I always have a propensity to think a lot about matters in my life. This is also true of the mildest thing that crossed my path and happen to intrigue my interest. Some people have said that i worry too much about nothing. Sometimes i do get overwhelmed with pessimistic thoughts weighing down on my consciousness, bearly giving me space to breathe. For those times, i think their opinions have an element of truth in them. But the real truth is that i would like to think that i am a thinker rather than a worrier.
Much worry and ado for nothing? No, i think not. Here is a piece of thinking that i did last night.
Many times in our lives, we mull and agonise over the big decisions in our lives. We perceive them as being major, purportedly because of their intrinsic connectedness to the central arrangements in our lives. And society would have us think that it is normal too. How many of us have not thought that changing a job, getting married or buying a house constitutes a major decision? Indeed we all do.
In the midst of focusing our energies on those major decisions, we conveniently forget about those minor decisions. We invoke simple decision making routines for such minor decisions, often monotonously giving little or not thought at all to such choices. Much like you simply leap across when you encounter a water puddle in your path in your stroll. It is good and bad in a way, i am inclined to think.
The good is that you don’t give too much fuss in a life that is already full of buzz. Don’t we already feel chocked some times with everyone and everything around baying for a piece of ourselves? Just gotta do what’s gonna be done.
Yet my thinker alter ego urges me to think otherwise. As much as the little decisions count for naught in terms of significance alone, taken altogether, it would be foolhardy to dismiss all of them as being naught. And this pessimistic sentiment was not borne out of baseless paranoia. Recall the “butterfly effect”. The butterfly effect is a metaphor to describe the sensitivity of initial conditions to changes. I believe that our lives, everyone of us included, are complicated. Taken one life at a time, i consider it to be a highly complex system, both dynamic and fluid with multiple inputs and multiple outputs (MIMO). The inputs include not only the decision inputs that we exercise out but also the decisions by other individuals which have a partial bearing on the decisions we make. And, some decisions have a resonance cascade effect, leading onto effects which influence the making of certain decisions and so on and so forth.
The simplest summary of such a system is that life is a consequential and reactionary system constituted by a lineage of decisions, big and small. One change in any one “link” in this “chain” of decisions have a tremendous effect on the causal relationship of the decisions as a whole on the overall effects. That is, the overall profile and character of the variables have changed thus should the effects as according to the butterfly effect.
What is the moral of the story?
As much as we agonise over the major or big decisions in our lives, remember that it is actually the accumulation of the decisions big and small that matters more. it is probably a romantic notion to think that one big decision can have that devastating effect on your life. Remember that it wasn’t THAT decision that set the life changing course in motion. It ALREADY was in motion courtesy of some previous decisions in collective.
No comments:
Post a Comment