During our daily lives we are called to make some decisions and some choices. We decide from the most trivial stuff, like what we will eat for breakfast, to the most decisive moments of our lives, like the choosing our profession. Even in this article, I made a personal choice of title and introduction, which is going to determine the way the article proceeds. Something similar happens in our life. The choices we make, open up new paths in the journey of life, they create new opportunities or block our way and often lead us to dead ends.
But how does everyone make these decisions? Which is the definitive power which wins inside of us and pushes us towards a specific direction? Is it the same for everyone? I hope that by the end of this article, you will be able to answer the questions above yourselves. More frequently than believed, do people follow very different approaches in similar situations and unfold unconventional realities.
So, what is the differentiating factor between all of us which makes us self-imposed individuals? How do two people find happiness or absolute sadness through a similar choice? The answer lies in everything which is hidden inside a person’s soul. In the stimuli and experience we acquired as children but also as adults, in words we listened to or overheard, in laughs and tears we shed either because of an experience which scarred us or of something distant which touched us, in wants which still stir inside us and musts which keep us chained. In all of these and much more…
A universal truth is that we are lucky enough to live in a society where the possibility of a choice exists. We are free to choose and live our lives according to our inner needs. The same society however, which offers us a freedom of choice, condemns and criticizes us harder than anyone. Social conventions and standardized norms which we unconsciously adopt, often and with mathematical precision, lead to decisions and choices with no personal contribution. Inevitably, in our minds the ongoing battle between our self-imposed individual and our socially affected being we constitute is raging.Is there really the concept of what we call a “right decision” or an abstract notion, constructed by society?
The truth is that I cannot give an answer to this question. What I can say is that there are decisions which reassure and comfort you, as they do not upset the “waters” and everything is wearily and indifferently in order. Nothing more. And then, there are decisions which pourlike a stream from our hearts, unadulterated, free from any extrinsic impurity, and they are usually accompanied by an intrinsic sense of guilt, like we have broken some inviolable law. Despite of that, we feel like they are more right and more just than our own existence, and if we don’t, who cares? We are happy with them and ready to live with their consequences.
“The present is not a potential past. It is the moment of choice and action” like Simon De Beauvoir wrote, who in fact taught what is described above with her personal choice and decisions, to which she stayed loyal until the end of her life.
Our life is a sum of choices. Unimportant or vital, pleasant or unpleasant. What matters is being able to take pride in the fact that they were ours and only ours.
On lightning is our life, yet we can make it in time!
Niko Kazantzakis
Translation: Miltos Bizios