Are all our Good Decisions always taken by us?

2015th BLOG POST

I am currently reading a non-fiction which is about depression – majorly in urban cities where life just doesn’t have a pause button. There are several instances mentioned in the book which brought tears to my eyes. Many of them were because I felt I am going through the same pain, suffering or have dealt something similar in past. I kept the book aside at around 1 AM and started scribbling why do I feel a certain emotion at certain time. As it is said that writing is the best therapy anyone can have, I started feeling better after writing my pain-points and analyzing it. When I was going through my life, I saw that most of the bad things happened were chosen by others for me. Then I went onto another level of this flowchart and thought if I would have decided something else for myself if the decision was forced upon me.

 

Luckily, the answers for most of them were true – I would have chosen something else if I had the option to choose – either during my childhood days or higher academic options or relationships or other prominent landmarks in my life. Then I also started looking at good things that have happened to me. I started writing why did that happen at first place. I also started refactoring how did I come upon taking those decisions for myself if I wrote only my name against the event or achievement. Somehow, I realized that even that happened because either I got influenced while having conversation with someone or through some content I consumed through books/articles/movies/videos etc. Then I started removing my name against all these points and wrote the name of the influencer which made me take the decision that went right in my life.

 

Finally, I realized that nothing in life happens only because of us – our emotions, decisions, dreams, aspirations or actions. It is always either influenced, decided or suggested by someone. Maybe you won’t remember at the moment but subconsciously, your mind knows how did you reach a point where you took or rejected a decision/option. Though I believe that decision-making is a skill in itself and most people on topmost designation has no job but to only provide approvals for certain tasks that has risks involved in it. People from outside think that they have nothing much to do but in reality, the kind of decisions they take can make their company/product or its future into success or failure.

 

So, coming back to the topic, when I realized that, I started pondering over the fact that every time we are about to do something or make some decision, when the same set of people who have taken or influenced most of our decisions in our life are available, why do we ignore them or their take about us? Why do we feel that we shouldn’t let someone else take charge of our life? Even though they are just going to give their inputs because many of us don’t see ourselves as 3^rd person but these people do. They know our level of capabilities, behavior, commitment etc. towards certain activities which relates to the progress or quality of our life. Sometimes, others are in better place to guide us than we, ourselves.

 

But when the same or certain thing goes wrong in our life where we didn’t include them in the decision-making process, they are the first people we run towards for help and guidance. We find solace in them. Even their presence and few words of affirmation for our future gives us comfort. We then realize our mistake of not including them while we were getting into this activity which had certain risk or failure involved. For e.g. when you find a partner, you never want to discuss that with your parents. Similarly, we keep turning down all the red flags raised by our siblings/friends because eventually, they end up knowing about it.

 

Later on, when we get a setback in our relationship, we run back to the same siblings/friends whom we considered jealous or less-informed about our emotions/choices. In case, the environment at home is moderate/liberal, we tend to cry hugging our parents or siblings. But what happens when we are getting into something as serious as this which can impact our emotional state later on? Why do we become so arrogant? What gives us the confidence that we are taking the best possible decision ever and it will never fail whatsoever? Isn’t this something we should consider when its eventually the people around us who help us get out of the rut we have trapped ourselves in?

 

The same scenario applies for everything – choosing our field of study, college, courses, job, job location, life-partner, hospital for delivery, job switching, purchasing a home, renting and the list keeps on going. When we end up realizing in any of these situations that we have screwed ourselves, we are ready to follow any advice given by our well-wishers. We give everything in their hands to do it for us just because we want to get out of the trap we have fallen into immediately. But the moment we are out again, we get back the same swag of playing with our life on our own terms. Where does this swag and terms go when everything gets lost in the race? Haha!

 

Life is funny and we are funnier. Life is shit then we are the ones shitting on it. It’s time to understand how we have reached wherever we are. If everything bad has happened due to others, even the good has happened because of others. These might be the same set of people or different but we are not the only ones who impact our life. There are always OTHERS who are involved in it – you like it or not. Now, how we have to handle the involvement of others – how much to include/exclude them – how much to take/not take their advice – is all upon us. But for that – we must know the set of people who have almost/mostly been right and wrong for us so that we can have our own set of board-of-directors kind of thing whom we consult every time we are trying to get into something which can impact our life largely. Best of Luck to you – hope you find your BoDs soon. 😊

 

Thanks!

 

WRITING BUDDHA