced pumpkin cake, she had watched how he poured over those frayed pages of an English classic, his brows gradually ascending, when he was amused or intrigued. Would the newbie server without being reminded, serve his loyal customer his cafe creme instead of the espresso shots that he regularly doled out. After all, in a place where the man couldn't have been more of a stranger, would be have chosen to stay?

The signage despite a few missing alphabets seemed to tell a different tale. Amidst the new found silence that the city had irrevocably inherited, she heard a loud cheep. 

The café had found a new patron.

Tʜᴇ ᴠᴏɪᴄᴇ

 

I αm lσst, I whíspєrєd
So͏m͏e͏w͏h͏e͏r͏e, ͏h͏e ͏s͏a͏i͏d, ͏y͏o͏u ͏s͏t͏a͏r͏t͏e͏d ͏o͏u͏t
I αm wєαrч, I retorted
That's because you marched this far.

I αm wєαk, fαllíng dσwn
Be͏c͏a͏u͏se yo͏u ͏s͏t͏o͏o͏d ͏up when nothing was an option too
I αm αlσnє, the battles' without aides
You are enough, always have, will be.

I cαnt sєє αhєαd, thє rσαd's dαrk
Turn your gaze, the light's inside
But.... I αm αfrαíd, σf whαt ít wíll вє
That means you've let go, ready to receive what's to be.

I dσubt I will mαkє ít, thє єnd's tσσ fαr
Yet you climbed out of your mother's warmth
And just why shσuld I вєlíєvє чσu?
Be͏c͏a͏u͏s͏e ͏I ͏made ͏y͏o͏u, I am the strength that is You.

 (Priya Poulose)