Something that I have learnt in my life is that indecision is rarely a Good Thing. I heard somewhere that indecision is a form of dependency, caused by needing someone else to tell you what to do. It is also a result of fear. Fear of making the wrong decision, and of suffering its consequences.
There is of course another side to it. Sometimes the inability to express a preference can result from a truly open mind – an absence of dogmatic opinion. And I still believe that keeping an open mind is a much better thing than rushing to make judgements – about situations, about beliefs, about people. And, unlike some (in)famous politicians, I believe that the ability to change one’s mind, in the face of new information, is also a Good Thing. As William Blake said,
The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
But keeping an open mind, and being willing to change it when appropriate, are not excuses for endless indecision. Life is a process. Life is motion. And without commitment to a course of action, we can drift forever in a sea of missed opportunities, or be forever tormented by If-Onlys and Should-Haves, which thoroughly prevent us being truly happy Right Here, Right Now.
It has taken me a very long time to learn this lesson, and even though I say I Know This Thing, I still find indecision a very difficult habit to break. At any point in my life, when a choice is called for, I find myself searching for some tool or other to help me make the Right Decision.
Asking other people’s advice is rarely helpful. I quickly get irritated that they do not, indeed they cannot know the tortuous path my mind has already taken in considering the multifarious possible implications of each choice. Their advice is always too simplistic. And I don’t want to hear what they would do in that situation. I want to know what I (if I was a decent human being, with a well balanced care for the needs of others and the needs of myself) would do.
I suppose I have, for a very long time, not had faith in myself to make good decisions, nor been really willing to take responsibility for my actions. And when other people are not around to depend on for the answer to the very frequent question, “What should I do?” I have looked for help from another source. Many’s the time I have opened the Bible, the Tao te Ching, or some other favourite philosophical book-of-the-moment, at random, in the hope of reading some relevant phrase to guide my course of action. I have looked for omens, and synchronicities, and clues. I have behaved as if I believed the Right Choice existed, somewhere out there, floating free in the ether, waiting to be discovered.
This belief in the existence of the Right Decision is paralysing. How can one possibly choose a fork in the road until one is sure that it leads to the correct destination? Especially when there is no signpost, and you have no map. And actually no idea what the destination is supposed to be.
And therein lies the key to the dilemma. The only way to make this journey we call Life is to stop worrying about where we are going, and concern ourselves instead with how we are travelling. And however much we may wish to travel wisely, we cannot take a short cut using the compass of other peoples’ wisdom. The Catch 22 of this whole Life Journey thing is this:
We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
Marcel Proust
