Friday, 1 November 2013

Choices we make : Blog # 148

Choices we make


All of us love to have choices. Be it from the most trivial of decisions to the most compelling ones, we need to have more than one option.

One reason for this liking for choices might be to minimize risk. If one option doesn't work, there is an alternative. And as people of our country, most of us are risk averse. Even at the risk of redundancy, we prefer to have multiples choices.

Another reason is having a choice is an easy way of empowerment or at least it gives a sense of being empowered. It shows an exit route in the vicinity. Whether one uses it or not is a different question altogether. We have all seen fire exits in buildings. A choice is like that. You might never use it. But it’s good to know that it is always there.

May be this is the reason why people prefer live in relationships to marriages. There is a choice. Once, one get in to a marriage, the choice ceases to exist. I am not getting in to the moral or social acceptance part of it. I am just exploring the options part here.

Same is the case with bonded labor. No one likes to get in to a bond with any organization, however desirable an employer that firm is. It is not that the employee will look out for other opportunities right from the day of joining. But again, he/she would like to have a choice of leaving when they would want to.

We explore choices in order to get to the best. Be it selecting a type of phone or a career choice, we do our research. Most of us do not settle with the first option that comes our way. We look at various choices so as to ensure that we are getting the optimum result out of the decision to be made.

Then there is the decision and ownership angle. Give a person a choice and ask him/her to make a decision. Since the choice is made by that person, there will be a sincere effort to make it work. We always own the choice that we make.

The sense of liberation attached to a choice is immense. If you are given more options to choose from, it means it is not imposed on you. There is a sense of freedom to it.

The journey of our life is a string of choices that we make. In that way, the whole of our life is in our control. But frailty of this thought is made conspicuous by the fact that the two defining choices concerning our Life is not something we make – the choice of when our Life begins and when it ends!J.

Arun Babu

2 comments:

  1. two defining choices concerning our Life is not something we make – the choice of when our Life begins and when it ends.....Wah Ustad Wah.....kya ending hai - Parvathy

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