Decisions -- they make us. They take us to where we are going. And often if we have a real problem with the way Life has turned out, or the hand Life has dealt us, or the way People possibly view us, it's good to just look at decisions, because there you'll find your answers and an admonishment for blaming Life and Other People. I admire people who are decisive. They seem to be the type of individuals who go through life with so much grit, always knowing which way they are going (though not always sure if that is the right way). They make choices fully aware that these may screw them up -- but they don't, because they make them with real conviction. Never half-baked ideas or "OK let's try it like this this time." They waver, but momentarily; purpose follows them like a puppy with an affection complex "pant, pant, here I am, I'm cute, pick me up." :P
How do these people do it? I find myself floundering over the slightest thing, and worst of all, making decisions and then thinking "well, I'm sure that was for the best anyway," when the choice seems like the easy way out, the path already trodden by a million different others, the boring choice, the safe choice that's completely normal and expected. You see, there's nothing wrong with the choice, but it's just so not-happening. In The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, a book that got under my skin in several ways and made me think about my life (not in the most pleasant way), the protagonist Tony Webster talks about how he had lived a perfectly acceptable and "peaceable" life-time...but how little he had made happen in his life. The whole narrative seemed to me like a eulogy for settling, ordinary decisions, and mediocrity more than anything else.
How decisions mould us, though. Makes you think about the series of events that has led to this point of life and time, and what could have been (to be avoided at all costs), who is in your life and who has had to leave it, who you have cut out for various reasons. But that's change, and another story all together. But I do, I do admire people who can make spot decisions, who do not think that OK is all right, and that maybe that could be done next week...because the thing we do not realise is that this particular moment in time is never, ever coming back again. This chance is critical in that the ripples this stone's-throw cause can be caused by no other stone thrown at any other angle. I wish I was like that. Instead, life for me seems to be a series of "maybe-next-times", something that can get tiresome when you're not tired enough to think of nothing.
“What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realised? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels? One whose self-rebukes never really inflicted pain?"
All these thoughts, however, come on the back of a really good day, so the vagaries of life is another thing to think about. Brings to mind what my mother had recently said to a friend who had hinted at the futility of life; that, in the words of Lord Buddha, nothing is permanent -- not the good times, nor the bad.
How do these people do it? I find myself floundering over the slightest thing, and worst of all, making decisions and then thinking "well, I'm sure that was for the best anyway," when the choice seems like the easy way out, the path already trodden by a million different others, the boring choice, the safe choice that's completely normal and expected. You see, there's nothing wrong with the choice, but it's just so not-happening. In The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, a book that got under my skin in several ways and made me think about my life (not in the most pleasant way), the protagonist Tony Webster talks about how he had lived a perfectly acceptable and "peaceable" life-time...but how little he had made happen in his life. The whole narrative seemed to me like a eulogy for settling, ordinary decisions, and mediocrity more than anything else.
How decisions mould us, though. Makes you think about the series of events that has led to this point of life and time, and what could have been (to be avoided at all costs), who is in your life and who has had to leave it, who you have cut out for various reasons. But that's change, and another story all together. But I do, I do admire people who can make spot decisions, who do not think that OK is all right, and that maybe that could be done next week...because the thing we do not realise is that this particular moment in time is never, ever coming back again. This chance is critical in that the ripples this stone's-throw cause can be caused by no other stone thrown at any other angle. I wish I was like that. Instead, life for me seems to be a series of "maybe-next-times", something that can get tiresome when you're not tired enough to think of nothing.
“What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realised? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels? One whose self-rebukes never really inflicted pain?"
All these thoughts, however, come on the back of a really good day, so the vagaries of life is another thing to think about. Brings to mind what my mother had recently said to a friend who had hinted at the futility of life; that, in the words of Lord Buddha, nothing is permanent -- not the good times, nor the bad.
