In the middle of a philosophical discussion last night, it occurred to me that it’s only possible to make decisions right now. I suppose that seems like a silly thing to say, but it’s not quite as obvious as it seems at first blush. We like to think that we can decide what we’re going to do next week, but this is not entirely accurate. We can plan for those things, we can state our intentions, but we can’t actually decide until the moment itself arrives.
Two weeks ago I decided to go to an event that took place last night. I didn’t go. Not much of a decision then, was it? Barring the discussion of the necessity of sticking to one’s decisions, this is exactly what I’m talking about. I couldn’t actually make the decision to go until the moment came to arrive at the event. Up until that point, something more important may have come up.
Why is this important? Well, I spend a lot of time planning my life; making decisions about what I want to do and who I want to be and how I’m going to get there. I make lists. I schedule things. I have dreams: places I want to go, things I want to do; but the truth of the matter is, none of those are decisions. It’s possible that none of it will happen. None of those things are happening now.
There is no way that I can decide right now that I’m going to Guatamala this summer and know for a fact that it’s going to happen. I can buy airfare, schedule the time, book hotels, etc. but there are too many uncontrollable eventualities for me to say that the decision is final. As a most obvious example, perhaps a member of my family will become ill and I will have to cancel the entire trip at the last moment.
Where I will be in six months is the culmination of the decisions that I make now, but I can’t decide now where I will be in six months.
I believe it was John Lennon who said, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” (It’s fascinating how we hear these little tidbits of knowledge, but can go on not understanding them for years.) Suddenly this has new meaning to me. What you decide right now is what determines who you are and what you accomplish in life. Are you actively making your life and the world, what you want it to be? Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” This takes on new meaning given this context. It’s not that I was clueless to it before. I thought I was working towards the world I want to live in, but in large part, I was preparing to work toward the world that I want to live.
Every instant, the future becomes now, and we have a new opportunity to live how we want to live and in the the world that we want to live in. If everyone decided this … now, it would be a different world. Instantly.
Any discussion of now would be incomplete without consideration of the other end of the spectrum: the past. Similarly, I can’t change what I have done, and yet it can be so tempting to long for it to be different. How many times do you think, “If I had only…” when the reality is: you can’t. It’s the past. Is this Obvious? Of course it is. Do we live as if we can change the past? Wishing that it were different? Of course we do.
But it’s too late. All we can do is learn from those experiences and then let them go. This makes us better able to make good decisions, now. I suppose if you are perfectly content with your life and with the world that you live in, then there is no need to improve upon the decisions that you make. However, if you want your life, where you live, what you do; if you want the world itself to be different, then you need to make decisions now that correlate with what you want. And you need to know that those decisions may not be the right ones. This is how it works for each one of us every moment.
I contend that this is how real change can happen. I make better decisions, now, based on the past. Tomorrow, I may discover that the decisions I make are wrong. On Monday, when confronted with a similar situation, I will make a different decision.
Better decisions, better living, every day, every moment, starting now.
3 Comments
where do I sign up?
So, you’re oonstantly shifting tactics to meet conditions on the gorund, then?
I’d posit that perhaps decisions about what one does require fluidity and defy our will, but they are made in repsonse to the far more personally-dictated matter of what one is. We can choose loyalty, but not whether we will in fact join a friend for dinner next Tuesday. Loyalty simply dictates dinner on Thursday if Tuesday is no good and a friend is in need of dinner out.
We are guided by stars, not tides.
Garrity,
I would not argue with the point that you make in your second paragraph. However, I propose that the two are not mutually exclusive. My point refers to what we have control over and how life develops seemingly of its own accord through the minutiae of myriad tiny decisions that we make every day.
If I understand properly, your point references those internal aspects of our personalities that drive those decisions. Both are critical, but I have spent a great deal of time working on my inner motivations, and just noticed that while I’m doing that, life keeps developing of its own accord.
For me, that is the value of the realization expressed in my post.
I would also argue that the choice of loyalty relates more to what we are that what we can choose.
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